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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/30315-8.txt b/30315-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..afefe1e --- /dev/null +++ b/30315-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1605 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Raeburn, by James L. Caw + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Raeburn + +Author: James L. Caw + +Release Date: October 22, 2009 [EBook #30315] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAEBURN *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Cover art] + + + + + + MASTERPIECES + IN COLOUR + EDITED BY -- + T. LEMAN HARE + + + + +RAEBURN + +1756-1823 + + + + +===================================================================== + +PLATE I.--LORD NEWTON (Frontispiece). + +(National Gallery of Scotland.) + +This chef-d'oeuvre, which dates from about 1807, represents one of the +most celebrated characters who ever sat upon the bench of the Court of +Session. Famous in his day for "law, paunch, whist, claret, and +worth," the exploits of Charles Hay, "The Mighty," as he was called, +have become traditions of the Parliament House. (See p. 79.) + +[Illustration: Plate I.] + +===================================================================== + + +RAEBURN + + + + +BY JAMES L. CAW + + +ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT + +REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR + + + +[Illustration: Title page art] + + + +LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK + +NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO. + +1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + Introduction + Chapter I. + " II. + " III. + " IV. + " V. + " VI. + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Plate + + I. Lord Newton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece + (National Gallery of Scotland) + + II. Children of Mr and the Hon. Mrs Paterson of Castle Huntly + (In the possession of Chas. J. G. Paterson, Esq.) + + III. Mrs Lauzun + (National Gallery, London) + + IV. Mrs Campbell of Balliemore + (National Gallery of Scotland) + + V. Professor Robison + (University of Edinburgh) + + VI. John Tait of Harvieston and his Grandson + (In the possession of Mrs Pitman) + + VII. Miss de Vismes + (In the possession of the Earl of Mansfield) + + VIII. Mrs Scott Moncrieff + (National Gallery of Scotland) + + + + +[Illustration: Raeburn] + +When in 1810, Henry Raeburn, then at the height of his powers, proposed +to settle in London, Lawrence dissuaded him. It is unnecessary, as it +would be unjust, to insinuate that the future President of the Royal +Academy had ulterior and personal motives in urging him to rest content +with his supremacy in the North. Raeburn was fifty-five at the time, +and, after his undisputed reign at home, even his generous nature might +have taken ill with the competition inseparable from such a venture. +Lawrence's advice was wise in many ways, and Raeburn, secure in the +admiration and constant patronage of his countrymen, lived his life to +the end unvexed by the petty jealousy of inferior rivals. Nor was +recognition confined to Scotland. Ultimately he was elected a member +of the Royal Academy, an honour all the more valued because +unsolicited. Yet, had the courtly Lawrence but known, acceptance of +his advice kept a greater than himself from London, and, it may be, +prevented the perpetuation and further development of that tradition of +noble portraiture of which Raeburn, with personal modifications, was +such a master. For long also it confined the Scottish painter's +reputation to his own country. Forty years after his death, his art +was so little known in England that the Redgraves, in their admirable +history of English painting, relegated him to a chapter headed "The +Contemporaries of Lawrence." Time brings its revenges, however, and of +late years Raeburn has taken a place in the very front rank of British +painters. And, if this recognition has been given tardily by English +critics, the reason is to be found in want of acquaintance with his +work. He had lived and painted solely in Scotland, and Scottish art, +like foreign art, so long as it remains at home, has little interest +for London, which, sure of its attractive power, sits arrogantly still +till art is brought to it. But Raeburn's work possesses that inherent +power, which, seen by comprehending eyes, compels admiration. The +Raeburn exhibition held in Edinburgh in 1876 was quite local in its +influence, but from time to time since then, at "The Old Masters" and +elsewhere, admirable examples have been shown in London; and recent +loan collections in Glasgow and Edinburgh, wherein his achievement was +very fully illustrated, were seen by large and cosmopolitan audiences. +And the better his work has become known, the more has it been +appreciated. Collectors and galleries at home and abroad are now +anxious to secure examples; dealers are as alert to buy as they are +keen to sell; prices have risen steadily from the very modest sums of +twenty years ago until fine pictures by him fetch as much as +representative specimens of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Fashion has had +much to do with this greatly enhanced reputation, but another, and more +commendable cause of the appreciation, not of the commercial value but +of the artistic merit of his work, lies in the fact that the qualities +which dominate it are those now held in highest esteem by artists and +lovers of art. Isolated though he was, Raeburn expressed himself in a +manner and achieved pictorial results which make his achievement +somewhat similar in kind to that of Velasquez and Hals. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE II.--CHILDREN OF MR AND THE HON. MRS PATERSON OF CASTLE HUNTLY. +(Charles J. G. Paterson, Esq.) + +Painted within a year or two of Raeburn's return from Italy, some +critics have seen, or thought they saw, in this picture the influence +of Michael Angelo. Be this as it may, the handling, lighting, and tone +and disposition of the colour are eminently characteristic of much of +the work done by Raeburn about 1790. + +[Illustration: Plate II.] + +===================================================================== + + + + +I + +If, during the last century, Scotland has shown exceptional activity in +the arts, especially in painting, and has produced a succession of +artists whose work is marked by able craftsmanship and emotional and +subjective qualities, which give it a distinctive place in modern +painting, the more than two hundred years which lay between the +Reformation and the advent of Raeburn seemed to hold little promise of +artistic development. During the Middle Ages and the renaissance the +internal condition of the country was too unsettled and its resources +were too meagre to make art widely possible. Strong castles and +beautiful churches were built here and there, but intermittent war on +the borders and fear of invasion kept even the more settled central +districts in a state of unrest. Moreover, the fierce barons were at +constant feud amongst themselves, and not infrequently the more +powerful amongst them were banded against the King. Of the first five +Jameses only the last died, and that miserably, in his bed. The innate +taste of the Stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in +the Court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial +relations with the Low Countries and political associations with +France. Poetry and scholarship were encouraged, if poorly +rewarded--one remembers Dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a +benefice--and relics and old records show that even in those stirring +times life was not without its refinements and tasteful accessories. +Yet only in the Church or for her service was there the quietude +necessary for art work of the higher kinds. Then came the Reformation +(during which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and decoration +perished) severing the connection of art with religion and sowing +distrust of art in any form. + +Had the Union of the Crowns not taken place in 1603, it is possible +that the art of painting might have developed much earlier than it did. +No doubt that event brought healing to the long open sore caused and +inflamed by kingly ambitions and national animosities, but it removed +the Court to London, and with that some of the greatest nobles, while +the change in the religion of the ruling house from Presbyterianism to +Episcopacy, which followed, led to the Covenants and the religious +persecution, and drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those +classes from whom artists mostly spring. Yet the logical rigidity of +the Calvinistic spirit, while taking much of the joy out of life and +opposing its manifestation in art, had certain compensating advantages. +Disciplining the mind, quickening the reasoning powers, and cultivating +that grasp of essentials which makes for success in almost any pursuit, +and not least in art, it helped very largely to make the Scot what he +is. + +During the peaceful years which immediately followed the Union, there +was considerable activity in the building of country residences. Now +that the country was more settled these were less castles than +mansions, and the larger and better lighted apartments possible led to +a good deal of elaborate decoration. Of this Pinkie House (1613) with +its painted gallery is perhaps the most celebrated example. It is +difficult, however, to determine how much of this kind of work was done +by foreign, how much by native craftsmen, and as it seems to have +exerted little influence upon the one or two picture-painters who +emerged during the seventeenth century, one need not discuss the +probabilities. So far as has been discovered, the only link between +this phase of art and the other consists of the fact that George +Jamesone (1598?-1644), the first clearly recognisable Scottish artist, +was apprenticed in 1612 to one John Andersone "paynter" in Edinburgh, +whose decoration in Gordon Castle is mentioned by an old chronicler. +As might be expected in the circumstances the "Scottish Van Dyck," as +he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. He was followed by a few +others, such as the Scougall family, Aikman Marshall, Wait, and the two +Alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much +appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of +portraitists between him and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) in whose work art +in Scotland took a great step forward.[1] A few of Ramsay's +predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre instruction--if +any thing that existed could be dignified by that name--to be obtained +in Scotland by a visit to the Low Countries or Italy, but Ramsay was +the first to obtain a sound technical training. The author of "The +Gentle Shepherd," to whom Edinburgh was indebted for its first +circulating library and its first play-house, encouraged his son's bent +for art, and after some preliminary study in London, Allan _fils_ was +sent to "The seat of the Beast" beyond the Alps, where he became a +pupil of Solimena and Imperiale and of the French Academy. Formed +under these influences, his style possesses no clearly marked national +trait, except it be the feeling for character which informs his finer +work and makes it, in a way, a link between that of Jamesone and that +of Raeburn. To this he added a delicate sense of tone and a tenderness +of colour and lighting, a gracefulness of drawing and a refined +accomplishment which were new in Scottish painting. His turn for charm +of pose and grace of motive was pronounced, and his portraitures mirror +very happily the mannered yet elegant social airs of the mid-eighteenth +century. More than that of any English painter of his day, his art +possesses "French elegance." + +===================================================================== + +PLATE III.--MRS LAUZUN. (National Gallery.) + +Only one of the three Raeburns in the National Gallery is an adequate +example. This is the picture reproduced. It was painted in 1795, and, +while very typical technically, possesses greater charm than most of +the portraits of women executed by him at that comparatively early date. + +[Illustration: Plate III.] + +===================================================================== + +Ramsay's activity as a painter coincided with a remarkable intellectual +movement which, making itself felt in history, philosophy, science, and +political economy, raised Scotland within a few years to a conspicuous +intellectual place in Europe. A product of the reaction which followed +the narrow and intense theological ideals which had dominated Scotland, +it was closely associated with the reign of the Moderates, who, with +their breadth of view, tolerance, and intellectual gifts had become the +most influential party in the National Church. Offering an outlet for +the human instincts and secular activities, it possessed special +attraction for independent minds and induced boldness of speculation +and original investigation of the phenomena of history and society. +Intimate with the leaders in this movement, Ramsay, before he left +Edinburgh for London, was active in the formation (1754) of the "Select +Society," which in addition to its main object--the improvement of its +members in reasoning and eloquence--sought to encourage the arts and +sciences and to improve the material and social condition of the +people. It was in this more genial atmosphere that Henry Raeburn was +reared. + +Born in 1756, Raeburn was not too late to paint many of the most gifted +of the older generation. David Hume, who sat to Ramsay more than once, +was dead before the new light rose above the horizon, and the +appearance of Adam Smith does not seem to be recorded except in a +Tassie medallion; but Black, the father of modern chemistry, and +Hutton, the originator of modern geology, were amongst his early +sitters; and fine works in a more mature manner have Principal +Robertson, James Watt, the engineer, Adam Ferguson, the historian, +Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, and others scarcely less interesting +for subject. And of his own immediate contemporaries--the cycle of +Walter Scott--he has left an almost complete gallery. Nor were his +sitters less fortunate. If they brought fine heads to be painted, he +painted them with wonderful insight grasp of character, and great +pictorial power. + + + +[1] J. Michael Wright (1625?-1700?), at his best probably the finest +native painter of the seventeenth century, went to England. + + + + +II. + +Descended from a race of "bonnet-lairds," who took their name from a +hill farm in the Border district, Robert Raeburn, the artist's father, +seems to have come to Edinburgh as a young man in the earlier part of +the eighteenth century. At that time the city had expanded but little +beyond the limits marked by the Flodden wall. The high grey lands +along the windy ridge between the Castle and Holyrood were still +tenanted by the upper classes, and such extension as had been was +towards the Meadows. The new town had not been projected even, and on +the slopes, now occupied by its spacious streets and squares, +copse-woods and grass and heather grew. In the hollow at the foot of +these green braes, and by the side of the Water of Leith, a chain of +little hamlets--Dean, Stockbridge, and Canon-mills--nestled, and in the +mid-most of these Robert Raeburn established himself as a yarn-boiler. +Although in the country, his home was less than a mile from St Giles's +Kirk. His business appears to have prospered, and during the early +forties he married Miss Ann Elder. There was a difference of twelve +years in the ages of their two sons, William and Henry, and the younger +was no more than six when both father and mother died. Left to the +care of his brother, who carried on the business, Henry Raeburn was +nominated for maintenance and education at Heriot's Hospital by Mrs +Sarah Sandilands or Durham in 1764, and remained seven years in the +school, which owed its origin to the bequest of George Heriot, jeweller +to James VI. and I. in Edinburgh and later in London. Many boys had +been educated on "Jingling Geordie's" foundation, but Raeburn was to be +its most distinguished product. He does not seem to have distinguished +himself specially as a scholar, however, the two prizes awarded to him +having been for writing, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was +apprenticed to a jeweller and goldsmith in Parliament Close. This +choice of a calling was probably suggested by the lad's own +inclinations, but it was a stroke of good fortune that gave him James +Gilliland as a master. No craft then practised in the Scottish capital +was so likely to have been congenial to him. In the eighteenth century +a silversmith made as well as sold plate and ornaments, and in his +master's shop Raeburn must have learned to use his hands and may have +acquired some idea of design. In addition Gilliland seems to have been +a man of some taste--one of his most intimate friends, David Deuchar, +the seal-engraver, devoted his leisure to etching, and executed many +plates after Holbein and the Dutch masters. It was to the latter that +Raeburn owed his first lessons in art. Surprising his friend's +apprentice at work on a drawing of himself, Deuchar, struck by the +talent displayed, inquired if he had had any instruction. No, he had +not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and +Deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted +eagerly. The story is pleasant and circumstantial enough to be +credible; and the existence of an early Raeburn miniature of Deuchar is +evidence of the existence of friendship between the two. But, as a +free drawing-school had been founded in 1760 by the Honourable the +Board of Manufactures for the precise object of encouraging and +improving design for manufactures, the impossibility of Raeburn +receiving instructions of some kind was less than seems to be implied. + +It is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly +elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in 1798 of +John Graham[1] (1754-1817) as preceptor that the Trustees' Academy was +developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound +influence on Scottish painting. From 1771, the year in which Raeburn +left Heriot's, until his death, Alexander Runciman (1736-85), the "Sir +Brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great +ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history +painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that Raeburn took +the tone of his colour from that painter's work. But no record exists +of Raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to +have received any more training than was involved in the relationships +with his master and his master's friend which have been described. +Even subsequent introduction to David Martin (1737-98), who settled in +Edinburgh in 1775, when Raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. By +that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an +arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and +received as compensation a share in the prices received for the +miniatures to which Raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which +Gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. These miniatures, of +which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no +very marked artistic qualities. Drawn with care and not without +considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but +not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character. +The frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and +placing of the heads are almost the only elements which hint their +authorship. They are simple and straight-forward likenesses rather +than works of art and bear no obvious relationship to the elegant +bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little of the contemporary +English school of miniaturists. But obviously they were some +preparation for the development which followed, when, soon afterwards +and almost at once, he passed from water-colour miniature to life-size +portraiture in oil paint. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE IV.--MRS CAMPBELL OF BALLIEMORE. + +(National Gallery of Scotland.) + +This is one of the finest of the many fine portraits by Raeburn in the +Edinburgh Gallery. Its place in the artist's work is discussed on page +63. + +[Illustration: Plate IV.] + +===================================================================== + +The rapid expansion of Edinburgh provided new opportunities and helped +to Raeburn's early success. When he was eight years old the building +of the North Bridge, which was to connect the old city with the +projected new town on the other side of the valley, was begun, and by +the time he attained his majority many of the well-to-do had migrated. +The new district meant bigger houses and larger rooms, and, with the +increase in wealth which followed the commercial and agricultural +development of the country of which the city was the capital, led to +alterations in the habits and expansion of the ideals of its +inhabitants. It was probably the opening for an artist offered by +these altered circumstances which had brought Martin to Edinburgh, and +certainly Raeburn was fortunate in that his emergence coincided with +them. An attractive and clever lad devoting himself to art in a +community increasing in wealth and expanding in ideas, and with a +sympathetic master coming in contact with the upper classes, Raeburn +could not fail to make acquaintances able and willing to help him. +Amongst these was John Clerk, younger of Eldin, later a famous +advocate, through whom the young artist got into touch with the +Penicuik family which for several generations had been notable for its +interest in the arts. And this would lead to other introductions. + + + +[1] Sir David Wilkie, Sir William Allan, and others were pupils of +Graham. + + + + +III. + +The influences which affected Raeburn and the models upon which he +formed either his style or his method are difficult to trace. Allan +Ramsay, having painted many portraits in Edinburgh before he went to +London in the same year as Raeburn was born, would be, one would think, +the most likely source of inspiration. Except Runciman, who +occasionally varied historical subjects by portraits painted in a broad +but somewhat empty manner, and Seaton, an artist of whom little is +known but whose rare and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of +handling and a simplicity of design which give the best of them a +certain distinction--can they have been an influence with Raeburn?--the +Scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth century were much +influenced by Ramsay, and Martin had been his favourite pupil. +Raeburn's connection with the latter was very slight, however. Beyond +giving the youth the entre้ to his studio and lending him a few +pictures to copy, Martin does not seem to have been of much direct +assistance, and even these little courtesies come to an end when the +painter to the Prince of Wales for Scotland unjustly accused the +jeweller's apprentice of having sold one of the copies he had been +allowed to make. Rumour, often astray but now and then hitting the +mark, said that the real reason was jealousy of the younger man's +growing powers. Raeburn's debt to Ramsay and Martin was therefore +inconsiderable and indirect. It is not traceable in the technique or +arrangement of his earliest known pictures, such as the full-length +"George Chalmers" in Dunfermline Town Hall, which was painted in 1776, +when the artist was twenty. Probably sight of Martin's pictures in +progress was an incentive to work rather than a formative influence on +his development as a painter. He had, says Allan Cunningham, writing +within a few years of Raeburn's death, "to make experiments, and drudge +to acquire what belongs to the mechanical labour, and not to the genius +of his art. His first difficulty was the preparation of his colours; +putting them on the palette, and applying them according to the rules +of art taught in the academies. All this he had to seek out for +himself." And, if probably exaggerated, the statement gives some idea +of the difficulties with which he had to contend. There were at that +time no exhibitions and no public collections of pictures where a youth +of genuine instinct could have gleaned hints as to technical procedure, +but there were at least portraits in a number of houses in the city and +district, and from these and from prints after the Masters, of which +Deuchar, an etcher himself, evidently possessed examples, Raeburn no +doubt derived much instruction as to design, the use of chiaroscuro and +the like. It has also been suggested with considerable likelihood that +mezzotints after portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds had a considerable +effect upon him. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE V.