THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/sirhenryraeburnrOOpinn °OJcUki zr 9fyts. Sc. r ^r y (fflert/riy/ c . 83). ^Esthetic Independence Raeburn nearly every Scots painter of note went to London, or Rome, or elsewhere on the Continent Whether resulting- from prejudice, ambition to enter a more extensive field, a desire to be nearer the main currents and greater markets of art, or the sheer lack of living practice at home, hardly a single prominent artist settled in Scotland. A marked change set in with the Scots Revival. Although Raeburn at one time contemplated setting up his easel Effect of in London, the majority of those who „ • 7 ’ J J Kemvat on brought the eighteenth century to a close, c , 7 , f , . / ’ Southern and ot those who ushered in the nineteenth, ^ , r Exodus of decided to abide by Scotland. It is highly Artists probable that they were affected both by the spirit and by the success of those who were building a Scottish literature. Art grew independently of both Kirk and State. The Kirk could not give it any patronage; the State did not. Scotland herself became the patron of such of her sons as loyally dedicated their art to her, in the illustration of her natural features, her domestic life, and her history. The Renaissance was the begin- ning of a new lease of strictly national life. What followed it constituted a virtual declaration of both organic and racial independence long after the Union. The Scot still lived within the Briton. Burns and Scott, no doubt, did much to turn back upon herself any imperial sympathies and aspirations Scotland may have been disposed to indulge. They kept alive the popular consciousness of possessing a 4 1 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. of Scots Nationality separate and self-contained individuality amongst the nations. If by preference and in consideration of Assertion se ^‘^ n ^ erest Allan Ramsay was an Anglo- phile, Raeburn kept his affection for Scot- land. His men and women, being mostly typical of Scots manhood and woman- hood, make a gallery of his portraits as distinctly Scots in subject and portrayal of character as those of Rembrandt are Dutch, or those of Velasquez Spanish, or those of Titian Italian. Wilkie was originally as thoroughly Scots as Ostade and Jan Steen were Dutch, or as Teniers was Flemish. When Sir George Harvey turned to history, he took no classic theme, but was content to give form to the tragedy and romance of the Covenant. Drummond was equally tenacious in his adherence to Scottish history, and Thomas Duncan hardly less so. These three, Harvey, Drummond, and Duncan, came a little later than Sir William Allan, but they only followed his lead. He painted “The Murder of Arch- bishop Sharp,” “John Knox admonishing Queen Mary,” “The Battle of Prestonpans,” and he died in front of the easel on which stood his unfinished “Battle of Bannockburn.” When Alexander Nasmyth died in 1840, Sir David Wilkie wrote to his widow: “He was the founder of the landscape school of painting of Scotland, and has for many years taken a lead in the patriotic aim of enriching his native land with the representations 42 The Scots Element in Letters and Art Of Border Descent of her romantic scenery.” Born in 1758, Nasmyth was almost exactly contemporary with Raeburn, and did for landscape what Raeburn did for por- traiture, and Wilkie for genre . Twenty years after Nasmyth came Thomson, who hardly ever left Scottish scenery. In their track, but greatly influenced by the romances and ballads of Sir Walter Scott, Horatio Macculloch followed. Together these men made a landscape tradition, but it was founded in the pro- nounced artistic Scots nationalism of Nasmyth and Thomson. In the front rank of these makers of a Scots art stands Raeburn. Sir Henry Raeburn was of Border descent, his fore- fathers probably taking - their name from the hill-farm of Raeburn. This led Sir Henry to call himself a “ Raeburn of that ilk.” The property ultimately passed to the Scotts. It is commonly placed in Annandale, but it appears to have been farther east, in Tweeddale. Morrison ( Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine ) mentions it in his Reminiscences . He was on familiar terms with several of the celebrities of his time, including Scott and Hogg, and tells of Sir Walter’s reference to a field near Selkirk — “There, a relation of my own, a Scott of Raeburn, fought a duel.” Again he says, “On a ride with Sir Walter Scott to call on his relation, Mr. Scott of Raeburn, we visited the Eildon Tree.” Scott was then at Abbotsford, and Morrison’s notes leave little doubt that Raeburn must be looked for in that direction. Andrew describes it as a hill-farm in Annandale, “still [1886] held by Sir 43 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A, The Border Walter Scott’s kinsfolk.” There may have been two Raeburns, but that both passed to Sir Walter’s relatives is improbable. On Sir Henry’s shield, his great-grandson William Raeburn Andrew says, is a rae or roe-deer drinking from a burn or rivulet running at its feet. The crest is a roe’s head, with the motto Robur in Deo. The earlier Raeburns are ami y an described by their descendant as rieving roperty of p astora j j a i rc j s> They probably did as their ae urn neighbours did, and followed the Border fashion in their methods of supplying the larder and replenishing byres and herds when beeves went scarce, and the customary pair of spurs was set before the laird for breakfast. The accounts of them differ very slightly. If their habits were predatory, and they raided all round, levying