The paintings of Sir James Matheson and his nephew Sir Alexander Matheson have gazed down for decades on proceedings against lesser drugs suppliers and other offenders at Dingwall Sheriff Court.

Now however, at the insistence of Highland councillor and historian David Alston, who felt their courtroom setting was highly inappropriate, the portraits, which have since 1918 been the property of the local authority, are to be removed to a museum.

Sheriff clerk Mike McBey yesterday commented: "They haven't yet been taken down, but it seems likely that the council will approach us about that soon. I understand they're council property and will be going to a museum."

James Matheson was born at West Shinness, near Lairg, in 1796, the second son of minor laird Captain Donald Matheson and his wife Catherine.

At Inverness Royal Academy and Edinburgh High School, he vied with some of Scotland's brightest young men for top place in his class before leaving Scotland to seek his fortune in London at the age of 17.

After two years in a mercantile house there, he left for Calcutta, where he worked briefly for a Scottish merchant firm, before moving on to Canton and Macao, where he developed quickly into a ruthless profiteer with a strict Scots Presbyterian streak.

As early as 1818 he began to smuggle Indian opium into China in exchange for tea, and 10 years later went into partnership with fellow Scot William Jardine, a surgeon turned merchant, to form what became the huge Jardine Matheson trading empire, to exploit the opium trade still further.

When the Chinese emperor expelled British drug dealers in 1839, Jardine Matheson lobbied the British Government, which the following year sent an expeditionary force to compel the Chinese to accept opium exports, thus leading to the Opium Wars, one of the most disgraceful chapters in British history.

The episode resulted in Matheson being lampooned as "McDrug" by contemporary novelist Benjamin Disraeli, later prime minister. In 1842 Matheson left China to buy estates in his native Sutherland and Lewis, and to become MP for Ross and Cromartie. He married in 1843, but had no issue.

He partly redeemed himself after famine struck Lewis in 1845 and used his fortune to import meal and seed potatoes into the island, partly as a gift, and partly as payment for work on the island's roads infrastructure. He also established an efficient steamer service and built 17 schools, for which he was created a baronet in 1850.

Sir James is buried at Lairg, beneath the symbols of his fortune – carved opium poppy seeds.

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