--PROFESSOR ROBISON. + +(University of Edinburgh.) + +Painted about 1798, "Professor Robison" is one of the most notable +portraits painted by Raeburn before 1800. It represents the +culmination of his _premier coup_ manner. (See pp. 63 and 73.) + +[Illustration: Plate V.] + +===================================================================== + +Passing from supposition, which, however interesting and plausible, +throws no very definite light upon the formation of Raeburn's style, to +his early work itself, one finds it chiefly remarkable for frank +rendering of character. Obviously he believed in his own eyes, and +sought simple and direct ways for the expression of his vision. +Certain of what he saw, and desiring to set it down as he saw it, lack +of training in the traditional methods of painting by process probably +led him to attempt direct realisation in paint. Here is at once the +simplest and the most reasonable explanation of how he became an +exponent of direct painting, of how, isolated though it was, his art +came to be perhaps the most emphatic statement of this particular +method of handling between Velasquez and Hals and comparatively recent +times. Of course at this early stage his technical accomplishment was +not at all equal to his frankness of vision. His drawing, although +expressing character, was uncertain and not fully constructive; his +sense of design was rather stiff and occasionally somewhat archaic in +character; his handling and modelling, if broad and courageous, were +insufficiently supported by knowledge; his colour was apt to be dull +and monotonous, or, when breaking from that, patchy and crude in its +more definite notes which do not fuse sufficiently with their +surroundings. + +Gradually these deficiencies were mastered, but in some degree they +persist in most of the comparatively few portraits which can be said +with certainty to have been painted before he went to Italy. He had +been in no hurry to go. Ever since marriage with one of his sitters in +1778, when he was only twenty-two, his future had been secure. The +lady, _ne้_ Ann Edgar of Bridgelands, Peebleshire, brought him a +considerable fortune. The widow of James Leslie--who traced his +descent to Sir George Leslie, first Baron of Balquhain (1351), and who, +after his purchase of Deanhaugh in 1777,[1] was spoken of as "Count of +Deanhaugh"--she was twelve years the artist's senior, and had three +children; but the marriage turned out most happily for all concerned. +Raeburn went to live at his wife's property, which lay not far from his +brother's house and factory at Stockbridge, and, although sitters +increased with his growing reputation until he is said to have been +quite independent of his wife's income, he does not appear to have had +a separate studio. Probably his Edinburgh clients went to Deanhaugh, +and at times he seems to have painted portraits at the country houses +of the gentry. But in 1785 desire to see and learn more than was +possible at home took him to Italy. While in London he made the +acquaintance of Reynolds, in whose studio he may have worked for a few +weeks, and Sir Joshua's advice confirming his original intention, +Raeburn and his wife went to Rome, where they resided about two years. +When parting Reynolds took him aside and whispered: "Young man, I know +nothing about your circumstances. Young painters are seldom rich; but +if money be necessary for your studies abroad, say so, and you shall +not want it." Money was not needed, but letters of introduction were +accepted gladly; and "ever afterwards Raeburn mentioned the name of Sir +Joshua with much respect." + + + +[1] If, as stated by Cumberland Hill in his _History of Stockbridge_, +Leslie bought Deanhaugh in 1777, and if, as stated by Cunningham and +others, Raeburn married in 1778, the lady can have been a widow for +only a few months. + + + + +IV. + +In these days of rapid travel, the transition from north to south is +exceedingly striking. Leaving London one speeds past the pleasant +Surrey fields and lanes and woodlands, and through the soft rolling +green downs, and in the afternoon and evening sees the less familiar +but not strange wide planes and poplar-fringed rivers of Northern +France, to open one's eyes next morning upon the brown sun-baked lands, +with their strange southern growths, which lie behind Marseilles; and +all day as the train thunders along the Riviera, through olive gardens +and vineyards, one has glimpses of strangely picturesque white-walled +and many-coloured shuttered towns fringing the broad bays or clustering +on the rocks above little harbours, and drinks a strange enchantment +from great vistas of lovely coast washed by blue waters and gladdened +by radiant sunshine. And on the second morning, issuing into the great +square before the station, you have your first sight of Rome. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE VI.--JOHN TAIT OF HARVIESTON AND HIS GRANDSON. (Mrs Pitman.) + +One of the artist's most virile and trenchant performances, it was +painted in 1798-9. The child was introduced after the grandfather's +death. (See p. 63.) + +[Illustration: Plate VI.] + +===================================================================== + +Yet impressive as these transitions are, they are nothing to the +contrast which Rome presented to the stranger from the north in the +eighteenth century when, after slow and long and weary travelling, he +reached his goal. Then Rome was still a town of the renaissance +imposed upon a city of the ancients; and under the aegis of the Papacy +preserved aspects of life and character which differed little from +those of three or four centuries earlier. After the grey metropolis of +the north, with its softly luminous or cloudy skies, its sombreness of +aspect, its calvinistic religious atmosphere, its interest in science +and philosophy, and its want of interest in the arts, the clear +sunshiny air of the Eternal City, its picturesque and crowded life, its +gorgeous ecclesiastical ceremonies and processions, its monuments of +art and architecture, and its cosmopolitan coteries of eager dilettanti +discussing the latest archaeological discoveries, and of artists +studying the achievements of the past, must have formed an +extraordinary contrast, Yet Raeburn, much as these novel and stirring +surroundings would strike him, remained true to his own impressions of +reality and was unaffected in his artistic ideals. Almost alone of the +foreign artists then resident in Rome, he was unaffected by the +pseudo-classicism which prevailed. In part a product of emasculated +academic tradition, and in part the result of philosophical +speculations, upon which the discoveries at Pompeii and the excavations +then taking place in Rome had had a strong influence, it was an +attitude which founded itself upon the past and opposed the direct +study of nature. Gavin Hamilton (1723-98) and Jacob More (1740?-93) +two of its most conspicuous pictorial exponents were Scots by birth, +but they had lived so long abroad that Scotland had become to them +little more than a memory. The work of the former was in many ways an +embodiment of the current dilettante conception of art, and kindred in +kind, though earlier in date, to that of Jacques Louis David +(1748-1825) under whose sway, towards the close of the century, classic +ideals came to dominate the art of Europe outside these isles. His +usefulness to Raeburn was chiefly that of a cicerone. There was little +of an archaeological kind with which he was unacquainted, and he was so +famous a discoverer of antiquities that the superstitious Romans +thought that he was in league with the devil. The landscapes of More, +though highly praised by Goethe, would appeal to Raeburn little more +than did the "sublime" historical designs of Hamilton. They were but +dilutions, frequently flavoured with melodramatic sentiment, of the +noble convention formulated by Claude and the Poussins. Raeburn, on +the other hand, had looked at man and nature inquiringly, and had +evolved a manner of expressing the results of his observation for +himself. Moreover he was past the easily impressionable age, and +turned his opportunities to direct and practical uses. He used to +declare that the advice of James Byres (1734-1818?) of Tonley, who, in +Raeburn's own words, was "a man of great general information, a +profound antiquary, and one of the best judges perhaps of everything +connected with art in Great Britain," was the most valuable lesson he +received while abroad. "Never paint anything except you have it before +you" was what his friend urged, and, while Raeburn, to judge from his +early portraits, did not stand greatly in need of the injunction, it +probably strengthened him in his own beliefs. Be that as it may he +seems to have used his stay in Italy principally to widen his technical +experience, and his work after his return was richer and fuller than +what he had done previously. No record of any special study he may +have undertaken or of the pictures he particularly admired exists. +Even gossip is silent as regards his preferences, except in so far as +it is said that while in Rome he came near to preferring sculpture to +painting. + + + + +V. + +Arrived back in Edinburgh in 1787, Raeburn took a studio in the new +town, and, with his enhanced powers and the added prestige due to his +sojourn abroad, soon occupied a commanding place. Few agreed with +Martin that "the lad in George Street painted better before he went to +Italy," for if the majority were unaware of his high artistic gifts, +none could be unconscious of the vital and convincing quality of his +portraitures. His earlier sitters included some of the most +distinguished people in Scotland. Lord President Dundas must have been +amongst the very first for he died before the end of the year. Ere +long his position was unassailable, and during the five-and-thirty +years that followed he painted practically everybody who was anybody. +Burns is probably the only great Scotsman of that epoch who was not +immortalised by his brush, for the missing likeness, which has been +discovered so often, was not painted from life but from Nasmyth's +portrait. + +From the time he returned home until 1809, when he purchased the +adjoining property off St Bernard's, Raeburn lived at Deanhaugh.[1] +The junction of these small estates enabled him to feu the outlying +parts on plans prepared by himself, architecture being one of his +hobbies, and his family's connection with them is still marked by such +names as Raeburn Place, Ann Street (after his wife), Leslie Place, St +Bernard's Crescent, and Deanhaugh Street. Some years earlier +continuous increase in the number of his clients had rendered a change +of studio desirable, and in 1795 he moved from George Street to 16 (now +32) York Place where he had built a specially designed and spacious +studio, with a suite of rooms for the display of recently completed +work or of portraits he had painted for himself. At a later date, when +exhibitions were inaugurated in Edinburgh (first series 1808-13), he +lent the show-rooms to the Society of Artists which organised them. +This action was typical of Raeburn's cordial relations with his +fellow-artists, most of whom were poor and socially unimportant; and +only a year before his death he championed the professional artists +when, partly in opposition to the Royal Institution, they proposed to +form an Academy. Incidentally also, the letter written on that +occasion, which I have transcribed in full in _Scottish Painting; Past +and Present_, gives an indication of the extent of his practice, of how +fully he was engaged. + +Until 1808 Raeburn's career had been one unbroken success, but in that +year, following upon the failure of his son, financial disaster +overtook him. The firm of "Henry Raeburn and Company, merchants, +Shore, Leith," consisted of Henry Raeburn, Junior, and James Philip +Inglis, who had married Anne Leslie, the artist's step-daughter, but +neither the _Edinburgh Gazette_ nor the local Directory states the +nature of their business. In the proceedings in connection with +Raeburn's own bankruptcy, however, he is described as "portrait-painter +and underwriter." What underwriter exactly means is uncertain, but it +may be that the son was a marine-insurance broker, that Raeburn himself +took marine-insurance risks. In any case his ruin seemed complete. +Not only did he lose all his savings but he had even to sell the York +Place studio, of which he was afterwards only tenant. He failed, paid +a composition, and, two years later, proposed settling in London. By +those of his biographers who have noticed it at all, this failure and +the contemplated removal south have been very closely associated. But +a more careful examination of the whole circumstances makes such an +assumption rather doubtful. Alexander Cunningham, in a letter written +on 16th February 1808, tells a correspondent--"I had a walk of three +hours on Sunday with my worthy friend, Raeburn. He had realised nearly +ฃ17,000, which is all gone. He has offered a small composition, which +he is in hopes will be accepted. He quits this to try his fate in +London, which I trust in God will be successful. While I write this I +feel the tear start." So far the connection is evident enough. But +although the artist received his discharge in June of the same year,[2] +it was not until two years later that he took active steps towards +carrying out his idea.[3] The time was highly propitious. Hoppner had +just died (23rd January 1810), and Wilkie records in his journal (March +2nd) that he had heard that that artist's house was to be taken for +Raeburn. Lawrence was now without a rival in the metropolis, and +Raeburn's talent was of a kind which would soon have commanded +attention there. The opening was obvious, but Raeburn's reception by +the gentlemen of the Royal Academy, when he visited London in May, was +not very cordial, and fortunately for Scotland, if not for himself, he +was persuaded to remain in Edinburgh. From then onward the fates were +kind. To quote his own words, written in 1822, "my business, though it +may fall off, cannot admit of enlargement." + +Wider recognition also came to him. He had exhibited at the Royal +Academy as early as 1792, but it was 1810 before he became a regular +contributor, and in 1812 he was elected an Associate, full membership +following three years later. Just prior to his advancement to +Academician rank, he wrote one of the few letters by him that have been +preserved:--"I observe what you say respecting the election of an R.A.; +but what am I to do here? They know that I am on their list; if they +choose to elect me without solicitation, it will be the more honourable +to me, and I will think the more of it; but if it can only be obtained +by means of solicitation and canvassing, I must give up all hopes of +it, for I would think it unfair to employ those means." + +No doubt election was particularly gratifying to Raeburn. Isolated as +he was in Edinburgh, where an Academy did not come into existence until +some years after his death, it must have been stimulating to receive +such tangible assurance of that appreciation of one's fellow-workers +which is the most grateful form of admiration to the artist. He +reciprocated by offering as his diploma work the impressive portrait of +himself, which is now one of the treasures of the National Gallery of +Scotland. The rules of the Academy, however, forbade the acceptance of +a self-portrait, and in 1821 he gave the "Boy with Rabbit"--a portrait +of his step-grandson, but one of his most genre-like pieces. Other +Academic diplomas received later were those of the Academies of +Florence, New York, and South Carolina. + +A year before he died these artistic laurels were supplemented by royal +favour. On the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event--to those +who took part in it--the first visit of a King to Scotland since the +Union of Parliaments, Raeburn was presented to George IV. and knighted. +His fellow artists marked their appreciation of this fresh distinction +by entertaining him to a public dinner, at which the chairman, +Alexander Nasmyth, the doyen of the local painters, declared that "they +loved him as a man not less than they admired him as an artist." And +in the following May, the King appointed him his "limner and painter in +Scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights, privileges, and +advantages thereto belonging." + +Raeburn did not long enjoy these new honours. In July, a day or two +after returning from an archaeological excursion in Fifeshire with, +amongst others, Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth, he became suddenly +ill, took to bed, and in less than a week was dead. + + + +[1] All Raeburn's biographers follow Cunningham in stating that Raeburn +succeeded to St Bernard's on the death of his brother in 1787 or 1788. +It was not so, however. The intimation in the _Edinburgh Evening +Courant_, of 13th December 1810, reads, "Died on the 6th December Mr +William Raeburn, manufacturer, Stockbridge"; and the title deeds of St +Bernard's show that the artist purchased it from the trustees of the +late Mrs Margaret Ross in October 1809. + +[2] Henry Raeburn & Co.'s affairs were not settled until March 1810. + +[3] That his own affairs were not only settled but were again highly +prosperous before this is apparent from his having purchased St +Bernard's in 1809. + + + + +VI. + +While Raeburn's attitude to reality was determined and his style was +formed to a great extent before he went abroad, his ideas of pictorial +effect were broadened and his technical resources enriched by his +sojourn in Italy. Some of the work executed immediately after his +return, such as the portraits of Lord President Dundas, Neil Gow, the +famous fiddler, and the earlier of two portraits of his friend John +Clerk of Eldin, shows, with much unity, a greater care and precision in +the handling of detail, a more searched kind of modelling and a fuller +sense of tone, and thicker impasto and fuller colour than that done +previously. Moreover the design of the first-named picture is +reminiscent in certain ways of Velasquez's "Pope Innocent X.," which he +may have seen and studied in the Doria Palace in Rome, though too much +stress need not be laid on the resemblance. About this time also, he +painted a few pictures in which difficult problems of lighting are +subtly and skilfully solved. In things like the charming bust "William +Ferguson of Kilrie" (before 1790) and the group of Sir John and Lady +Clerk of Penicuik (1790) the faces are in luminous shadow, touched by +soft reflected light to give expression and animation. But for obvious +reasons such effects are not favoured by the clients of +portrait-painters, and that Raeburn should have adopted them at all is +evidence of the widening of the artistic horizon induced by his stay +abroad. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE VII.--MISS EMILY DE VISMES--LADY MURRAY. (Earl of Mansfield.) + +An admirable example of the artist's mature style, and one of his most +charming portraits of women. (See p. 79.) + +[Illustration: Plate VII.] + +===================================================================== + +In pictures painted but little later than these, one finds a marked +tendency to revert to the more abbreviated modelling and broader +execution which have been noted as characteristic of his pre-Roman +style. The execution, however, is now much more confident and +masterly, the draughtsmanship better, the design, while exceedingly +simple, less stiff and more closely knit. Using pigment of very fluid +consistency and never loading the lights, though following the +traditional method of thick in the lights and thin in the shadows, his +handling is exceedingly direct and spontaneous, his touch fearless and +broad yet thoroughly under control, his drawing summary yet selective +and so expressive that, even in faces where the lighting is so broad +that there is little shadow to mark the features and little modelling +to explain the planes, the large structure of the head and the +essentials of likeness are rendered in a very satisfying and convincing +way. His colour, however, if losing the inclination to the rather dull +grey-greenness which had prevailed before 1785, remained somewhat cold +and wanting in quality, and the more forcible tints introduced in the +draperies were frequently lacking in modulation and were not quite in +harmony with the prevailing tone. Something of this deficiency in +fusion is also noticeable in his flesh tints, the carnations of the +complexions being somewhat detached owing to defective gradation where +the pinks join the whites. As experience came, Raeburn advanced from +the somewhat starved quality of pigment, which in his earlier pictures +was accentuated by his broad manner of handling, until in many of the +pictures painted during the later nineties he attained extraordinary +{63} power of expression by vigorous and incisive use of square +brush-work and full yet fluid and unloaded impasto. This method with +its sharply struck touches and simplified planes reaches its climax +perhaps in the striking portrait (1798 circa) of Professor Robison in +white night-cap and red-striped dressing-gown, though the more fused +manner of "Mrs Campbell of Balliemore" (1795) and the extraordinary +trenchant handling of the "John Tait of Harvieston and his grandson" +(1798-9) show modifications which are as fine and perhaps less +mannered. Even earlier he sometimes attained a solidity and +forcefulness of effect, a fullness of colour, and a resonance of tone +which gave foretaste of the accomplishment of his full maturity. +Curiously this is most marked in two or three full-lengths. The +earliest of these was the famous "Dr Nathaniel Spens" in the possession +of the Royal Company of Archers, by which body it was commissioned in +1791. In it close realisation of detail and restraint in handling are +very happily harmonised with breadth of ensemble and effectiveness of +design. Some five years later this fine achievement was followed by +the even more striking, if rather less dignified, "Sir John Sinclair," +a splendid piece of virtuosity, which unites brilliant colour and +admirable tone to great dash and bravura of brush-work. + +During this period, and indeed throughout his career, Raeburn usually +placed his sitters in a strong direct light, which, being thrown upon +the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light) +illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with +definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. Very +often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and +arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. In many of his pictures one finds the +lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through +the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the +parts he wished subordinated. This device appears in full-lengths as +well as in busts and threequarter-lengths, and while, no doubt, helping +to the desired end, is now and then a disturbing influence from the +fact that it is difficult to account for the result from purely normal +causes. With Rembrandt, the greatest master of concentrated pictorial +effect, the transitions from the fully illumined passages to the +surrounding transparent darks are so gradual and so subtle that one +scarcely notices that the effect has been arranged--the concentration +is an integral part of the imaginative apprehension of the subject. It +is otherwise with Raeburn, in his earlier work at least. Later he +attained much the same results by less arbitrary and apparent means, by +swathing the hands and arms--the high tone of which he evidently found +disconcerting and conflicting with the heads--in drapery, by placing +them where they tell as little as possible, and by modifications in +handling. His management of accessories was also determined by desire +for concentration. Although, as is obvious from his increasing use of +it, preferring a simple background from which the figure has +atmospheric detachment, he frequently used the scenic setting which +Reynolds and Gainsborough had made the vogue. His idea, however, was +that a landscape background should be exceedingly unassertive--"nothing +more than the shadow of a landscape; effect is all that is +wanted"--and, always executing them himself, his are invariably +subordinate to the figure. But the essential quality of his vision +went best with plain backgrounds. That he did not wholly abandon the +decorative convention which he heired, and often employed to excellent +purpose, was due in large measure to caution. "He came," says W. E. +Henley, "at the break between new and old--when the old was not yet +discredited, and the new was still inoffensive; and with that exquisite +good sense which marks the artist, he identified himself with that +which was known, and not with that which, though big with many kinds of +possibilities, was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively +alive." Yet, had he had the full courage of his convictions, his work +would have been an even more outstanding landmark in the history of +painting than it is. Still to ask from Raeburn what one does not get +from Velasquez, many of whose portraits have a conventional setting, is +to be more exacting than critical, and, as has been indicated, +simplicity of design and aerial relief became increasingly evident in +Raeburn's work, and that in spite of the protests of some of his +admirers. + +While Raeburn had been working towards a fuller and more subtle +statement of likeness, modelling, and arrangement, it is possible that +removal to his new studio accelerated development in that direction. +The painting-room had been designed by himself for his own special +purposes, and no doubt suggested new possibilities. In any case, the +portraits painted after 1795 reveal a definite increase in the +qualities mentioned. But before considering the characteristics of his +later style, it might be well to tell what is known of his habits of +work and technical procedure. Cunningham's summary of these applies +partly to the George Street and partly to the York Place period, but +for practical purposes they may be regarded as one, for, while +Raeburn's art may be divided into periods, each was but a stage in a +gradual and consistent evolution. "The motions of the artist were as +regular as those of a clock. He rose at seven during summer, took +breakfast about eight with his wife and children, walked into George +Street, and was ready for a sitter by nine; and of sitters he generally +had, for many years, not fewer than three or four a day. To these he +gave an hour and a half each. He seldom kept a sitter more than two +hours, unless the person happened--and that was often the case--to be +gifted with more than common talents. He then felt himself happy, and +never failed to detain the party till the arrival of a new sitter +intimated that he must be gone. For a head size he generally required +four or five sittings: and he preferred painting the head and hands to +any other part of the body; assigning as a reason that they required +less consideration. A fold of drapery, or the natural ease which the +casting of a mantle over the shoulder demanded, occasioned him more +perplexing study than a head full of thought and imagination. Such was +the intuition with which he penetrated at once to the mind, that the +first sitting rarely came to a close without his having seized strongly +on the character and disposition of the individual. He never drew in +his heads, or indeed any part of the body, with chalk--a system pursued +successfully by Lawrence--but began with the brush at once. The +forehead, chin, nose, and mouth, were his first touches. He always +painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on; for +such was his accuracy of eye, and steadiness of nerve, that he could +introduce the most delicate touches, or the almost mechanical +regularity of line, without aid, or other contrivance than fair +off-hand dexterity. He remained in his painting-room till a little +after five o'clock, when he walked home, and dined at six.... From one +who knew him in his youthful days, and sat to him when he rose in fame, +I have this description of his way of going to work. "He spoke a few +words to me in his usual brief and kindly way--evidently to put me into +an agreeable mood; and then having placed me in a chair on a platform +at the end of his painting-room, in the posture required, set up his +easel beside me with the canvas ready to receive the colour. When he +saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back +step by step, with his face towards me, till he was nigh the other end +of the room; he stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to +the canvas, and, without looking at me, wrought upon it with colour for +some time. Having done this, he retreated in the same manner, studied +my looks at that distance for about another minute, then came hastily +up to the canvas and painted for a few minutes more." These details +may be supplemented by the list of colours used by him, which Alexander +Fraser, R.S.A., gave in _The Portfolio_. "His palette was a simple +one; his colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but sometimes yellow ochre +instead), Prussian blue, burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake, +white, of course, and the medium he used was 'gumption,' a composition +of sugar of lead, mastic varnish, and linseed oil. The colours were +ground by a servant in his own house and put into small pots ready for +use." When one adds that his studio had a very high side-light, and +that he painted on half-primed canvas with a definitely marked twill, +all that is known of his practice has been noted. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE VIII.--MRS SCOTT MONCRIEFF. + +(National Gallery of Scotland.) + +None of Raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this. +Although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used, it +is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one of +the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since 1854, +when Mr R. Scott Moncrieff, Welwood of Pitliver, bequeathed it to the +Royal Scottish Academy. (See page 79.) + +[Illustration: Plate VIII.] + +===================================================================== + +As already suggested, Raeburn's style was tending towards greater +completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before +he removed to York Place in 1795, but, while his normal advance was in +that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a +number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing +them with their {73} predecessors that one notices that the advance was +definite and not casual. Occasionally, as in the "Professor Robison," +there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but, +as the "Lord Braxfield" of about 1790 is a premonition of a much later +manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the +character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. But +comparing the splendid group, "Reginald Macdonald of Clanranald and his +two younger brothers" (about 1800), or the "Mrs Cruikshank of Langley +Park" (about 1805), with typical examples painted between 1787 and +1795, one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power +of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of +form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more expressive use +of colour and chiaroscuro. + +Considerable ingenuity has been expended in trying to prove that +Raeburn's subsequent development was due in some way or other to the +influence of Hoppner and Lawrence. Consideration of his situation and +of his work itself, however, scarcely bears this out. His ignorance of +what was being done by London artists, and of how his own pictures +compared with theirs, is very clearly evident from the following letter +written to Wilkie:-- + + + Edinburgh, + 12_th September_ 1819. + +Mr dear Sir,--I let you to wit that I am still here, and long much to +hear from you, both as to how you are and what you are doing. I would +not wish to impose any hardship upon you, but it would give me great +pleasure if you would take the trouble to write me at least once a +year, if not oftener, and give me a little information of what is going +on among the artists, for I do assure you I have as little +communication with any of them, and know almost as little about them, +as if I were living at the Cape of Good Hope. + +I send up generally a picture or two to the Exhibition, which serve +merely as an advertisement that I am still in the land of the living, +but in other respects it does me no good, for I get no notice from any +one, nor have I the least conception how they look beside others. I +know not in what London papers any critiques of that kind are made, and +our Edinburgh ones (at least those that I see) take no notice of these +matters. At any rate I would prefer a candid observation or two from +an artist like you, conveying not only your own opinion but perhaps +that of others, before any of them. + +Are the Portrait-Painters as well employed as ever? Sir Thomas +Lawrence, they tell me, has refused to commence any more pictures till +he gets done with those that are on hand, and that he has raised his +prices to some enormous sum. Is that true, and will you do me the +favour to tell me what his prices really are, and what Sir W. Beechy, +Mr Philips, and Mr Owen have for their pictures? It will be a +particular favour if you will take the trouble to ascertain these for +me precisely, for I am raising my prices too, and it would be a guide +to me--not that I intend to raise mine so high as your famous London +artists. + + +Moreover he is said to have visited London only three times: in 1785, +when he spent several weeks while on his way to Italy; in 1810, when he +contemplated settling there; and in 1815, after he was elected an +Academician. It is of course only with the later visits that we have +to do in this connection. By that time Hoppner was dead, and +Lawrence's claim to be painter par excellence to the fashionable world +was undisputed. No doubt the Scottish painter would be attracted by +the technical accomplishment of Lawrence's work; but he was between +fifty and sixty years of age and little likely to be influenced by an +art, which, for all its brilliance, was meretricious in many respects. +Yet it is possible that the adulation lavished by society upon his +contemporary's style may have induced him to consider if something of +the elegance for which it was esteemed so highly could not be added +with advantage to his own. On the other hand, Scottish society was +gradually undergoing evolution, and, while a greater infusion of +fashion amongst its members would in itself tend to stimulate the +favourite painter of the day in the same direction, increase in wealth +would bring a greater number of younger sitters to his studio. +Probably a combination of these represents the influences which +affected Raeburn. In any case, his later portraits, especially of +women, possess qualities of charm and beauty which, while never merely +pretty or meretricious, connect them in some measure with the more +modish and less sincere and virile work of Lawrence. But +otherwise--and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he never sacrificed +character to elegance or subordinated individuality to type--the +evolution of his style continued on purely personal lines. The +pictures painted between 1810 and his death, while still at the height +of his powers, are essentially one with those of the preceding decade. +There is in them a more delicate sense of beauty than before, and his +portraits of ladies are marked by a quickened perception of feminine +grace and charm; but these are results of the natural development of +his nature and of his personal powers of expression rather than of any +radical alteration in his standpoint. + +As regards the work of the last fifteen years and more, it is less +increased grasp of character, for that had always been a leading trait, +than growth in the expressive power and completeness of his technique +that is the dominating factor. And here the prevailing qualities are +but the issue of previous experience. His modelling ceases to be +marked by the rough-hewn and over simplified planes which had +distinguished his incisive square-touch at its strongest and becomes +fused and suave. As Sir Walter Armstrong put it, "He began with the +facets and ended with the completest modelling ever reached by any +English painter." Now his colour not only loses the inclination to +slatiness and monotony, which were evident before 1795, and sometimes +even later, but, the half-tones being more delicately graded, the +transitions, though still lacking the subtleties of the real colourist, +are blended and the general tone enriched and harmonised. And his use +of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more delicate both in its play upon +the face and in the broad disposition, which now attains finer and more +convincing concentration in virtue of more skillful subordination +through handling, as well as through more pictorial management of his +old arrangement of lighting. Moreover the scenic setting, if retained +in many full-lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a simple +background lighted from the same source as the sitter, and against +which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief. +With these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his +later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive +brushing of the preceding period, were also associated a fuller and +fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of +effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his earlier pictures rarely +possess. + +A sympathetic and human perception of character was the basis of his +relationship to his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a rarely +convincing way, and to me at least the {79} view of life expressed in +his later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which +dominates his earlier work. Comparatively this is perhaps especially +evident in his rendering of pretty women. "Mrs Scott Moncrieff," "Miss +de Vismes," "Miss Janet Suttie," and "Mrs Irvine Boswell," to name no +more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked +by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. Still +his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures of +older women and of men, and his masterpieces are to be found amongst +his pictures of this kind rather than amongst his "beauty" pieces, +seductive though the best of these are. When one thinks of his finest +and most personal achievements, one recalls such things as "Lord +Newton," "Sir William Forbes," and "James Wardrop of Torbanehill," or +"Mrs Cruikshank," and "Mrs James Campbell." + +Born a painter of character, Raeburn was at his best where character, +intellect, and shrewdness were most marked. Yet axiomatic though it +may sound, this implies great gifts. To seize the obvious points of +likeness, and make a portrait more living than life itself is +comparatively easy; but to grasp the essential elements of likeness and +character, and, while vitalising these pictorially and decoratively, to +preserve the normal tone of life is difficult indeed. Of this, the +highest triumph of the portrait-painter's art as such, Raeburn was a +master. + + + + + + PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT + THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS. + + + + + + + IN THE SAME SERIES + + ARTIST. AUTHOR. + + VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN. + REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND. + ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND. + GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN. + BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS. + ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO. + BELLINI. GEORGE HAY. + FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON. + REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS. + LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY. + RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY. + HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE. + TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY. + LUINI. JAMES MASON. + TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + + _Others in Preparation._ + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Raeburn, by James L. Caw + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAEBURN *** + +***** This file should be named 30315-8.txt or 30315-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/3/1/30315/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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Caw +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.letter {text-indent: 4%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +P.plate {font-size: 80% ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 15% ; + margin-right: 15% } + +P.footnote {font-size: 80%; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.intro {font-size: medium ; + text-indent: -5% ; + margin-left: 5% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +IMG.imgcenter { margin-left: auto; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-top: 1%; + margin-right: auto; } + +.pagenum { position: absolute; + left: 1%; + font-size: 95%; + text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Raeburn, by James L. Caw + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Raeburn + +Author: James L. Caw + +Release Date: October 22, 2009 [EBook #30315] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAEBURN *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="img-cover"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-cover.jpg" ALT="Cover art" BORDER="2" WIDTH="412" HEIGHT="599"> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4> +MASTERPIECES<BR> +IN COLOUR<BR> +EDITED BY —<BR> +T. LEMAN HARE<BR> +</H4> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3> +RAEBURN +<BR> +1756-1823 +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<HR> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +PLATE I.—LORD NEWTON (Frontispiece). +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +(National Gallery of Scotland.) +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +This chef-d'oeuvre, which dates from about 1807, represents one of the +most celebrated characters who ever sat upon the bench of the Court of +Session. Famous in his day for "law, paunch, whist, claret, and +worth," the exploits of Charles Hay, "The Mighty," as he was called, +have become traditions of the Parliament House. (See p. 79.) +</P> + +<A NAME="img-frontt"></A> +<CENTER> +<A HREF="images/img-front.jpg"> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-frontt.jpg" ALT="Plate I." BORDER="2" WIDTH="569" HEIGHT="697"> +</A> +</CENTER> + +<BR> + +<HR> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +RAEBURN +</H1> + +<BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +BY JAMES L. CAW +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT +<BR> +REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="img-title"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-title.jpg" ALT="Title page art" BORDER="" WIDTH="289" HEIGHT="262"> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK +<BR> +NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO. +<BR> +1909 +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%"> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="15%"> </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" WIDTH="85"> +<A HREF="#intro">Introduction</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">Chapter </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap01">I.</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top"> "</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap02">II.</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top"> "</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap03">III.</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top"> "</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap04">IV.</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top"> "</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap05">V.</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top"> "</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap06">VI.</A></TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS +</H2> + +<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%"> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">Plate</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#img-frontt"> +Lord Newton +</A><BR> + <SPAN STYLE="font-size: 80%"> + (National Gallery of Scotland) +</SPAN> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">Frontispiece</TD> +</TR> + + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#img-014t"> +Children of Mr and the Hon. Mrs Paterson of Castle Huntly +</A><BR> + <SPAN STYLE="font-size: 80%"> + (In the possession of Chas. J. G. Paterson, Esq.) +</SPAN> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#img-024t"> +Mrs Lauzun +</A><BR> + <SPAN STYLE="font-size: 80%"> + (National Gallery, London) +</SPAN> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#img-034t"> +Mrs Campbell of Balliemore +</A><BR> + <SPAN STYLE="font-size: 80%"> + (National Gallery of Scotland) +</SPAN> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#img-040t"> +Professor Robison +</A><BR> + <SPAN STYLE="font-size: 80%"> + (University of Edinburgh) +</SPAN> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#img-050t"> +John Tait of Harvieston and his Grandson +</A><BR> + <SPAN STYLE="font-size: 80%"> + (In the possession of Mrs Pitman) +</SPAN> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#img-060t"> +Miss de Vismes +</A><BR> + <SPAN STYLE="font-size: 80%"> + (In the possession of the Earl of Mansfield) +</SPAN> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#img-070t"> +Mrs Scott Moncrieff +</A><BR> + <SPAN STYLE="font-size: 80%"> + (National Gallery of Scotland) +</SPAN> +</TD> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="intro"></A> + +<A NAME="img-011"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-011.jpg" ALT="Raeburn" BORDER="" WIDTH="268" HEIGHT="276"> +</CENTER> + +<P> +When in 1810, Henry Raeburn, then at the height of his powers, proposed +to settle in London, Lawrence dissuaded him. It is unnecessary, as it +would be unjust, to insinuate that the future President of the Royal +Academy had ulterior and personal motives in urging him to rest content +with his supremacy in the North. Raeburn was fifty-five at the time, +and, after his undisputed reign at home, even his generous nature might +have taken ill with the competition inseparable from such a venture. +Lawrence's advice was wise in many ways, and Raeburn, secure in the +admiration and constant patronage of his countrymen, lived his life to +the end unvexed by the petty jealousy of inferior rivals. Nor was +recognition confined to Scotland. Ultimately he was elected a member +of the Royal Academy, an honour all the more valued because +unsolicited. Yet, had the courtly Lawrence but known, acceptance of +his advice kept a greater than himself from London, and, it may be, +prevented the perpetuation and further development of that tradition of +noble portraiture of which Raeburn, with personal modifications, was +such a master. For long also it confined the Scottish painter's +reputation to his own country. Forty years after his death, his art +was so little known in England that the Redgraves, in their admirable +history of English painting, relegated him to a chapter headed "The +Contemporaries of Lawrence." Time brings its revenges, however, and of +late years Raeburn has taken a place in the very front rank of British +painters. And, if this recognition has been given tardily by English +critics, the reason is to be found in want of acquaintance with his +work. He had lived and painted solely in Scotland, and Scottish art, +like foreign art, so long as it remains at home, has little interest +for London, which, sure of its attractive power, sits arrogantly still +till art is brought to it. But Raeburn's work possesses that inherent +power, which, seen by comprehending eyes, compels admiration. The +Raeburn exhibition held in Edinburgh in 1876 was quite local in its +influence, but from time to time since then, at "The Old Masters" and +elsewhere, admirable examples have been shown in London; and recent +loan collections in Glasgow and Edinburgh, wherein his achievement was +very fully illustrated, were seen by large and cosmopolitan audiences. +And the better his work has become known, the more has it been +appreciated. Collectors and galleries at home and abroad are now +anxious to secure examples; dealers are as alert to buy as they are +keen to sell; prices have risen steadily from the very modest sums of +twenty years ago until fine pictures by him fetch as much as +representative specimens of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Fashion has had +much to do with this greatly enhanced reputation, but another, and more +commendable cause of the appreciation, not of the commercial value but +of the artistic merit of his work, lies in the fact that the qualities +which dominate it are those now held in highest esteem by artists and +lovers of art. Isolated though he was, Raeburn expressed himself in a +manner and achieved pictorial results which make his achievement +somewhat similar in kind to that of Velasquez and Hals. +</P> + +<HR> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +PLATE II.