supplies from their neighbours on both sides of the Border, then Cunningham — and he is followed almost verbatim by Andrew — indulges in a euphemism when he describes them as husband- men in peace and soldiers in war, until the union of the Crowns brought the days of disorder to a close. They are then supposed to have laid their armour and weapons aside, and to have peacefully cultivated the ground through succeeding generations. In another account the Raeburns figure as a family distinguished in the Scottish wars, worthily winning the honours of knighthood, and intermarrying with other families of equal station in the scale of Border 44 Rievers, Soldiers, and Farmers His Father rank. The Scottish wars referred to are presumably those with England, but the whole story is enveloped in doubt. However they may have borne themselves in Border warfare, and whatever honours they may have won, the Raeburns only emerged from obscurity with Sir Henry. He reached a higher fame with brush and mahlstick than his ancestors ever did with sword and spear. The family was nearing the confines of history when, early in the eighteenth century, Robert Rae- burn decided to give up farming for manufacturing, and left the undulating uplands of the Border for the neighbourhood of the capital. He appears to have been a young unmarried man, with a full endowment of Scots energy and of ambition to “get on.” It is probable that he turned the Tweeddale property and stock into money ^ for investment in his new venture. Any- , ~ . . . , t • j c Farming to how, we find him beginning some kind ot J milling or manufacturing at Stockbridge, anu J ac then an outlying suburb but now incor- s porated with the capital. Andrew adopts Cunningham’s inexact statement that Robert commenced manufacturer and became the proprietor of mills. The nature of their output is not stated. Stockbridge was probably selected by Robert that he might avail himself of the power supplied by the Water of Leith and of the market offered by Edinburgh. It is easily reached from Princes Street by any of the thoroughfares westwards of Hanover Street, leading 45 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Stock- bridge and the Raeburn Mills towards the north. It is entered by a bridge across the Water of Leith, which divides the old suburb from the city. Robert’s mill was in all likelihood in the neighbourhood of the bridge. But the most attractive view of Stockbridsre is to be had from Dean Bridge, on the road to Dalmeny and Queensferry. Following the course of the burn on its way to the Firth of Forth, the spectator cannot fail to be im- pressed by the varied beauties of the prospect, and he will notice on the bank of the stream St. Bernard’s Well, one of the surviving landmarks of the old Raeburn property. The view is well worth looking at in breadth and detail, for it holds both Raeburn’s birthplace and the playground of his boyhood. Of Stockbridge itself, more- over, the very existence is a colossal biographical fact. In all its essentials of building and plan, in its original form as Raeburn left it, the suburb is as much his creation as one of his portraits. The later streets radiate from the Raeburn centre, and make an archi- tectural fringe to the Raeburn property. It is also worthy of note that Ann Street, so-called by Sir Henry as a compliment to Lady Raeburn, has literary associa- tions of its own, “ Christopher North,” De Quincey, and others having had their homes there. The whole district is interesting, and has a definite place in the story of Raeburn’s life. A few of the minor streets are poor enough, but others, like St. Bernard’s Crescent and those contiguous to it, are substantial and 46 Birth Birth of Henry handsome, and offer quiet retreats to the studious, and to professional men, artists and others. Whatever the exact site of Robert Raeburn’s establishment, there are two reasons for assuming that he prospered. It will be observed that Cunningham speaks of him as having become the proprietor, not of a mill, but of mills. In the next place he married a lady named Ann Elder. Of Robert little is known beyond Cunningham’s statement that he was a most worthy man ; and of the mother of the painter the only quality mentioned by the same author is her tenderness. They had two sons — William, born about 1744, and Henry, born on the 4th of March 1756. The morning of the sons’ lives was clouded. About the time when the kingdom was entering upon the long and fateful reign of George III. loss fell upon the Raeburn household. For, first, Robert died, and then his widow. Left orphans at an age when parental guidance is most needed, the two boys were called upon to face the world together. William had apparently been taught something of his father’s business and its management, as, although only a youth of sixteen or eighteen, he Is said to have continued it. That his character was of the strongest is abundantly clear. It was sound in principle and tough in fibre. To manly courage, self-reliance, and resource- fulness in emergency he united that regard for the sanctity of the family tie and warm-heartedness which led him to care for Henry with the affection of a brother 47 The Raeburn Orphans at Home Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. and the solicitude of a parent. He was father, mother, and brother in one. Cunning-ham mentions the intervention of friends, and it is quite possible that, touched by the position of the two youngsters, they may have offered William counsel and influence. Feeling in his inexperience the burden of business, he could