—CHILDREN OF MR AND THE HON. MRS PATERSON OF CASTLE HUNTLY. +(Charles J. G. Paterson, Esq.) +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +Painted within a year or two of Raeburn's return from Italy, some +critics have seen, or thought they saw, in this picture the influence +of Michael Angelo. Be this as it may, the handling, lighting, and tone +and disposition of the colour are eminently characteristic of much of +the work done by Raeburn about 1790. +</P> + +<A NAME="img-014t"></A> +<CENTER> +<A HREF="images/img-014.jpg"> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-014t.jpg" ALT="Plate II." BORDER="2" WIDTH="563" HEIGHT="702"> +</A> +</CENTER> + +<BR> + +<HR> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +I +</H3> + +<P> +If, during the last century, Scotland has shown exceptional activity in +the arts, especially in painting, and has produced a succession of +artists whose work is marked by able craftsmanship and emotional and +subjective qualities, which give it a distinctive place in modern +painting, the more than two hundred years which lay between the +Reformation and the advent of Raeburn seemed to hold little promise of +artistic development. During the Middle Ages and the renaissance the +internal condition of the country was too unsettled and its resources +were too meagre to make art widely possible. Strong castles and +beautiful churches were built here and there, but intermittent war on +the borders and fear of invasion kept even the more settled central +districts in a state of unrest. Moreover, the fierce barons were at +constant feud amongst themselves, and not infrequently the more +powerful amongst them were banded against the King. Of the first five +Jameses only the last died, and that miserably, in his bed. The innate +taste of the Stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in +the Court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial +relations with the Low Countries and political associations with +France. Poetry and scholarship were encouraged, if poorly +rewarded—one remembers Dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a +benefice—and relics and old records show that even in those stirring +times life was not without its refinements and tasteful accessories. +Yet only in the Church or for her service was there the quietude +necessary for art work of the higher kinds. Then came the Reformation +(during which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and decoration +perished) severing the connection of art with religion and sowing +distrust of art in any form. +</P> + +<P> +Had the Union of the Crowns not taken place in 1603, it is possible +that the art of painting might have developed much earlier than it did. +No doubt that event brought healing to the long open sore caused and +inflamed by kingly ambitions and national animosities, but it removed +the Court to London, and with that some of the greatest nobles, while +the change in the religion of the ruling house from Presbyterianism to +Episcopacy, which followed, led to the Covenants and the religious +persecution, and drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those +classes from whom artists mostly spring. Yet the logical rigidity of +the Calvinistic spirit, while taking much of the joy out of life and +opposing its manifestation in art, had certain compensating advantages. +Disciplining the mind, quickening the reasoning powers, and cultivating +that grasp of essentials which makes for success in almost any pursuit, +and not least in art, it helped very largely to make the Scot what he +is. +</P> + +<P> +During the peaceful years which immediately followed the Union, there +was considerable activity in the building of country residences. Now +that the country was more settled these were less castles than +mansions, and the larger and better lighted apartments possible led to +a good deal of elaborate decoration. Of this Pinkie House (1613) with +its painted gallery is perhaps the most celebrated example. It is +difficult, however, to determine how much of this kind of work was done +by foreign, how much by native craftsmen, and as it seems to have +exerted little influence upon the one or two picture-painters who +emerged during the seventeenth century, one need not discuss the +probabilities. So far as has been discovered, the only link between +this phase of art and the other consists of the fact that George +Jamesone (1598?-1644), the first clearly recognisable Scottish artist, +was apprenticed in 1612 to one John Andersone "paynter" in Edinburgh, +whose decoration in Gordon Castle is mentioned by an old chronicler. +As might be expected in the circumstances the "Scottish Van Dyck," as +he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. He was followed by a few +others, such as the Scougall family, Aikman Marshall, Wait, and the two +Alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much +appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of +portraitists between him and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) in whose work art +in Scotland took a great step forward.[<A NAME="chap01fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap01fn1">1</A>] A few of Ramsay's +predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre instruction—if +any thing that existed could be dignified by that name—to be obtained +in Scotland by a visit to the Low Countries or Italy, but Ramsay was +the first to obtain a sound technical training. The author of "The +Gentle Shepherd," to whom Edinburgh was indebted for its first +circulating library and its first play-house, encouraged his son's bent +for art, and after some preliminary study in London, Allan <I>fils</I> was +sent to "The seat of the Beast" beyond the Alps, where he became a +pupil of Solimena and Imperiale and of the French Academy. Formed +under these influences, his style possesses no clearly marked national +trait, except it be the feeling for character which informs his finer +work and makes it, in a way, a link between that of Jamesone and that +of Raeburn. To this he added a delicate sense of tone and a tenderness +of colour and lighting, a gracefulness of drawing and a refined +accomplishment which were new in Scottish painting. His turn for charm +of pose and grace of motive was pronounced, and his portraitures mirror +very happily the mannered yet elegant social airs of the mid-eighteenth +century. More than that of any English painter of his day, his art +possesses "French elegance." +</P> + +<HR> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +PLATE III.—MRS LAUZUN. (National Gallery.) +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +Only one of the three Raeburns in the National Gallery is an adequate +example. This is the picture reproduced. It was painted in 1795, and, +while very typical technically, possesses greater charm than most of +the portraits of women executed by him at that comparatively early date. +</P> + +<A NAME="img-024t"></A> +<CENTER> +<A HREF="images/img-024.jpg"> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-024t.jpg" ALT="Plate III." BORDER="2" WIDTH="564" HEIGHT="736"> +</A> +</CENTER> + +<BR> + +<HR> + +<P> +Ramsay's activity as a painter coincided with a remarkable intellectual +movement which, making itself felt in history, philosophy, science, and +political economy, raised Scotland within a few years to a conspicuous +intellectual place in Europe. A product of the reaction which followed +the narrow and intense theological ideals which had dominated Scotland, +it was closely associated with the reign of the Moderates, who, with +their breadth of view, tolerance, and intellectual gifts had become the +most influential party in the National Church. Offering an outlet for +the human instincts and secular activities, it possessed special +attraction for independent minds and induced boldness of speculation +and original investigation of the phenomena of history and society. +Intimate with the leaders in this movement, Ramsay, before he left +Edinburgh for London, was active in the formation (1754) of the "Select +Society," which in addition to its main object—the improvement of its +members in reasoning and eloquence—sought to encourage the arts and +sciences and to improve the material and social condition of the +people. It was in this more genial atmosphere that Henry Raeburn was +reared. +</P> + +<P> +Born in 1756, Raeburn was not too late to paint many of the most gifted +of the older generation. David Hume, who sat to Ramsay more than once, +was dead before the new light rose above the horizon, and the +appearance of Adam Smith does not seem to be recorded except in a +Tassie medallion; but Black, the father of modern chemistry, and +Hutton, the originator of modern geology, were amongst his early +sitters; and fine works in a more mature manner have Principal +Robertson, James Watt, the engineer, Adam Ferguson, the historian, +Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, and others scarcely less interesting +for subject. And of his own immediate contemporaries—the cycle of +Walter Scott—he has left an almost complete gallery. Nor were his +sitters less fortunate. If they brought fine heads to be painted, he +painted them with wonderful insight grasp of character, and great +pictorial power. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01fn1"></A> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +[<A HREF="#chap01fn1text">1</A>] J. Michael Wright (1625?-1700?), at his best probably the finest +native painter of the seventeenth century, went to England. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +II. +</H3> + +<P> +Descended from a race of "bonnet-lairds," who took their name from a +hill farm in the Border district, Robert Raeburn, the artist's father, +seems to have come to Edinburgh as a young man in the earlier part of +the eighteenth century. At that time the city had expanded but little +beyond the limits marked by the Flodden wall. The high grey lands +along the windy ridge between the Castle and Holyrood were still +tenanted by the upper classes, and such extension as had been was +towards the Meadows. The new town had not been projected even, and on +the slopes, now occupied by its spacious streets and squares, +copse-woods and grass and heather grew. In the hollow at the foot of +these green braes, and by the side of the Water of Leith, a chain of +little hamlets—Dean, Stockbridge, and Canon-mills—nestled, and in the +mid-most of these Robert Raeburn established himself as a yarn-boiler. +Although in the country, his home was less than a mile from St Giles's +Kirk. His business appears to have prospered, and during the early +forties he married Miss Ann Elder. There was a difference of twelve +years in the ages of their two sons, William and Henry, and the younger +was no more than six when both father and mother died. Left to the +care of his brother, who carried on the business, Henry Raeburn was +nominated for maintenance and education at Heriot's Hospital by Mrs +Sarah Sandilands or Durham in 1764, and remained seven years in the +school, which owed its origin to the bequest of George Heriot, jeweller +to James VI. and I. in Edinburgh and later in London. Many boys had +been educated on "Jingling Geordie's" foundation, but Raeburn was to be +its most distinguished product. He does not seem to have distinguished +himself specially as a scholar, however, the two prizes awarded to him +having been for writing, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was +apprenticed to a jeweller and goldsmith in Parliament Close. This +choice of a calling was probably suggested by the lad's own +inclinations, but it was a stroke of good fortune that gave him James +Gilliland as a master. No craft then practised in the Scottish capital +was so likely to have been congenial to him. In the eighteenth century +a silversmith made as well as sold plate and ornaments, and in his +master's shop Raeburn must have learned to use his hands and may have +acquired some idea of design. In addition Gilliland seems to have been +a man of some taste—one of his most intimate friends, David Deuchar, +the seal-engraver, devoted his leisure to etching, and executed many +plates after Holbein and the Dutch masters. It was to the latter that +Raeburn owed his first lessons in art. Surprising his friend's +apprentice at work on a drawing of himself, Deuchar, struck by the +talent displayed, inquired if he had had any instruction. No, he had +not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and +Deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted +eagerly. The story is pleasant and circumstantial enough to be +credible; and the existence of an early Raeburn miniature of Deuchar is +evidence of the existence of friendship between the two. But, as a +free drawing-school had been founded in 1760 by the Honourable the +Board of Manufactures for the precise object of encouraging and +improving design for manufactures, the impossibility of Raeburn +receiving instructions of some kind was less than seems to be implied. +</P> + +<P> +It is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly +elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in 1798 of +John Graham[<A NAME="chap02fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap02fn1">1</A>] (1754-1817) as preceptor that the Trustees' Academy was +developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound +influence on Scottish painting. From 1771, the year in which Raeburn +left Heriot's, until his death, Alexander Runciman (1736-85), the "Sir +Brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great +ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history +painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that Raeburn took +the tone of his colour from that painter's work. But no record exists +of Raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to +have received any more training than was involved in the relationships +with his master and his master's friend which have been described. +Even subsequent introduction to David Martin (1737-98), who settled in +Edinburgh in 1775, when Raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. By +that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an +arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and +received as compensation a share in the prices received for the +miniatures to which Raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which +Gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. These miniatures, of +which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no +very marked artistic qualities. Drawn with care and not without +considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but +not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character. +The frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and +placing of the heads are almost the only elements which hint their +authorship. They are simple and straight-forward likenesses rather +than works of art and bear no obvious relationship to the elegant +bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little of the contemporary +English school of miniaturists. But obviously they were some +preparation for the development which followed, when, soon afterwards +and almost at once, he passed from water-colour miniature to life-size +portraiture in oil paint. +</P> + +<HR> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +PLATE IV.—MRS CAMPBELL OF BALLIEMORE. +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +(National Gallery of Scotland.) +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +This is one of the finest of the many fine portraits by Raeburn in the +Edinburgh Gallery. Its place in the artist's work is discussed on page +<A HREF="#P63">63</A>. +</P> + +<A NAME="img-034t"></A> +<CENTER> +<A HREF="images/img-034.jpg"> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-034t.jpg" ALT="Plate IV." BORDER="2" WIDTH="564" HEIGHT="741"> +</A> +</CENTER> + +<BR> + +<HR> + +<P> +The rapid expansion of Edinburgh provided new opportunities and helped +to Raeburn's early success. When he was eight years old the building +of the North Bridge, which was to connect the old city with the +projected new town on the other side of the valley, was begun, and by +the time he attained his majority many of the well-to-do had migrated. +The new district meant bigger houses and larger rooms, and, with the +increase in wealth which followed the commercial and agricultural +development of the country of which the city was the capital, led to +alterations in the habits and expansion of the ideals of its +inhabitants. It was probably the opening for an artist offered by +these altered circumstances which had brought Martin to Edinburgh, and +certainly Raeburn was fortunate in that his emergence coincided with +them. An attractive and clever lad devoting himself to art in a +community increasing in wealth and expanding in ideas, and with a +sympathetic master coming in contact with the upper classes, Raeburn +could not fail to make acquaintances able and willing to help him. +Amongst these was John Clerk, younger of Eldin, later a famous +advocate, through whom the young artist got into touch with the +Penicuik family which for several generations had been notable for its +interest in the arts. And this would lead to other introductions. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02fn1"></A> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +[<A HREF="#chap02fn1text">1</A>] Sir David Wilkie, Sir William Allan, and others were pupils of +Graham. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +III. +</H3> + +<P> +The influences which affected Raeburn and the models upon which he +formed either his style or his method are difficult to trace. Allan +Ramsay, having painted many portraits in Edinburgh before he went to +London in the same year as Raeburn was born, would be, one would think, +the most likely source of inspiration. Except Runciman, who +occasionally varied historical subjects by portraits painted in a broad +but somewhat empty manner, and Seaton, an artist of whom little is +known but whose rare and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of +handling and a simplicity of design which give the best of them a +certain distinction—can they have been an influence with Raeburn?—the +Scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth century were much +influenced by Ramsay, and Martin had been his favourite pupil. +Raeburn's connection with the latter was very slight, however. Beyond +giving the youth the entre้ to his studio and lending him a few +pictures to copy, Martin does not seem to have been of much direct +assistance, and even these little courtesies come to an end when the +painter to the Prince of Wales for Scotland unjustly accused the +jeweller's apprentice of having sold one of the copies he had been +allowed to make. Rumour, often astray but now and then hitting the +mark, said that the real reason was jealousy of the younger man's +growing powers. Raeburn's debt to Ramsay and Martin was therefore +inconsiderable and indirect. It is not traceable in the technique or +arrangement of his earliest known pictures, such as the full-length +"George Chalmers" in Dunfermline Town Hall, which was painted in 1776, +when the artist was twenty. Probably sight of Martin's pictures in +progress was an incentive to work rather than a formative influence on +his development as a painter. He had, says Allan Cunningham, writing +within a few years of Raeburn's death, "to make experiments, and drudge +to acquire what belongs to the mechanical labour, and not to the genius +of his art. His first difficulty was the preparation of his colours; +putting them on the palette, and applying them according to the rules +of art taught in the academies. All this he had to seek out for +himself." And, if probably exaggerated, the statement gives some idea +of the difficulties with which he had to contend. There were at that +time no exhibitions and no public collections of pictures where a youth +of genuine instinct could have gleaned hints as to technical procedure, +but there were at least portraits in a number of houses in the city and +district, and from these and from prints after the Masters, of which +Deuchar, an etcher himself, evidently possessed examples, Raeburn no +doubt derived much instruction as to design, the use of chiaroscuro and +the like. It has also been suggested with considerable likelihood that +mezzotints after portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds had a considerable +effect upon him. +</P> + +<HR> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +PLATE V.—PROFESSOR ROBISON. +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +(University of Edinburgh.) +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +Painted about 1798, "Professor Robison" is one of the most notable +portraits painted by Raeburn before 1800. It represents the +culmination of his <I>premier coup</I> manner. (See pp. <A HREF="#P63">63</A> and <A HREF="#P73">73</A>.) +</P> + +<A NAME="img-040t"></A> +<CENTER> +<A HREF="images/img-040.jpg"> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-040t.jpg" ALT="Plate V." BORDER="2" WIDTH="568" HEIGHT="718"> +</A> +</CENTER> + +<BR> + +<HR> + +<P> +Passing from supposition, which, however interesting and plausible, +throws no very definite light upon the formation of Raeburn's style, to +his early work itself, one finds it chiefly remarkable for frank +rendering of character. Obviously he believed in his own eyes, and +sought simple and direct ways for the expression of his vision. +Certain of what he saw, and desiring to set it down as he saw it, lack +of training in the traditional methods of painting by process probably +led him to attempt direct realisation in paint. Here is at once the +simplest and the most reasonable explanation of how he became an +exponent of direct painting, of how, isolated though it was, his art +came to be perhaps the most emphatic statement of this particular +method of handling between Velasquez and Hals and comparatively recent +times. Of course at this early stage his technical accomplishment was +not at all equal to his frankness of vision. His drawing, although +expressing character, was uncertain and not fully constructive; his +sense of design was rather stiff and occasionally somewhat archaic in +character; his handling and modelling, if broad and courageous, were +insufficiently supported by knowledge; his colour was apt to be dull +and monotonous, or, when breaking from that, patchy and crude in its +more definite notes which do not fuse sufficiently with their +surroundings. +</P> + +<P> +Gradually these deficiencies were mastered, but in some degree they +persist in most of the comparatively few portraits which can be said +with certainty to have been painted before he went to Italy. He had +been in no hurry to go. Ever since marriage with one of his sitters in +1778, when he was only twenty-two, his future had been secure. The +lady, <I>ne้</I> Ann Edgar of Bridgelands, Peebleshire, brought him a +considerable fortune. The widow of James Leslie—who traced his +descent to Sir George Leslie, first Baron of Balquhain (1351), and who, +after his purchase of Deanhaugh in 1777,[<A NAME="chap03fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap03fn1">1</A>] was spoken of as "Count of +Deanhaugh"—she was twelve years the artist's senior, and had three +children; but the marriage turned out most happily for all concerned. +Raeburn went to live at his wife's property, which lay not far from his +brother's house and factory at Stockbridge, and, although sitters +increased with his growing reputation until he is said to have been +quite independent of his wife's income, he does not appear to have had +a separate studio. Probably his Edinburgh clients went to Deanhaugh, +and at times he seems to have painted portraits at the country houses +of the gentry. But in 1785 desire to see and learn more than was +possible at home took him to Italy. While in London he made the +acquaintance of Reynolds, in whose studio he may have worked for a few +weeks, and Sir Joshua's advice confirming his original intention, +Raeburn and his wife went to Rome, where they resided about two years. +When parting Reynolds took him aside and whispered: "Young man, I know +nothing about your circumstances. Young painters are seldom rich; but +if money be necessary for your studies abroad, say so, and you shall +not want it." Money was not needed, but letters of introduction were +accepted gladly; and "ever afterwards Raeburn mentioned the name of Sir +Joshua with much respect." +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03fn1"></A> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +[<A HREF="#chap03fn1text">1</A>] If, as stated by Cumberland Hill in his <I>History of Stockbridge</I>, +Leslie bought Deanhaugh in 1777, and if, as stated by Cunningham and +others, Raeburn married in 1778, the lady can have been a widow for +only a few months. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IV. +</H3> + +<P> +In these days of rapid travel, the transition from north to south is +exceedingly striking. Leaving London one speeds past the pleasant +Surrey fields and lanes and woodlands, and through the soft rolling +green downs, and in the afternoon and evening sees the less familiar +but not strange wide planes and poplar-fringed rivers of Northern +France, to open one's eyes next morning upon the brown sun-baked lands, +with their strange southern growths, which lie behind Marseilles; and +all day as the train thunders along the Riviera, through olive gardens +and vineyards, one has glimpses of strangely picturesque white-walled +and many-coloured shuttered towns fringing the broad bays or clustering +on the rocks above little harbours, and drinks a strange enchantment +from great vistas of lovely coast washed by blue waters and gladdened +by radiant sunshine. And on the second morning, issuing into the great +square before the station, you have your first sight of Rome. +</P> + +<HR> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +PLATE VI.—JOHN TAIT OF HARVIESTON AND HIS GRANDSON. (Mrs Pitman.) +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +One of the artist's most virile and trenchant performances, it was +painted in 1798-9. The child was introduced after the grandfather's +death. (See p. <A HREF="#P63">63</A>.) +</P> + +<A NAME="img-050t"></A> +<CENTER> +<A HREF="images/img-050.jpg"> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-050t.jpg" ALT="Plate VI." BORDER="2" WIDTH="571" HEIGHT="715"> +</A> +</CENTER> + +<BR> + +<HR> + +<P> +Yet impressive as these transitions are, they are nothing to the +contrast which Rome presented to the stranger from the north in the +eighteenth century when, after slow and long and weary travelling, he +reached his goal. Then Rome was still a town of the renaissance +imposed upon a city of the ancients; and under the aegis of the Papacy +preserved aspects of life and character which differed little from +those of three or four centuries earlier. After the grey metropolis of +the north, with its softly luminous or cloudy skies, its sombreness of +aspect, its calvinistic religious atmosphere, its interest in science +and philosophy, and its want of interest in the arts, the clear +sunshiny air of the Eternal City, its picturesque and crowded life, its +gorgeous ecclesiastical ceremonies and processions, its monuments of +art and architecture, and its cosmopolitan coteries of eager dilettanti +discussing the latest archaeological discoveries, and of artists +studying the achievements of the past, must have formed an +extraordinary contrast, Yet Raeburn, much as these novel and stirring +surroundings would strike him, remained true to his own impressions of +reality and was unaffected in his artistic ideals. Almost alone of the +foreign artists then resident in Rome, he was unaffected by the +pseudo-classicism which prevailed. In part a product of emasculated +academic tradition, and in part the result of philosophical +speculations, upon which the discoveries at Pompeii and the excavations +then taking place in Rome had had a strong influence, it was an +attitude which founded itself upon the past and opposed the direct +study of nature. Gavin Hamilton (1723-98) and Jacob More (1740?-93) +two of its most conspicuous pictorial exponents were Scots by birth, +but they had lived so long abroad that Scotland had become to them +little more than a memory. The work of the former was in many ways an +embodiment of the current dilettante conception of art, and kindred in +kind, though earlier in date, to that of Jacques Louis David +(1748-1825) under whose sway, towards the close of the century, classic +ideals came to dominate the art of Europe outside these isles. His +usefulness to Raeburn was chiefly that of a cicerone. There was little +of an archaeological kind with which he was unacquainted, and he was so +famous a discoverer of antiquities that the superstitious Romans +thought that he was in league with the devil. The landscapes of More, +though highly praised by Goethe, would appeal to Raeburn little more +than did the "sublime" historical designs of Hamilton. They were but +dilutions, frequently flavoured with melodramatic sentiment, of the +noble convention formulated by Claude and the Poussins. Raeburn, on +the other hand, had looked at man and nature inquiringly, and had +evolved a manner of expressing the results of his observation for +himself. Moreover he was past the easily impressionable age, and +turned his opportunities to direct and practical uses. He used to +declare that the advice of James Byres (1734-1818?) of Tonley, who, in +Raeburn's own words, was "a man of great general information, a +profound antiquary, and one of the best judges perhaps of everything +connected with art in Great Britain," was the most valuable lesson he +received while abroad. "Never paint anything except you have it before +you" was what his friend urged, and, while Raeburn, to judge from his +early portraits, did not stand greatly in need of the injunction, it +probably strengthened him in his own beliefs. Be that as it may he +seems to have used his stay in Italy principally to widen his technical +experience, and his work after his return was richer and fuller than +what he had done previously. No record of any special study he may +have undertaken or of the pictures he particularly admired exists. +Even gossip is silent as regards his preferences, except in so far as +it is said that while in Rome he came near to preferring sculpture to +painting. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +V. +</H3> + +<P> +Arrived back in Edinburgh in 1787, Raeburn took a studio in the new +town, and, with his enhanced powers and the added prestige due to his +sojourn abroad, soon occupied a commanding place. Few agreed with +Martin that "the lad in George Street painted better before he went to +Italy," for if the majority were unaware of his high artistic gifts, +none could be unconscious of the vital and convincing quality of his +portraitures. His earlier sitters included some of the most +distinguished people in Scotland. Lord President Dundas must have been +amongst the very first for he died before the end of the year. Ere +long his position was unassailable, and during the five-and-thirty +years that followed he painted practically everybody who was anybody. +Burns is probably the only great Scotsman of that epoch who was not +immortalised by his brush, for the missing likeness, which has been +discovered so often, was not painted from life but from Nasmyth's +portrait. +</P> + +<P> +From the time he returned home until 1809, when he purchased the +adjoining property off St Bernard's, Raeburn lived at Deanhaugh.[<A NAME="chap05fn1text"></A><A HREF="#chap05fn1">1</A>] +The junction of these small estates enabled him to feu the outlying +parts on plans prepared by himself, architecture being one of his +hobbies, and his family's connection with them is still marked by such +names as Raeburn Place, Ann Street (after his wife), Leslie Place, St +Bernard's Crescent, and Deanhaugh Street. Some years earlier +continuous increase in the number of his clients had rendered a change +of studio desirable, and in 1795 he moved from George Street to 16 (now +32) York Place where he had built a specially designed and spacious +studio, with a suite of rooms for the display of recently completed +work or of portraits he had painted for himself. At a later date, when +exhibitions were inaugurated in Edinburgh (first series 1808-13), he +lent the show-rooms to the Society of Artists which organised them. +This action was typical of Raeburn's cordial relations with his +fellow-artists, most of whom were poor and socially unimportant; and +only a year before his death he championed the professional artists +when, partly in opposition to the Royal Institution, they proposed to +form an Academy. Incidentally also, the letter written on that +occasion, which I have transcribed in full in <I>Scottish Painting; Past +and Present</I>, gives an indication of the extent of his practice, of how +fully he was engaged. +</P> + +<P> +Until 1808 Raeburn's career had been one unbroken success, but in that +year, following upon the failure of his son, financial disaster +overtook him. The firm of "Henry Raeburn and Company, merchants, +Shore, Leith," consisted of Henry Raeburn, Junior, and James Philip +Inglis, who had married Anne Leslie, the artist's step-daughter, but +neither the <I>Edinburgh Gazette</I> nor the local Directory states the +nature of their business. In the proceedings in connection with +Raeburn's own bankruptcy, however, he is described as "portrait-painter +and underwriter." What underwriter exactly means is uncertain, but it +may be that the son was a marine-insurance broker, that Raeburn himself +took marine-insurance risks. In any case his ruin seemed complete. +Not only did he lose all his savings but he had even to sell the York +Place studio, of which he was afterwards only tenant. He failed, paid +a composition, and, two years later, proposed settling in London. By +those of his biographers who have noticed it at all, this failure and +the contemplated removal south have been very closely associated. But +a more careful examination of the whole circumstances makes such an +assumption rather doubtful. Alexander Cunningham, in a letter written +on 16th February 1808, tells a correspondent—"I had a walk of three +hours on Sunday with my worthy friend, Raeburn. He had realised nearly +ฃ17,000, which is all gone. He has offered a small composition, which +he is in hopes will be accepted. He quits this to try his fate in +London, which I trust in God will be successful. While I write this I +feel the tear start." So far the connection is evident enough. But +although the artist received his discharge in June of the same year,[<A NAME="chap05fn2text"></A><A HREF="#chap05fn2">2</A>] +it was not until two years later that he took active steps towards +carrying out his idea.[<A NAME="chap05fn3text"></A><A HREF="#chap05fn3">3</A>] The time was highly propitious. Hoppner had +just died (23rd January 1810), and Wilkie records in his journal (March +2nd) that he had heard that that artist's house was to be taken for +Raeburn. Lawrence was now without a rival in the metropolis, and +Raeburn's talent was of a kind which would soon have commanded +attention there. The opening was obvious, but Raeburn's reception by +the gentlemen of the Royal Academy, when he visited London in May, was +not very cordial, and fortunately for Scotland, if not for himself, he +was persuaded to remain in Edinburgh. From then onward the fates were +kind. To quote his own words, written in 1822, "my business, though it +may fall off, cannot admit of enlargement." +</P> + +<P> +Wider recognition also came to him. He had exhibited at the Royal +Academy as early as 1792, but it was 1810 before he became a regular +contributor, and in 1812 he was elected an Associate, full membership +following three years later. Just prior to his advancement to +Academician rank, he wrote one of the few letters by him that have been +preserved:—"I observe what you say respecting the election of an R.A.; +but what am I to do here? They know that I am on their list; if they +choose to elect me without solicitation, it will be the more honourable +to me, and I will think the more of it; but if it can only be obtained +by means of solicitation and canvassing, I must give up all hopes of +it, for I would think it unfair to employ those means." +</P> + +<P> +No doubt election was particularly gratifying to Raeburn. Isolated as +he was in Edinburgh, where an Academy did not come into existence until +some years after his death, it must have been stimulating to receive +such tangible assurance of that appreciation of one's fellow-workers +which is the most grateful form of admiration to the artist. He +reciprocated by offering as his diploma work the impressive portrait of +himself, which is now one of the treasures of the National Gallery of +Scotland. The rules of the Academy, however, forbade the acceptance of +a self-portrait, and in 1821 he gave the "Boy with Rabbit"—a portrait +of his step-grandson, but one of his most genre-like pieces. Other +Academic diplomas received later were those of the Academies of +Florence, New York, and South Carolina. +</P> + +<P> +A year before he died these artistic laurels were supplemented by royal +favour. On the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event—to those +who took part in it—the first visit of a King to Scotland since the +Union of Parliaments, Raeburn was presented to George IV. and knighted. +His fellow artists marked their appreciation of this fresh distinction +by entertaining him to a public dinner, at which the chairman, +Alexander Nasmyth, the doyen of the local painters, declared that "they +loved him as a man not less than they admired him as an artist." And +in the following May, the King appointed him his "limner and painter in +Scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights, privileges, and +advantages thereto belonging." +</P> + +<P> +Raeburn did not long enjoy these new honours. In July, a day or two +after returning from an archaeological excursion in Fifeshire with, +amongst others, Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth, he became suddenly +ill, took to bed, and in less than a week was dead. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05fn1"></A> +<A NAME="chap05fn2"></A> +<A NAME="chap05fn3"></A> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +[<A HREF="#chap05fn1text">1</A>] All Raeburn's biographers follow Cunningham in stating that Raeburn +succeeded to St Bernard's on the death of his brother in 1787 or 1788. +It was not so, however. The intimation in the <I>Edinburgh Evening +Courant</I>, of 13th December 1810, reads, "Died on the 6th December Mr +William Raeburn, manufacturer, Stockbridge"; and the title deeds of St +Bernard's show that the artist purchased it from the trustees of the +late Mrs Margaret Ross in October 1809. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +[<A HREF="#chap05fn2text">2</A>] Henry Raeburn & Co.'s affairs were not settled until March 1810. +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +[<A HREF="#chap05fn3text">3</A>] That his own affairs were not only settled but were again highly +prosperous before this is apparent from his having purchased St +Bernard's in 1809. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VI. +</H3> + +<P> +While Raeburn's attitude to reality was determined and his style was +formed to a great extent before he went abroad, his ideas of pictorial +effect were broadened and his technical resources enriched by his +sojourn in Italy. Some of the work executed immediately after his +return, such as the portraits of Lord President Dundas, Neil Gow, the +famous fiddler, and the earlier of two portraits of his friend John +Clerk of Eldin, shows, with much unity, a greater care and precision in +the handling of detail, a more searched kind of modelling and a fuller +sense of tone, and thicker impasto and fuller colour than that done +previously. Moreover the design of the first-named picture is +reminiscent in certain ways of Velasquez's "Pope Innocent X.," which he +may have seen and studied in the Doria Palace in Rome, though too much +stress need not be laid on the resemblance. About this time also, he +painted a few pictures in which difficult problems of lighting are +subtly and skilfully solved. In things like the charming bust "William +Ferguson of Kilrie" (before 1790) and the group of Sir John and Lady +Clerk of Penicuik (1790) the faces are in luminous shadow, touched by +soft reflected light to give expression and animation. But for obvious +reasons such effects are not favoured by the clients of +portrait-painters, and that Raeburn should have adopted them at all is +evidence of the widening of the artistic horizon induced by his stay +abroad. +</P> + +<HR> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +PLATE VII.—MISS EMILY DE VISMES—LADY MURRAY. (Earl of Mansfield.) +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +An admirable example of the artist's mature style, and one of his most +charming portraits of women. (See p. <A HREF="#P79">79</A>.) +</P> + +<A NAME="img-060t"></A> +<CENTER> +<A HREF="images/img-060.jpg"> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-060t.jpg" ALT="Plate VII." BORDER="2" WIDTH="563" HEIGHT="704"> +</A> +</CENTER> + +<BR> + +<HR> + +<P> +In pictures painted but little later than these, one finds a marked +tendency to revert to the more abbreviated modelling and broader +execution which have been noted as characteristic of his pre-Roman +style. The execution, however, is now much more confident and +masterly, the draughtsmanship better, the design, while exceedingly +simple, less stiff and more closely knit. Using pigment of very fluid +consistency and never loading the lights, though following the +traditional method of thick in the lights and thin in the shadows, his +handling is exceedingly direct and spontaneous, his touch fearless and +broad yet thoroughly under control, his drawing summary yet selective +and so expressive that, even in faces where the lighting is so broad +that there is little shadow to mark the features and little modelling +to explain the planes, the large structure of the head and the +essentials of likeness are rendered in a very satisfying and convincing +way. His colour, however, if losing the inclination to the rather dull +grey-greenness which had prevailed before 1785, remained somewhat cold +and wanting in quality, and the more forcible tints introduced in the +draperies were frequently lacking in modulation and were not quite in +harmony with the prevailing tone. Something of this deficiency in +fusion is also noticeable in his flesh tints, the carnations of the +complexions being somewhat detached owing to defective gradation where +the pinks join the whites. As experience came, Raeburn advanced from +the somewhat starved quality of pigment, which in his earlier pictures +was accentuated by his broad manner of handling, until in many of the +pictures painted during the later nineties he attained extraordinary + +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P63"></A>63}</SPAN> +power of expression by vigorous and incisive use of square +brush-work and full yet fluid and unloaded impasto. This method with +its sharply struck touches and simplified planes reaches its climax +perhaps in the striking portrait (1798 circa) of Professor Robison in +white night-cap and red-striped dressing-gown, though the more fused +manner of "Mrs Campbell of Balliemore" (1795) and the extraordinary +trenchant handling of the "John Tait of Harvieston and his grandson" +(1798-9) show modifications which are as fine and perhaps less +mannered. Even earlier he sometimes attained a solidity and +forcefulness of effect, a fullness of colour, and a resonance of tone +which gave foretaste of the accomplishment of his full maturity. +Curiously this is most marked in two or three full-lengths. The +earliest of these was the famous "Dr Nathaniel Spens" in the possession +of the Royal Company of Archers, by which body it was commissioned in +1791. In it close realisation of detail and restraint in handling are +very happily harmonised with breadth of ensemble and effectiveness of +design. Some five years later this fine achievement was followed by +the even more striking, if rather less dignified, "Sir John Sinclair," +a splendid piece of virtuosity, which unites brilliant colour and +admirable tone to great dash and bravura of brush-work. +</P> + +<P> +During this period, and indeed throughout his career, Raeburn usually +placed his sitters in a strong direct light, which, being thrown upon +the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light) +illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with +definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. Very +often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and +arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. In many of his pictures one finds the +lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through +the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the +parts he wished subordinated. This device appears in full-lengths as +well as in busts and threequarter-lengths, and while, no doubt, helping +to the desired end, is now and then a disturbing influence from the +fact that it is difficult to account for the result from purely normal +causes. With Rembrandt, the greatest master of concentrated pictorial +effect, the transitions from the fully illumined passages to the +surrounding transparent darks are so gradual and so subtle that one +scarcely notices that the effect has been arranged—the concentration +is an integral part of the imaginative apprehension of the subject. It +is otherwise with Raeburn, in his earlier work at least. Later he +attained much the same results by less arbitrary and apparent means, by +swathing the hands and arms—the high tone of which he evidently found +disconcerting and conflicting with the heads—in drapery, by placing +them where they tell as little as possible, and by modifications in +handling. His management of accessories was also determined by desire +for concentration. Although, as is obvious from his increasing use of +it, preferring a simple background from which the figure has +atmospheric detachment, he frequently used the scenic setting which +Reynolds and Gainsborough had made the vogue. His idea, however, was +that a landscape background should be exceedingly unassertive—"nothing +more than the shadow of a landscape; effect is all that is +wanted"—and, always executing them himself, his are invariably +subordinate to the figure. But the essential quality of his vision +went best with plain backgrounds. That he did not wholly abandon the +decorative convention which he heired, and often employed to excellent +purpose, was due in large measure to caution. "He came," says W. E. +Henley, "at the break between new and old—when the old was not yet +discredited, and the new was still inoffensive; and with that exquisite +good sense which marks the artist, he identified himself with that +which was known, and not with that which, though big with many kinds of +possibilities, was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively +alive." Yet, had he had the full courage of his convictions, his work +would have been an even more outstanding landmark in the history of +painting than it is. Still to ask from Raeburn what one does not get +from Velasquez, many of whose portraits have a conventional setting, is +to be more exacting than critical, and, as has been indicated, +simplicity of design and aerial relief became increasingly evident in +Raeburn's work, and that in spite of the protests of some of his +admirers. +</P> + +<P> +While Raeburn had been working towards a fuller and more subtle +statement of likeness, modelling, and arrangement, it is possible that +removal to his new studio accelerated development in that direction. +The painting-room had been designed by himself for his own special +purposes, and no doubt suggested new possibilities. In any case, the +portraits painted after 1795 reveal a definite increase in the +qualities mentioned. But before considering the characteristics of his +later style, it might be well to tell what is known of his habits of +work and technical procedure. Cunningham's summary of these applies +partly to the George Street and partly to the York Place period, but +for practical purposes they may be regarded as one, for, while +Raeburn's art may be divided into periods, each was but a stage in a +gradual and consistent evolution. "The motions of the artist were as +regular as those of a clock. He rose at seven during summer, took +breakfast about eight with his wife and children, walked into George +Street, and was ready for a sitter by nine; and of sitters he generally +had, for many years, not fewer than three or four a day. To these he +gave an hour and a half each. He seldom kept a sitter more than two +hours, unless the person happened—and that was often the case—to be +gifted with more than common talents. He then felt himself happy, and +never failed to detain the party till the arrival of a new sitter +intimated that he must be gone. For a head size he generally required +four or five sittings: and he preferred painting the head and hands to +any other part of the body; assigning as a reason that they required +less consideration. A fold of drapery, or the natural ease which the +casting of a mantle over the shoulder demanded, occasioned him more +perplexing study than a head full of thought and imagination. Such was +the intuition with which he penetrated at once to the mind, that the +first sitting rarely came to a close without his having seized strongly +on the character and disposition of the individual. He never drew in +his heads, or indeed any part of the body, with chalk—a system pursued +successfully by Lawrence—but began with the brush at once. The +forehead, chin, nose, and mouth, were his first touches. He always +painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on; for +such was his accuracy of eye, and steadiness of nerve, that he could +introduce the most delicate touches, or the almost mechanical +regularity of line, without aid, or other contrivance than fair +off-hand dexterity. He remained in his painting-room till a little +after five o'clock, when he walked home, and dined at six.... From one +who knew him in his youthful days, and sat to him when he rose in fame, +I have this description of his way of going to work. "He spoke a few +words to me in his usual brief and kindly way—evidently to put me into +an agreeable mood; and then having placed me in a chair on a platform +at the end of his painting-room, in the posture required, set up his +easel beside me with the canvas ready to receive the colour. When he +saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back +step by step, with his face towards me, till he was nigh the other end +of the room; he stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to +the canvas, and, without looking at me, wrought upon it with colour for +some time. Having done this, he retreated in the same manner, studied +my looks at that distance for about another minute, then came hastily +up to the canvas and painted for a few minutes more." These details +may be supplemented by the list of colours used by him, which Alexander +Fraser, R.S.A., gave in <I>The Portfolio</I>. "His palette was a simple +one; his colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but sometimes yellow ochre +instead), Prussian blue, burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake, +white, of course, and the medium he used was 'gumption,' a composition +of sugar of lead, mastic varnish, and linseed oil. The colours were +ground by a servant in his own house and put into small pots ready for +use." When one adds that his studio had a very high side-light, and +that he painted on half-primed canvas with a definitely marked twill, +all that is known of his practice has been noted. +</P> + +<HR> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +PLATE VIII.—MRS SCOTT MONCRIEFF. +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +(National Gallery of Scotland.) +</P> + +<P CLASS="plate"> +None of Raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this. +Although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used, it +is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one of +the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since 1854, +when Mr R. Scott Moncrieff, Welwood of Pitliver, bequeathed it to the +Royal Scottish Academy. (See page <A HREF="#P79">79</A>.) +</P> + +<A NAME="img-070t"></A> +<CENTER> +<A HREF="images/img-070.jpg"> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-070t.jpg" ALT="Plate VIII." BORDER="2" WIDTH="563" HEIGHT="770"> +</A> +</CENTER> + +<BR> + +<HR> + +<P> +As already suggested, Raeburn's style was tending towards greater +completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before +he removed to York Place in 1795, but, while his normal advance was in +that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a +number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing +them with their +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P73"></A>73}</SPAN> +predecessors that one notices that the advance was +definite and not casual. Occasionally, as in the "Professor Robison," +there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but, +as the "Lord Braxfield" of about 1790 is a premonition of a much later +manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the +character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. But +comparing the splendid group, "Reginald Macdonald of Clanranald and his +two younger brothers" (about 1800), or the "Mrs Cruikshank of Langley +Park" (about 1805), with typical examples painted between 1787 and +1795, one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power +of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of +form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more expressive use +of colour and chiaroscuro. +</P> + +<P> +Considerable ingenuity has been expended in trying to prove that +Raeburn's subsequent development was due in some way or other to the +influence of Hoppner and Lawrence. Consideration of his situation and +of his work itself, however, scarcely bears this out. His ignorance of +what was being done by London artists, and of how his own pictures +compared with theirs, is very clearly evident from the following letter +written to Wilkie:— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +Edinburgh,<BR> +12<I>th September</I> 1819.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +Mr dear Sir,—I let you to wit that I am still here, and long much to +hear from you, both as to how you are and what you are doing. I would +not wish to impose any hardship upon you, but it would give me great +pleasure if you would take the trouble to write me at least once a +year, if not oftener, and give me a little information of what is going +on among the artists, for I do assure you I have as little +communication with any of them, and know almost as little about them, +as if I were living at the Cape of Good Hope. +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +I send up generally a picture or two to the Exhibition, which serve +merely as an advertisement that I am still in the land of the living, +but in other respects it does me no good, for I get no notice from any +one, nor have I the least conception how they look beside others. I +know not in what London papers any critiques of that kind are made, and +our Edinburgh ones (at least those that I see) take no notice of these +matters. At any rate I would prefer a candid observation or two from +an artist like you, conveying not only your own opinion but perhaps +that of others, before any of them. +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +Are the Portrait-Painters as well employed as ever? Sir Thomas +Lawrence, they tell me, has refused to commence any more pictures till +he gets done with those that are on hand, and that he has raised his +prices to some enormous sum. Is that true, and will you do me the +favour to tell me what his prices really are, and what Sir W. Beechy, +Mr Philips, and Mr Owen have for their pictures? It will be a +particular favour if you will take the trouble to ascertain these for +me precisely, for I am raising my prices too, and it would be a guide +to me—not that I intend to raise mine so high as your famous London +artists. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Moreover he is said to have visited London only three times: in 1785, +when he spent several weeks while on his way to Italy; in 1810, when he +contemplated settling there; and in 1815, after he was elected an +Academician. It is of course only with the later visits that we have +to do in this connection. By that time Hoppner was dead, and +Lawrence's claim to be painter par excellence to the fashionable world +was undisputed. No doubt the Scottish painter would be attracted by +the technical accomplishment of Lawrence's work; but he was between +fifty and sixty years of age and little likely to be influenced by an +art, which, for all its brilliance, was meretricious in many respects. +Yet it is possible that the adulation lavished by society upon his +contemporary's style may have induced him to consider if something of +the elegance for which it was esteemed so highly could not be added +with advantage to his own. On the other hand, Scottish society was +gradually undergoing evolution, and, while a greater infusion of +fashion amongst its members would in itself tend to stimulate the +favourite painter of the day in the same direction, increase in wealth +would bring a greater number of younger sitters to his studio. +Probably a combination of these represents the influences which +affected Raeburn. In any case, his later portraits, especially of +women, possess qualities of charm and beauty which, while never merely +pretty or meretricious, connect them in some measure with the more +modish and less sincere and virile work of Lawrence. But +otherwise—and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he never sacrificed +character to elegance or subordinated individuality to type—the +evolution of his style continued on purely personal lines. The +pictures painted between 1810 and his death, while still at the height +of his powers, are essentially one with those of the preceding decade. +There is in them a more delicate sense of beauty than before, and his +portraits of ladies are marked by a quickened perception of feminine +grace and charm; but these are results of the natural development of +his nature and of his personal powers of expression rather than of any +radical alteration in his standpoint. +</P> + +<P> +As regards the work of the last fifteen years and more, it is less +increased grasp of character, for that had always been a leading trait, +than growth in the expressive power and completeness of his technique +that is the dominating factor. And here the prevailing qualities are +but the issue of previous experience. His modelling ceases to be +marked by the rough-hewn and over simplified planes which had +distinguished his incisive square-touch at its strongest and becomes +fused and suave. As Sir Walter Armstrong put it, "He began with the +facets and ended with the completest modelling ever reached by any +English painter." Now his colour not only loses the inclination to +slatiness and monotony, which were evident before 1795, and sometimes +even later, but, the half-tones being more delicately graded, the +transitions, though still lacking the subtleties of the real colourist, +are blended and the general tone enriched and harmonised. And his use +of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more delicate both in its play upon +the face and in the broad disposition, which now attains finer and more +convincing concentration in virtue of more skillful subordination +through handling, as well as through more pictorial management of his +old arrangement of lighting. Moreover the scenic setting, if retained +in many full-lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a simple +background lighted from the same source as the sitter, and against +which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief. +With these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his +later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive +brushing of the preceding period, were also associated a fuller and +fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of +effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his earlier pictures rarely +possess. +</P> + +<P> +A sympathetic and human perception of character was the basis of his +relationship to his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a rarely +convincing way, and to me at least the +<SPAN CLASS="pagenum">{<A NAME="P79"></A>79}</SPAN> +view of life expressed in +his later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which +dominates his earlier work. Comparatively this is perhaps especially +evident in his rendering of pretty women. "Mrs Scott Moncrieff," "Miss +de Vismes," "Miss Janet Suttie," and "Mrs Irvine Boswell," to name no +more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked +by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. Still +his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures of +older women and of men, and his masterpieces are to be found amongst +his pictures of this kind rather than amongst his "beauty" pieces, +seductive though the best of these are. When one thinks of his finest +and most personal achievements, one recalls such things as "Lord +Newton," "Sir William Forbes," and "James Wardrop of Torbanehill," or +"Mrs Cruikshank," and "Mrs James Campbell." +</P> + +<P> +Born a painter of character, Raeburn was at his best where character, +intellect, and shrewdness were most marked. Yet axiomatic though it +may sound, this implies great gifts. To seize the obvious points of +likeness, and make a portrait more living than life itself is +comparatively easy; but to grasp the essential elements of likeness and +character, and, while vitalising these pictorially and decoratively, to +preserve the normal tone of life is difficult indeed. Of this, the +highest triumph of the portrait-painter's art as such, Raeburn was a +master. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT<BR> +THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS.<BR> +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<HR> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> + +<H3> +IN THE SAME SERIES +</H3> + +<PRE> +ARTIST. AUTHOR. + +VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN. +REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN. +TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND. +ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND. +GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN. +BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS. +ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO. +BELLINI. GEORGE HAY. +FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON. +REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS. +LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY. +RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY. +HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE. +TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN. +CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY. +LUINI. JAMES MASON. +TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + +<I>Others in Preparation.</I> +</PRE> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Raeburn, by James L. Caw + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAEBURN *** + +***** This file should be named 30315-h.htm or 30315-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/3/1/30315/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Caw + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Raeburn + +Author: James L. Caw + +Release Date: October 22, 2009 [EBook #30315] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAEBURN *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Cover art] + + + + + + MASTERPIECES + IN COLOUR + EDITED BY -- + T. LEMAN HARE + + + + +RAEBURN + +1756-1823 + + + + +===================================================================== + +PLATE I.--LORD NEWTON (Frontispiece). + +(National Gallery of Scotland.) + +This chef-d'oeuvre, which dates from about 1807, represents one of the +most celebrated characters who ever sat upon the bench of the Court of +Session. Famous in his day for "law, paunch, whist, claret, and +worth," the exploits of Charles Hay, "The Mighty," as he was called, +have become traditions of the Parliament House. (See p. 79.) + +[Illustration: Plate I.] + +===================================================================== + + +RAEBURN + + + + +BY JAMES L. CAW + + +ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT + +REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR + + + +[Illustration: Title page art] + + + +LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK + +NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO. + +1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + Introduction + Chapter I. + " II. + " III. + " IV. + " V. + " VI. + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Plate + + I. Lord Newton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece + (National Gallery of Scotland) + + II. Children of Mr and the Hon. Mrs Paterson of Castle Huntly + (In the possession of Chas. J. G. Paterson, Esq.) + + III. Mrs Lauzun + (National Gallery, London) + + IV. Mrs Campbell of Balliemore + (National Gallery of Scotland) + + V. Professor Robison + (University of Edinburgh) + + VI. John Tait of Harvieston and his Grandson + (In the possession of Mrs Pitman) + + VII. Miss de Vismes + (In the possession of the Earl of Mansfield) + + VIII. Mrs Scott Moncrieff + (National Gallery of Scotland) + + + + +[Illustration: Raeburn] + +When in 1810, Henry Raeburn, then at the height of his powers, proposed +to settle in London, Lawrence dissuaded him. It is unnecessary, as it +would be unjust, to insinuate that the future President of the Royal +Academy had ulterior and personal motives in urging him to rest content +with his supremacy in the North. Raeburn was fifty-five at the time, +and, after his undisputed reign at home, even his generous nature might +have taken ill with the competition inseparable from such a venture. +Lawrence's advice was wise in many ways, and Raeburn, secure in the +admiration and constant patronage of his countrymen, lived his life to +the end unvexed by the petty jealousy of inferior rivals. Nor was +recognition confined to Scotland. Ultimately he was elected a member +of the Royal Academy, an honour all the more valued because +unsolicited. Yet, had the courtly Lawrence but known, acceptance of +his advice kept a greater than himself from London, and, it may be, +prevented the perpetuation and further development of that tradition of +noble portraiture of which Raeburn, with personal modifications, was +such a master. For long also it confined the Scottish painter's +reputation to his own country. Forty years after his death, his art +was so little known in England that the Redgraves, in their admirable +history of English painting, relegated him to a chapter headed "The +Contemporaries of Lawrence." Time brings its revenges, however, and of +late years Raeburn has taken a place in the very front rank of British +painters. And, if this recognition has been given tardily by English +critics, the reason is to be found in want of acquaintance with his +work. He had lived and painted solely in Scotland, and Scottish art, +like foreign art, so long as it remains at home, has little interest +for London, which, sure of its attractive power, sits arrogantly still +till art is brought to it. But Raeburn's work possesses that inherent +power, which, seen by comprehending eyes, compels admiration. The +Raeburn exhibition held in Edinburgh in 1876 was quite local in its +influence, but from time to time since then, at "The Old Masters" and +elsewhere, admirable examples have been shown in London; and recent +loan collections in Glasgow and Edinburgh, wherein his achievement was +very fully illustrated, were seen by large and cosmopolitan audiences. +And the better his work has become known, the more has it been +appreciated. Collectors and galleries at home and abroad are now +anxious to secure examples; dealers are as alert to buy as they are +keen to sell; prices have risen steadily from the very modest sums of +twenty years ago until fine pictures by him fetch as much as +representative specimens of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Fashion has had +much to do with this greatly enhanced reputation, but another, and more +commendable cause of the appreciation, not of the commercial value but +of the artistic merit of his work, lies in the fact that the qualities +which dominate it are those now held in highest esteem by artists and +lovers of art. Isolated though he was, Raeburn expressed himself in a +manner and achieved pictorial results which make his achievement +somewhat similar in kind to that of Velasquez and Hals. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE II.--CHILDREN OF MR AND THE HON. MRS PATERSON OF CASTLE HUNTLY. +(Charles J. G. Paterson, Esq.) + +Painted within a year or two of Raeburn's return from Italy, some +critics have seen, or thought they saw, in this picture the influence +of Michael Angelo. Be this as it may, the handling, lighting, and tone +and disposition of the colour are eminently characteristic of much of +the work done by Raeburn about 1790. + +[Illustration: Plate II.] + +===================================================================== + + + + +I + +If, during the last century, Scotland has shown exceptional activity in +the arts, especially in painting, and has produced a succession of +artists whose work is marked by able craftsmanship and emotional and +subjective qualities, which give it a distinctive place in modern +painting, the more than two hundred years which lay between the +Reformation and the advent of Raeburn seemed to hold little promise of +artistic development. During the Middle Ages and the renaissance the +internal condition of the country was too unsettled and its resources +were too meagre to make art widely possible. Strong castles and +beautiful churches were built here and there, but intermittent war on +the borders and fear of invasion kept even the more settled central +districts in a state of unrest. Moreover, the fierce barons were at +constant feud amongst themselves, and not infrequently the more +powerful amongst them were banded against the King. Of the first five +Jameses only the last died, and that miserably, in his bed. The innate +taste of the Stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in +the Court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial +relations with the Low Countries and political associations with +France. Poetry and scholarship were encouraged, if poorly +rewarded--one remembers Dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a +benefice--and relics and old records show that even in those stirring +times life was not without its refinements and tasteful accessories. +Yet only in the Church or for her service was there the quietude +necessary for art work of the higher kinds. Then came the Reformation +(during which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and decoration +perished) severing the connection of art with religion and sowing +distrust of art in any form. + +Had the Union of the Crowns not taken place in 1603, it is possible +that the art of painting might have developed much earlier than it did. +No doubt that event brought healing to the long open sore caused and +inflamed by kingly ambitions and national animosities, but it removed +the Court to London, and with that some of the greatest nobles, while +the change in the religion of the ruling house from Presbyterianism to +Episcopacy, which followed, led to the Covenants and the religious +persecution, and drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those +classes from whom artists mostly spring. Yet the logical rigidity of +the Calvinistic spirit, while taking much of the joy out of life and +opposing its manifestation in art, had certain compensating advantages. +Disciplining the mind, quickening the reasoning powers, and cultivating +that grasp of essentials which makes for success in almost any pursuit, +and not least in art, it helped very largely to make the Scot what he +is. + +During the peaceful years which immediately followed the Union, there +was considerable activity in the building of country residences. Now +that the country was more settled these were less castles than +mansions, and the larger and better lighted apartments possible led to +a good deal of elaborate decoration. Of this Pinkie House (1613) with +its painted gallery is perhaps the most celebrated example. It is +difficult, however, to determine how much of this kind of work was done +by foreign, how much by native craftsmen, and as it seems to have +exerted little influence upon the one or two picture-painters who +emerged during the seventeenth century, one need not discuss the +probabilities. So far as has been discovered, the only link between +this phase of art and the other consists of the fact that George +Jamesone (1598?-1644), the first clearly recognisable Scottish artist, +was apprenticed in 1612 to one John Andersone "paynter" in Edinburgh, +whose decoration in Gordon Castle is mentioned by an old chronicler. +As might be expected in the circumstances the "Scottish Van Dyck," as +he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. He was followed by a few +others, such as the Scougall family, Aikman Marshall, Wait, and the two +Alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much +appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of +portraitists between him and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) in whose work art +in Scotland took a great step forward.[1] A few of Ramsay's +predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre instruction--if +any thing that existed could be dignified by that name--to be obtained +in Scotland by a visit to the Low Countries or Italy, but Ramsay was +the first to obtain a sound technical training. The author of "The +Gentle Shepherd," to whom Edinburgh was indebted for its first +circulating library and its first play-house, encouraged his son's bent +for art, and after some preliminary study in London, Allan _fils_ was +sent to "The seat of the Beast" beyond the Alps, where he became a +pupil of Solimena and Imperiale and of the French Academy. Formed +under these influences, his style possesses no clearly marked national +trait, except it be the feeling for character which informs his finer +work and makes it, in a way, a link between that of Jamesone and that +of Raeburn. To this he added a delicate sense of tone and a tenderness +of colour and lighting, a gracefulness of drawing and a refined +accomplishment which were new in Scottish painting. His turn for charm +of pose and grace of motive was pronounced, and his portraitures mirror +very happily the mannered yet elegant social airs of the mid-eighteenth +century. More than that of any English painter of his day, his art +possesses "French elegance." + +===================================================================== + +PLATE III.--MRS LAUZUN. (National Gallery.) + +Only one of the three Raeburns in the National Gallery is an adequate +example. This is the picture reproduced. It was painted in 1795, and, +while very typical technically, possesses greater charm than most of +the portraits of women executed by him at that comparatively early date. + +[Illustration: Plate III.] + +===================================================================== + +Ramsay's activity as a painter coincided with a remarkable intellectual +movement which, making itself felt in history, philosophy, science, and +political economy, raised Scotland within a few years to a conspicuous +intellectual place in Europe. A product of the reaction which followed +the narrow and intense theological ideals which had dominated Scotland, +it was closely associated with the reign of the Moderates, who, with +their breadth of view, tolerance, and intellectual gifts had become the +most influential party in the National Church. Offering an outlet for +the human instincts and secular activities, it possessed special +attraction for independent minds and induced boldness of speculation +and original investigation of the phenomena of history and society. +Intimate with the leaders in this movement, Ramsay, before he left +Edinburgh for London, was active in the formation (1754) of the "Select +Society," which in addition to its main object--the improvement of its +members in reasoning and eloquence--sought to encourage the arts and +sciences and to improve the material and social condition of the +people. It was in this more genial atmosphere that Henry Raeburn was +reared. + +Born in 1756, Raeburn was not too late to paint many of the most gifted +of the older generation. David Hume, who sat to Ramsay more than once, +was dead before the new light rose above the horizon, and the +appearance of Adam Smith does not seem to be recorded except in a +Tassie medallion; but Black, the father of modern chemistry, and +Hutton, the originator of modern geology, were amongst his early +sitters; and fine works in a more mature manner have Principal +Robertson, James Watt, the engineer, Adam Ferguson, the historian, +Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, and others scarcely less interesting +for subject. And of his own immediate contemporaries--the cycle of +Walter Scott--he has left an almost complete gallery. Nor were his +sitters less fortunate. If they brought fine heads to be painted, he +painted them with wonderful insight grasp of character, and great +pictorial power. + + + +[1] J. Michael Wright (1625?-1700?), at his best probably the finest +native painter of the seventeenth century, went to England. + + + + +II. + +Descended from a race of "bonnet-lairds," who took their name from a +hill farm in the Border district, Robert Raeburn, the artist's father, +seems to have come to Edinburgh as a young man in the earlier part of +the eighteenth century. At that time the city had expanded but little +beyond the limits marked by the Flodden wall. The high grey lands +along the windy ridge between the Castle and Holyrood were still +tenanted by the upper classes, and such extension as had been was +towards the Meadows. The new town had not been projected even, and on +the slopes, now occupied by its spacious streets and squares, +copse-woods and grass and heather grew. In the hollow at the foot of +these green braes, and by the side of the Water of Leith, a chain of +little hamlets--Dean, Stockbridge, and Canon-mills--nestled, and in the +mid-most of these Robert Raeburn established himself as a yarn-boiler. +Although in the country, his home was less than a mile from St Giles's +Kirk. His business appears to have prospered, and during the early +forties he married Miss Ann Elder. There was a difference of twelve +years in the ages of their two sons, William and Henry, and the younger +was no more than six when both father and mother died. Left to the +care of his brother, who carried on the business, Henry Raeburn was +nominated for maintenance and education at Heriot's Hospital by Mrs +Sarah Sandilands or Durham in 1764, and remained seven years in the +school, which owed its origin to the bequest of George Heriot, jeweller +to James VI. and I. in Edinburgh and later in London. Many boys had +been educated on "Jingling Geordie's" foundation, but Raeburn was to be +its most distinguished product. He does not seem to have distinguished +himself specially as a scholar, however, the two prizes awarded to him +having been for writing, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was +apprenticed to a jeweller and goldsmith in Parliament Close. This +choice of a calling was probably suggested by the lad's own +inclinations, but it was a stroke of good fortune that gave him James +Gilliland as a master. No craft then practised in the Scottish capital +was so likely to have been congenial to him. In the eighteenth century +a silversmith made as well as sold plate and ornaments, and in his +master's shop Raeburn must have learned to use his hands and may have +acquired some idea of design. In addition Gilliland seems to have been +a man of some taste--one of his most intimate friends, David Deuchar, +the seal-engraver, devoted his leisure to etching, and executed many +plates after Holbein and the Dutch masters. It was to the latter that +Raeburn owed his first lessons in art. Surprising his friend's +apprentice at work on a drawing of himself, Deuchar, struck by the +talent displayed, inquired if he had had any instruction. No, he had +not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and +Deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted +eagerly. The story is pleasant and circumstantial enough to be +credible; and the existence of an early Raeburn miniature of Deuchar is +evidence of the existence of friendship between the two. But, as a +free drawing-school had been founded in 1760 by the Honourable the +Board of Manufactures for the precise object of encouraging and +improving design for manufactures, the impossibility of Raeburn +receiving instructions of some kind was less than seems to be implied. + +It is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly +elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in 1798 of +John Graham[1] (1754-1817) as preceptor that the Trustees' Academy was +developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound +influence on Scottish painting. From 1771, the year in which Raeburn +left Heriot's, until his death, Alexander Runciman (1736-85), the "Sir +Brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great +ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history +painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that Raeburn took +the tone of his colour from that painter's work. But no record exists +of Raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to +have received any more training than was involved in the relationships +with his master and his master's friend which have been described. +Even subsequent introduction to David Martin (1737-98), who settled in +Edinburgh in 1775, when Raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. By +that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an +arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and +received as compensation a share in the prices received for the +miniatures to which Raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which +Gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. These miniatures, of +which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no +very marked artistic qualities. Drawn with care and not without +considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but +not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character. +The frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and +placing of the heads are almost the only elements which hint their +authorship. They are simple and straight-forward likenesses rather +than works of art and bear no obvious relationship to the elegant +bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little of the contemporary +English school of miniaturists. But obviously they were some +preparation for the development which followed, when, soon afterwards +and almost at once, he passed from water-colour miniature to life-size +portraiture in oil paint. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE IV.--MRS CAMPBELL OF BALLIEMORE. + +(National Gallery of Scotland.) + +This is one of the finest of the many fine portraits by Raeburn in the +Edinburgh Gallery. Its place in the artist's work is discussed on page +63. + +[Illustration: Plate IV.] + +===================================================================== + +The rapid expansion of Edinburgh provided new opportunities and helped +to Raeburn's early success. When he was eight years old the building +of the North Bridge, which was to connect the old city with the +projected new town on the other side of the valley, was begun, and by +the time he attained his majority many of the well-to-do had migrated. +The new district meant bigger houses and larger rooms, and, with the +increase in wealth which followed the commercial and agricultural +development of the country of which the city was the capital, led to +alterations in the habits and expansion of the ideals of its +inhabitants. It was probably the opening for an artist offered by +these altered circumstances which had brought Martin to Edinburgh, and +certainly Raeburn was fortunate in that his emergence coincided with +them. An attractive and clever lad devoting himself to art in a +community increasing in wealth and expanding in ideas, and with a +sympathetic master coming in contact with the upper classes, Raeburn +could not fail to make acquaintances able and willing to help him. +Amongst these was John Clerk, younger of Eldin, later a famous +advocate, through whom the young artist got into touch with the +Penicuik family which for several generations had been notable for its +interest in the arts. And this would lead to other introductions. + + + +[1] Sir David Wilkie, Sir William Allan, and others were pupils of +Graham. + + + + +III. + +The influences which affected Raeburn and the models upon which he +formed either his style or his method are difficult to trace. Allan +Ramsay, having painted many portraits in Edinburgh before he went to +London in the same year as Raeburn was born, would be, one would think, +the most likely source of inspiration. Except Runciman, who +occasionally varied historical subjects by portraits painted in a broad +but somewhat empty manner, and Seaton, an artist of whom little is +known but whose rare and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of +handling and a simplicity of design which give the best of them a +certain distinction--can they have been an influence with Raeburn?--the +Scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth century were much +influenced by Ramsay, and Martin had been his favourite pupil. +Raeburn's connection with the latter was very slight, however. Beyond +giving the youth the entree to his studio and lending him a few +pictures to copy, Martin does not seem to have been of much direct +assistance, and even these little courtesies come to an end when the +painter to the Prince of Wales for Scotland unjustly accused the +jeweller's apprentice of having sold one of the copies he had been +allowed to make. Rumour, often astray but now and then hitting the +mark, said that the real reason was jealousy of the younger man's +growing powers. Raeburn's debt to Ramsay and Martin was therefore +inconsiderable and indirect. It is not traceable in the technique or +arrangement of his earliest known pictures, such as the full-length +"George Chalmers" in Dunfermline Town Hall, which was painted in 1776, +when the artist was twenty. Probably sight of Martin's pictures in +progress was an incentive to work rather than a formative influence on +his development as a painter. He had, says Allan Cunningham, writing +within a few years of Raeburn's death, "to make experiments, and drudge +to acquire what belongs to the mechanical labour, and not to the genius +of his art. His first difficulty was the preparation of his colours; +putting them on the palette, and applying them according to the rules +of art taught in the academies. All this he had to seek out for +himself." And, if probably exaggerated, the statement gives some idea +of the difficulties with which he had to contend. There were at that +time no exhibitions and no public collections of pictures where a youth +of genuine instinct could have gleaned hints as to technical procedure, +but there were at least portraits in a number of houses in the city and +district, and from these and from prints after the Masters, of which +Deuchar, an etcher himself, evidently possessed examples, Raeburn no +doubt derived much instruction as to design, the use of chiaroscuro and +the like. It has also been suggested with considerable likelihood that +mezzotints after portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds had a considerable +effect upon him. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE V.--PROFESSOR ROBISON. + +(University of Edinburgh.) + +Painted about 1798, "Professor Robison" is one of the most notable +portraits painted by Raeburn before 1800. It represents the +culmination of his _premier coup_ manner. (See pp. 63 and 73.) + +[Illustration: Plate V.] + +===================================================================== + +Passing from supposition, which, however interesting and plausible, +throws no very definite light upon the formation of Raeburn's style, to +his early work itself, one finds it chiefly remarkable for frank +rendering of character. Obviously he believed in his own eyes, and +sought simple and direct ways for the expression of his vision. +Certain of what he saw, and desiring to set it down as he saw it, lack +of training in the traditional methods of painting by process probably +led him to attempt direct realisation in paint. Here is at once the +simplest and the most reasonable explanation of how he became an +exponent of direct painting, of how, isolated though it was, his art +came to be perhaps the most emphatic statement of this particular +method of handling between Velasquez and Hals and comparatively recent +times. Of course at this early stage his technical accomplishment was +not at all equal to his frankness of vision. His drawing, although +expressing character, was uncertain and not fully constructive; his +sense of design was rather stiff and occasionally somewhat archaic in +character; his handling and modelling, if broad and courageous, were +insufficiently supported by knowledge; his colour was apt to be dull +and monotonous, or, when breaking from that, patchy and crude in its +more definite notes which do not fuse sufficiently with their +surroundings. + +Gradually these deficiencies were mastered, but in some degree they +persist in most of the comparatively few portraits which can be said +with certainty to have been painted before he went to Italy. He had +been in no hurry to go. Ever since marriage with one of his sitters in +1778, when he was only twenty-two, his future had been secure. The +lady, _nee_ Ann Edgar of Bridgelands, Peebleshire, brought him a +considerable fortune. The widow of James Leslie--who traced his +descent to Sir George Leslie, first Baron of Balquhain (1351), and who, +after his purchase of Deanhaugh in 1777,[1] was spoken of as "Count of +Deanhaugh"--she was twelve years the artist's senior, and had three +children; but the marriage turned out most happily for all concerned. +Raeburn went to live at his wife's property, which lay not far from his +brother's house and factory at Stockbridge, and, although sitters +increased with his growing reputation until he is said to have been +quite independent of his wife's income, he does not appear to have had +a separate studio. Probably his Edinburgh clients went to Deanhaugh, +and at times he seems to have painted portraits at the country houses +of the gentry. But in 1785 desire to see and learn more than was +possible at home took him to Italy. While in London he made the +acquaintance of Reynolds, in whose studio he may have worked for a few +weeks, and Sir Joshua's advice confirming his original intention, +Raeburn and his wife went to Rome, where they resided about two years. +When parting Reynolds took him aside and whispered: "Young man, I know +nothing about your circumstances. Young painters are seldom rich; but +if money be necessary for your studies abroad, say so, and you shall +not want it." Money was not needed, but letters of introduction were +accepted gladly; and "ever afterwards Raeburn mentioned the name of Sir +Joshua with much respect." + + + +[1] If, as stated by Cumberland Hill in his _History of Stockbridge_, +Leslie bought Deanhaugh in 1777, and if, as stated by Cunningham and +others, Raeburn married in 1778, the lady can have been a widow for +only a few months. + + + + +IV. + +In these days of rapid travel, the transition from north to south is +exceedingly striking. Leaving London one speeds past the pleasant +Surrey fields and lanes and woodlands, and through the soft rolling +green downs, and in the afternoon and evening sees the less familiar +but not strange wide planes and poplar-fringed rivers of Northern +France, to open one's eyes next morning upon the brown sun-baked lands, +with their strange southern growths, which lie behind Marseilles; and +all day as the train thunders along the Riviera, through olive gardens +and vineyards, one has glimpses of strangely picturesque white-walled +and many-coloured shuttered towns fringing the broad bays or clustering +on the rocks above little harbours, and drinks a strange enchantment +from great vistas of lovely coast washed by blue waters and gladdened +by radiant sunshine. And on the second morning, issuing into the great +square before the station, you have your first sight of Rome. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE VI.--JOHN TAIT OF HARVIESTON AND HIS GRANDSON. (Mrs Pitman.) + +One of the artist's most virile and trenchant performances, it was +painted in 1798-9. The child was introduced after the grandfather's +death. (See p. 63.) + +[Illustration: Plate VI.] + +===================================================================== + +Yet impressive as these transitions are, they are nothing to the +contrast which Rome presented to the stranger from the north in the +eighteenth century when, after slow and long and weary travelling, he +reached his goal. Then Rome was still a town of the renaissance +imposed upon a city of the ancients; and under the aegis of the Papacy +preserved aspects of life and character which differed little from +those of three or four centuries earlier. After the grey metropolis of +the north, with its softly luminous or cloudy skies, its sombreness of +aspect, its calvinistic religious atmosphere, its interest in science +and philosophy, and its want of interest in the arts, the clear +sunshiny air of the Eternal City, its picturesque and crowded life, its +gorgeous ecclesiastical ceremonies and processions, its monuments of +art and architecture, and its cosmopolitan coteries of eager dilettanti +discussing the latest archaeological discoveries, and of artists +studying the achievements of the past, must have formed an +extraordinary contrast, Yet Raeburn, much as these novel and stirring +surroundings would strike him, remained true to his own impressions of +reality and was unaffected in his artistic ideals. Almost alone of the +foreign artists then resident in Rome, he was unaffected by the +pseudo-classicism which prevailed. In part a product of emasculated +academic tradition, and in part the result of philosophical +speculations, upon which the discoveries at Pompeii and the excavations +then taking place in Rome had had a strong influence, it was an +attitude which founded itself upon the past and opposed the direct +study of nature. Gavin Hamilton (1723-98) and Jacob More (1740?-93) +two of its most conspicuous pictorial exponents were Scots by birth, +but they had lived so long abroad that Scotland had become to them +little more than a memory. The work of the former was in many ways an +embodiment of the current dilettante conception of art, and kindred in +kind, though earlier in date, to that of Jacques Louis David +(1748-1825) under whose sway, towards the close of the century, classic +ideals came to dominate the art of Europe outside these isles. His +usefulness to Raeburn was chiefly that of a cicerone. There was little +of an archaeological kind with which he was unacquainted, and he was so +famous a discoverer of antiquities that the superstitious Romans +thought that he was in league with the devil. The landscapes of More, +though highly praised by Goethe, would appeal to Raeburn little more +than did the "sublime" historical designs of Hamilton. They were but +dilutions, frequently flavoured with melodramatic sentiment, of the +noble convention formulated by Claude and the Poussins. Raeburn, on +the other hand, had looked at man and nature inquiringly, and had +evolved a manner of expressing the results of his observation for +himself. Moreover he was past the easily impressionable age, and +turned his opportunities to direct and practical uses. He used to +declare that the advice of James Byres (1734-1818?) of Tonley, who, in +Raeburn's own words, was "a man of great general information, a +profound antiquary, and one of the best judges perhaps of everything +connected with art in Great Britain," was the most valuable lesson he +received while abroad. "Never paint anything except you have it before +you" was what his friend urged, and, while Raeburn, to judge from his +early portraits, did not stand greatly in need of the injunction, it +probably strengthened him in his own beliefs. Be that as it may he +seems to have used his stay in Italy principally to widen his technical +experience, and his work after his return was richer and fuller than +what he had done previously. No record of any special study he may +have undertaken or of the pictures he particularly admired exists. +Even gossip is silent as regards his preferences, except in so far as +it is said that while in Rome he came near to preferring sculpture to +painting. + + + + +V. + +Arrived back in Edinburgh in 1787, Raeburn took a studio in the new +town, and, with his enhanced powers and the added prestige due to his +sojourn abroad, soon occupied a commanding place. Few agreed with +Martin that "the lad in George Street painted better before he went to +Italy," for if the majority were unaware of his high artistic gifts, +none could be unconscious of the vital and convincing quality of his +portraitures. His earlier sitters included some of the most +distinguished people in Scotland. Lord President Dundas must have been +amongst the very first for he died before the end of the year. Ere +long his position was unassailable, and during the five-and-thirty +years that followed he painted practically everybody who was anybody. +Burns is probably the only great Scotsman of that epoch who was not +immortalised by his brush, for the missing likeness, which has been +discovered so often, was not painted from life but from Nasmyth's +portrait. + +From the time he returned home until 1809, when he purchased the +adjoining property off St Bernard's, Raeburn lived at Deanhaugh.[1] +The junction of these small estates enabled him to feu the outlying +parts on plans prepared by himself, architecture being one of his +hobbies, and his family's connection with them is still marked by such +names as Raeburn Place, Ann Street (after his wife), Leslie Place, St +Bernard's Crescent, and Deanhaugh Street. Some years earlier +continuous increase in the number of his clients had rendered a change +of studio desirable, and in 1795 he moved from George Street to 16 (now +32) York Place where he had built a specially designed and spacious +studio, with a suite of rooms for the display of recently completed +work or of portraits he had painted for himself. At a later date, when +exhibitions were inaugurated in Edinburgh (first series 1808-13), he +lent the show-rooms to the Society of Artists which organised them. +This action was typical of Raeburn's cordial relations with his +fellow-artists, most of whom were poor and socially unimportant; and +only a year before his death he championed the professional artists +when, partly in opposition to the Royal Institution, they proposed to +form an Academy. Incidentally also, the letter written on that +occasion, which I have transcribed in full in _Scottish Painting; Past +and Present_, gives an indication of the extent of his practice, of how +fully he was engaged. + +Until 1808 Raeburn's career had been one unbroken success, but in that +year, following upon the failure of his son, financial disaster +overtook him. The firm of "Henry Raeburn and Company, merchants, +Shore, Leith," consisted of Henry Raeburn, Junior, and James Philip +Inglis, who had married Anne Leslie, the artist's step-daughter, but +neither the _Edinburgh Gazette_ nor the local Directory states the +nature of their business. In the proceedings in connection with +Raeburn's own bankruptcy, however, he is described as "portrait-painter +and underwriter." What underwriter exactly means is uncertain, but it +may be that the son was a marine-insurance broker, that Raeburn himself +took marine-insurance risks. In any case his ruin seemed complete. +Not only did he lose all his savings but he had even to sell the York +Place studio, of which he was afterwards only tenant. He failed, paid +a composition, and, two years later, proposed settling in London. By +those of his biographers who have noticed it at all, this failure and +the contemplated removal south have been very closely associated. But +a more careful examination of the whole circumstances makes such an +assumption rather doubtful. Alexander Cunningham, in a letter written +on 16th February 1808, tells a correspondent--"I had a walk of three +hours on Sunday with my worthy friend, Raeburn. He had realised nearly +L17,000, which is all gone. He has offered a small composition, which +he is in hopes will be accepted. He quits this to try his fate in +London, which I trust in God will be successful. While I write this I +feel the tear start." So far the connection is evident enough. But +although the artist received his discharge in June of the same year,[2] +it was not until two years later that he took active steps towards +carrying out his idea.[3] The time was highly propitious. Hoppner had +just died (23rd January 1810), and Wilkie records in his journal (March +2nd) that he had heard that that artist's house was to be taken for +Raeburn. Lawrence was now without a rival in the metropolis, and +Raeburn's talent was of a kind which would soon have commanded +attention there. The opening was obvious, but Raeburn's reception by +the gentlemen of the Royal Academy, when he visited London in May, was +not very cordial, and fortunately for Scotland, if not for himself, he +was persuaded to remain in Edinburgh. From then onward the fates were +kind. To quote his own words, written in 1822, "my business, though it +may fall off, cannot admit of enlargement." + +Wider recognition also came to him. He had exhibited at the Royal +Academy as early as 1792, but it was 1810 before he became a regular +contributor, and in 1812 he was elected an Associate, full membership +following three years later. Just prior to his advancement to +Academician rank, he wrote one of the few letters by him that have been +preserved:--"I observe what you say respecting the election of an R.A.; +but what am I to do here? They know that I am on their list; if they +choose to elect me without solicitation, it will be the more honourable +to me, and I will think the more of it; but if it can only be obtained +by means of solicitation and canvassing, I must give up all hopes of +it, for I would think it unfair to employ those means." + +No doubt election was particularly gratifying to Raeburn. Isolated as +he was in Edinburgh, where an Academy did not come into existence until +some years after his death, it must have been stimulating to receive +such tangible assurance of that appreciation of one's fellow-workers +which is the most grateful form of admiration to the artist. He +reciprocated by offering as his diploma work the impressive portrait of +himself, which is now one of the treasures of the National Gallery of +Scotland. The rules of the Academy, however, forbade the acceptance of +a self-portrait, and in 1821 he gave the "Boy with Rabbit"--a portrait +of his step-grandson, but one of his most genre-like pieces. Other +Academic diplomas received later were those of the Academies of +Florence, New York, and South Carolina. + +A year before he died these artistic laurels were supplemented by royal +favour. On the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event--to those +who took part in it--the first visit of a King to Scotland since the +Union of Parliaments, Raeburn was presented to George IV. and knighted. +His fellow artists marked their appreciation of this fresh distinction +by entertaining him to a public dinner, at which the chairman, +Alexander Nasmyth, the doyen of the local painters, declared that "they +loved him as a man not less than they admired him as an artist." And +in the following May, the King appointed him his "limner and painter in +Scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights, privileges, and +advantages thereto belonging." + +Raeburn did not long enjoy these new honours. In July, a day or two +after returning from an archaeological excursion in Fifeshire with, +amongst others, Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth, he became suddenly +ill, took to bed, and in less than a week was dead. + + + +[1] All Raeburn's biographers follow Cunningham in stating that Raeburn +succeeded to St Bernard's on the death of his brother in 1787 or 1788. +It was not so, however. The intimation in the _Edinburgh Evening +Courant_, of 13th December 1810, reads, "Died on the 6th December Mr +William Raeburn, manufacturer, Stockbridge"; and the title deeds of St +Bernard's show that the artist purchased it from the trustees of the +late Mrs Margaret Ross in October 1809. + +[2] Henry Raeburn & Co.'s affairs were not settled until March 1810. + +[3] That his own affairs were not only settled but were again highly +prosperous before this is apparent from his having purchased St +Bernard's in 1809. + + + + +VI. + +While Raeburn's attitude to reality was determined and his style was +formed to a great extent before he went abroad, his ideas of pictorial +effect were broadened and his technical resources enriched by his +sojourn in Italy. Some of the work executed immediately after his +return, such as the portraits of Lord President Dundas, Neil Gow, the +famous fiddler, and the earlier of two portraits of his friend John +Clerk of Eldin, shows, with much unity, a greater care and precision in +the handling of detail, a more searched kind of modelling and a fuller +sense of tone, and thicker impasto and fuller colour than that done +previously. Moreover the design of the first-named picture is +reminiscent in certain ways of Velasquez's "Pope Innocent X.," which he +may have seen and studied in the Doria Palace in Rome, though too much +stress need not be laid on the resemblance. About this time also, he +painted a few pictures in which difficult problems of lighting are +subtly and skilfully solved. In things like the charming bust "William +Ferguson of Kilrie" (before 1790) and the group of Sir John and Lady +Clerk of Penicuik (1790) the faces are in luminous shadow, touched by +soft reflected light to give expression and animation. But for obvious +reasons such effects are not favoured by the clients of +portrait-painters, and that Raeburn should have adopted them at all is +evidence of the widening of the artistic horizon induced by his stay +abroad. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE VII.--MISS EMILY DE VISMES--LADY MURRAY. (Earl of Mansfield.) + +An admirable example of the artist's mature style, and one of his most +charming portraits of women. (See p. 79.) + +[Illustration: Plate VII.] + +===================================================================== + +In pictures painted but little later than these, one finds a marked +tendency to revert to the more abbreviated modelling and broader +execution which have been noted as characteristic of his pre-Roman +style. The execution, however, is now much more confident and +masterly, the draughtsmanship better, the design, while exceedingly +simple, less stiff and more closely knit. Using pigment of very fluid +consistency and never loading the lights, though following the +traditional method of thick in the lights and thin in the shadows, his +handling is exceedingly direct and spontaneous, his touch fearless and +broad yet thoroughly under control, his drawing summary yet selective +and so expressive that, even in faces where the lighting is so broad +that there is little shadow to mark the features and little modelling +to explain the planes, the large structure of the head and the +essentials of likeness are rendered in a very satisfying and convincing +way. His colour, however, if losing the inclination to the rather dull +grey-greenness which had prevailed before 1785, remained somewhat cold +and wanting in quality, and the more forcible tints introduced in the +draperies were frequently lacking in modulation and were not quite in +harmony with the prevailing tone. Something of this deficiency in +fusion is also noticeable in his flesh tints, the carnations of the +complexions being somewhat detached owing to defective gradation where +the pinks join the whites. As experience came, Raeburn advanced from +the somewhat starved quality of pigment, which in his earlier pictures +was accentuated by his broad manner of handling, until in many of the +pictures painted during the later nineties he attained extraordinary +{63} power of expression by vigorous and incisive use of square +brush-work and full yet fluid and unloaded impasto. This method with +its sharply struck touches and simplified planes reaches its climax +perhaps in the striking portrait (1798 circa) of Professor Robison in +white night-cap and red-striped dressing-gown, though the more fused +manner of "Mrs Campbell of Balliemore" (1795) and the extraordinary +trenchant handling of the "John Tait of Harvieston and his grandson" +(1798-9) show modifications which are as fine and perhaps less +mannered. Even earlier he sometimes attained a solidity and +forcefulness of effect, a fullness of colour, and a resonance of tone +which gave foretaste of the accomplishment of his full maturity. +Curiously this is most marked in two or three full-lengths. The +earliest of these was the famous "Dr Nathaniel Spens" in the possession +of the Royal Company of Archers, by which body it was commissioned in +1791. In it close realisation of detail and restraint in handling are +very happily harmonised with breadth of ensemble and effectiveness of +design. Some five years later this fine achievement was followed by +the even more striking, if rather less dignified, "Sir John Sinclair," +a splendid piece of virtuosity, which unites brilliant colour and +admirable tone to great dash and bravura of brush-work. + +During this period, and indeed throughout his career, Raeburn usually +placed his sitters in a strong direct light, which, being thrown upon +the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light) +illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with +definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. Very +often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and +arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. In many of his pictures one finds the +lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through +the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the +parts he wished subordinated. This device appears in full-lengths as +well as in busts and threequarter-lengths, and while, no doubt, helping +to the desired end, is now and then a disturbing influence from the +fact that it is difficult to account for the result from purely normal +causes. With Rembrandt, the greatest master of concentrated pictorial +effect, the transitions from the fully illumined passages to the +surrounding transparent darks are so gradual and so subtle that one +scarcely notices that the effect has been arranged--the concentration +is an integral part of the imaginative apprehension of the subject. It +is otherwise with Raeburn, in his earlier work at least. Later he +attained much the same results by less arbitrary and apparent means, by +swathing the hands and arms--the high tone of which he evidently found +disconcerting and conflicting with the heads--in drapery, by placing +them where they tell as little as possible, and by modifications in +handling. His management of accessories was also determined by desire +for concentration. Although, as is obvious from his increasing use of +it, preferring a simple background from which the figure has +atmospheric detachment, he frequently used the scenic setting which +Reynolds and Gainsborough had made the vogue. His idea, however, was +that a landscape background should be exceedingly unassertive--"nothing +more than the shadow of a landscape; effect is all that is +wanted"--and, always executing them himself, his are invariably +subordinate to the figure. But the essential quality of his vision +went best with plain backgrounds. That he did not wholly abandon the +decorative convention which he heired, and often employed to excellent +purpose, was due in large measure to caution. "He came," says W. E. +Henley, "at the break between new and old--when the old was not yet +discredited, and the new was still inoffensive; and with that exquisite +good sense which marks the artist, he identified himself with that +which was known, and not with that which, though big with many kinds of +possibilities, was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively +alive." Yet, had he had the full courage of his convictions, his work +would have been an even more outstanding landmark in the history of +painting than it is. Still to ask from Raeburn what one does not get +from Velasquez, many of whose portraits have a conventional setting, is +to be more exacting than critical, and, as has been indicated, +simplicity of design and aerial relief became increasingly evident in +Raeburn's work, and that in spite of the protests of some of his +admirers. + +While Raeburn had been working towards a fuller and more subtle +statement of likeness, modelling, and arrangement, it is possible that +removal to his new studio accelerated development in that direction. +The painting-room had been designed by himself for his own special +purposes, and no doubt suggested new possibilities. In any case, the +portraits painted after 1795 reveal a definite increase in the +qualities mentioned. But before considering the characteristics of his +later style, it might be well to tell what is known of his habits of +work and technical procedure. Cunningham's summary of these applies +partly to the George Street and partly to the York Place period, but +for practical purposes they may be regarded as one, for, while +Raeburn's art may be divided into periods, each was but a stage in a +gradual and consistent evolution. "The motions of the artist were as +regular as those of a clock. He rose at seven during summer, took +breakfast about eight with his wife and children, walked into George +Street, and was ready for a sitter by nine; and of sitters he generally +had, for many years, not fewer than three or four a day. To these he +gave an hour and a half each. He seldom kept a sitter more than two +hours, unless the person happened--and that was often the case--to be +gifted with more than common talents. He then felt himself happy, and +never failed to detain the party till the arrival of a new sitter +intimated that he must be gone. For a head size he generally required +four or five sittings: and he preferred painting the head and hands to +any other part of the body; assigning as a reason that they required +less consideration. A fold of drapery, or the natural ease which the +casting of a mantle over the shoulder demanded, occasioned him more +perplexing study than a head full of thought and imagination. Such was +the intuition with which he penetrated at once to the mind, that the +first sitting rarely came to a close without his having seized strongly +on the character and disposition of the individual. He never drew in +his heads, or indeed any part of the body, with chalk--a system pursued +successfully by Lawrence--but began with the brush at once. The +forehead, chin, nose, and mouth, were his first touches. He always +painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on; for +such was his accuracy of eye, and steadiness of nerve, that he could +introduce the most delicate touches, or the almost mechanical +regularity of line, without aid, or other contrivance than fair +off-hand dexterity. He remained in his painting-room till a little +after five o'clock, when he walked home, and dined at six.... From one +who knew him in his youthful days, and sat to him when he rose in fame, +I have this description of his way of going to work. "He spoke a few +words to me in his usual brief and kindly way--evidently to put me into +an agreeable mood; and then having placed me in a chair on a platform +at the end of his painting-room, in the posture required, set up his +easel beside me with the canvas ready to receive the colour. When he +saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back +step by step, with his face towards me, till he was nigh the other end +of the room; he stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to +the canvas, and, without looking at me, wrought upon it with colour for +some time. Having done this, he retreated in the same manner, studied +my looks at that distance for about another minute, then came hastily +up to the canvas and painted for a few minutes more." These details +may be supplemented by the list of colours used by him, which Alexander +Fraser, R.S.A., gave in _The Portfolio_. "His palette was a simple +one; his colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but sometimes yellow ochre +instead), Prussian blue, burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake, +white, of course, and the medium he used was 'gumption,' a composition +of sugar of lead, mastic varnish, and linseed oil. The colours were +ground by a servant in his own house and put into small pots ready for +use." When one adds that his studio had a very high side-light, and +that he painted on half-primed canvas with a definitely marked twill, +all that is known of his practice has been noted. + +===================================================================== + +PLATE VIII.--MRS SCOTT MONCRIEFF. + +(National Gallery of Scotland.) + +None of Raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this. +Although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used, it +is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one of +the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since 1854, +when Mr R. Scott Moncrieff, Welwood of Pitliver, bequeathed it to the +Royal Scottish Academy. (See page 79.) + +[Illustration: Plate VIII.] + +===================================================================== + +As already suggested, Raeburn's style was tending towards greater +completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before +he removed to York Place in 1795, but, while his normal advance was in +that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a +number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing +them with their {73} predecessors that one notices that the advance was +definite and not casual. Occasionally, as in the "Professor Robison," +there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but, +as the "Lord Braxfield" of about 1790 is a premonition of a much later +manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the +character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. But +comparing the splendid group, "Reginald Macdonald of Clanranald and his +two younger brothers" (about 1800), or the "Mrs Cruikshank of Langley +Park" (about 1805), with typical examples painted between 1787 and +1795, one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power +of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of +form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more expressive use +of colour and chiaroscuro. + +Considerable ingenuity has been expended in trying to prove that +Raeburn's subsequent development was due in some way or other to the +influence of Hoppner and Lawrence. Consideration of his situation and +of his work itself, however, scarcely bears this out. His ignorance of +what was being done by London artists, and of how his own pictures +compared with theirs, is very clearly evident from the following letter +written to Wilkie:-- + + + Edinburgh, + 12_th September_ 1819. + +Mr dear Sir,--I let you to wit that I am still here, and long much to +hear from you, both as to how you are and what you are doing. I would +not wish to impose any hardship upon you, but it would give me great +pleasure if you would take the trouble to write me at least once a +year, if not oftener, and give me a little information of what is going +on among the artists, for I do assure you I have as little +communication with any of them, and know almost as little about them, +as if I were living at the Cape of Good Hope. + +I send up generally a picture or two to the Exhibition, which serve +merely as an advertisement that I am still in the land of the living, +but in other respects it does me no good, for I get no notice from any +one, nor have I the least conception how they look beside others. I +know not in what London papers any critiques of that kind are made, and +our Edinburgh ones (at least those that I see) take no notice of these +matters. At any rate I would prefer a candid observation or two from +an artist like you, conveying not only your own opinion but perhaps +that of others, before any of them. + +Are the Portrait-Painters as well employed as ever? Sir Thomas +Lawrence, they tell me, has refused to commence any more pictures till +he gets done with those that are on hand, and that he has raised his +prices to some enormous sum. Is that true, and will you do me the +favour to tell me what his prices really are, and what Sir W. Beechy, +Mr Philips, and Mr Owen have for their pictures? It will be a +particular favour if you will take the trouble to ascertain these for +me precisely, for I am raising my prices too, and it would be a guide +to me--not that I intend to raise mine so high as your famous London +artists. + + +Moreover he is said to have visited London only three times: in 1785, +when he spent several weeks while on his way to Italy; in 1810, when he +contemplated settling there; and in 1815, after he was elected an +Academician. It is of course only with the later visits that we have +to do in this connection. By that time Hoppner was dead, and +Lawrence's claim to be painter par excellence to the fashionable world +was undisputed. No doubt the Scottish painter would be attracted by +the technical accomplishment of Lawrence's work; but he was between +fifty and sixty years of age and little likely to be influenced by an +art, which, for all its brilliance, was meretricious in many respects. +Yet it is possible that the adulation lavished by society upon his +contemporary's style may have induced him to consider if something of +the elegance for which it was esteemed so highly could not be added +with advantage to his own. On the other hand, Scottish society was +gradually undergoing evolution, and, while a greater infusion of +fashion amongst its members would in itself tend to stimulate the +favourite painter of the day in the same direction, increase in wealth +would bring a greater number of younger sitters to his studio. +Probably a combination of these represents the influences which +affected Raeburn. In any case, his later portraits, especially of +women, possess qualities of charm and beauty which, while never merely +pretty or meretricious, connect them in some measure with the more +modish and less sincere and virile work of Lawrence. But +otherwise--and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he never sacrificed +character to elegance or subordinated individuality to type--the +evolution of his style continued on purely personal lines. The +pictures painted between 1810 and his death, while still at the height +of his powers, are essentially one with those of the preceding decade. +There is in them a more delicate sense of beauty than before, and his +portraits of ladies are marked by a quickened perception of feminine +grace and charm; but these are results of the natural development of +his nature and of his personal powers of expression rather than of any +radical alteration in his standpoint. + +As regards the work of the last fifteen years and more, it is less +increased grasp of character, for that had always been a leading trait, +than growth in the expressive power and completeness of his technique +that is the dominating factor. And here the prevailing qualities are +but the issue of previous experience. His modelling ceases to be +marked by the rough-hewn and over simplified planes which had +distinguished his incisive square-touch at its strongest and becomes +fused and suave. As Sir Walter Armstrong put it, "He began with the +facets and ended with the completest modelling ever reached by any +English painter." Now his colour not only loses the inclination to +slatiness and monotony, which were evident before 1795, and sometimes +even later, but, the half-tones being more delicately graded, the +transitions, though still lacking the subtleties of the real colourist, +are blended and the general tone enriched and harmonised. And his use +of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more delicate both in its play upon +the face and in the broad disposition, which now attains finer and more +convincing concentration in virtue of more skillful subordination +through handling, as well as through more pictorial management of his +old arrangement of lighting. Moreover the scenic setting, if retained +in many full-lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a simple +background lighted from the same source as the sitter, and against +which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief. +With these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his +later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive +brushing of the preceding period, were also associated a fuller and +fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of +effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his earlier pictures rarely +possess. + +A sympathetic and human perception of character was the basis of his +relationship to his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a rarely +convincing way, and to me at least the {79} view of life expressed in +his later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which +dominates his earlier work. Comparatively this is perhaps especially +evident in his rendering of pretty women. "Mrs Scott Moncrieff," "Miss +de Vismes," "Miss Janet Suttie," and "Mrs Irvine Boswell," to name no +more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked +by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. Still +his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures of +older women and of men, and his masterpieces are to be found amongst +his pictures of this kind rather than amongst his "beauty" pieces, +seductive though the best of these are. When one thinks of his finest +and most personal achievements, one recalls such things as "Lord +Newton," "Sir William Forbes," and "James Wardrop of Torbanehill," or +"Mrs Cruikshank," and "Mrs James Campbell." + +Born a painter of character, Raeburn was at his best where character, +intellect, and shrewdness were most marked. Yet axiomatic though it +may sound, this implies great gifts. To seize the obvious points of +likeness, and make a portrait more living than life itself is +comparatively easy; but to grasp the essential elements of likeness and +character, and, while vitalising these pictorially and decoratively, to +preserve the normal tone of life is difficult indeed. Of this, the +highest triumph of the portrait-painter's art as such, Raeburn was a +master. + + + + + + PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT + THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS. + + + + + + + IN THE SAME SERIES + + ARTIST. AUTHOR. + + VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN. + REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND. + ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND. + GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN. + BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS. + ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO. + BELLINI. GEORGE HAY. + FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON. + REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS. + LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY. + RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY. + HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE. + TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY. + LUINI. JAMES MASON. + TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + + _Others in Preparation._ + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Raeburn, by James L. Caw + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAEBURN *** + +***** This file should be named 30315.txt or 30315.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/3/1/30315/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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