not have had much spare energy to bestow upon domestic affairs, even upon Henry. It was accordingly decided to find a temporary home for him. The matter was easily arranged. The wealth devoted to the upbringing and training of the un- protected young in methods of self-help is one of Edinburgh’s distinctions. The benevolence of men like Heriot, Donaldson, Stewart, and the Watsons has been royally munificent and wisely directed. The Hos- pitals of their founding are amongst the brightest and most honourable, as well as the stateliest and most beautiful ornaments of the city, and in more than one instance they have proved nurseries of genius. It was a red-letter day in the life of Henry Raeburn when he was taken from Stockbridge to the south side of Edinburgh, and placed in the Hospital in Lauriston which bears the name of George Heriot, Scott’s “Jingling Geordie.” He was then nine years of age. At this point it is necessary to correct an error which was allowed to slip into the short sketch of Raeburn in Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scots- men. The anonymous writer says : “It has been repre- sented by some of Sir Henry’s biographers . . . that 48 Henry goes to Heriof s Hospital The Binning Boys (p. 90). At Heriot’s Hospital he received his education at Heriot’s Hospital, a well- known and benevolent institution in Edinburgh ; but this is not the fact, his brother William having with heartfelt satisfaction given him the scanty but usual education of the period.” There is no doubt of William’s willingness and pecuniary ability to provide for Henry’s education. The only question is one of opportunity and prudence. The endowment of Heriot’s Hospital was intended to meet exactly such a case as that of Henry Raeburn, and that he was a “ Heriotty ” is a certainty. The evidence is given at first-hand by Sir Walter Armstrong. Dr. William Steven, who, in addition to being the historian of Heriot’s Hospital, was House Governor and Inspector of the Heriot Foundation Schools, states that a man named Sandilands had purchased from the governors the right of presenting two boys to be maintained and educated in the Hospital. The father’s privilege passed to his daughter, Sarah Sandilands, and she, says Dr. Steven, “was the early patroness of Sir Henry Raeburn, whom she presented to Heriot’s Hospital in 1764. This orphan boy, who afterwards became the celebrated portrait-painter, her grand-daughter (Mrs. Durham Weir) had the pleasure of seeing knighted by George IV. at Hopetoun House.” Dr. Steven wrote upon the authority of the minutes of the Hospital Board. According to them the governors held a meeting on the 15th of April 1765, at which a presentation was laid before them “granted by Sarah Sandilands, relict of Thomas Durham of Boghead, in 49 E Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. His Career at Her lot's favour of Henry, son of Robert Raeburn, Burg-ess and Freeman, whose parents are both dead.” The last clause shows that the g-overnors were not perform- ing- an act of charity. The Hospital came in place of the boy’s home, and its teachers and managers in that of his parents. The governors accordingly granted Henry formal admission to the Hospital. Of his career there only a broad and general out- line is given. He had no skill in the classics; per- haps his taste did not lie in that direction. But he received an education which enabled him afterwards to maintain on equal terms a lifelong intercourse with men of letters, and fitted him both for studio-association with sitters of learning and rank and for the social position which he rose to command. He must also have been at least grounded in good manners. Afterwards, in any case, he always bore himself in society like a gentleman of the old school. In doing the task-work of the school he acquitted himself as other boys did. He was neither very dull, says Cunningham, nor very bright. He possessed no distinctive intellectual faculty above the average, and does not appear to have been in any way touched with the precocity occasionally betrayed by genius. Too great importance need not be attached to stories of his alleged superiority over his class-mates in stolen efforts in drawing — that, for example, when the scholars drew figures on their slates or copy-books, those of Raeburn surpassed them all. Similar statements appear in Education Ended other artists’ Lives. They may be true, but they may also be imagined inferences from the ascertained facts of future years. The saying is attributed to Raeburn himself that some of his companions at Heriot’s be- came the closest friends of later life. In his early years, his nature is described as open and sincere, and though his temper was quick, it never gave per- manent offence or estranged a friend. There is nothing to mark the passing years, and 1770 is reached before Raeburn’s name came again before the Hospital governors. On the 4th of June they “ approved of the report of the visiting committee, dated the sixteenth of May last, finding that Henry Raeburn and ^ ie & e °J Francis Ronaldson, for their skill in writing, ^ eeU • 17*71 etc., were best entitled to the benefits of ' ' Dean of Guild Heriot’s Mortification, and appointed the Treasurer of the Hospital to make payment to each of these Boys of the sum of One pound five shillings sterling.” A year later, Raeburn was again accorded a similar reward. He had then been six or seven years in Heriot’s — the exact time depending upon whether he entered on Sarah Sandilands’s presentation or on formal admission by the authorities — and he left it at the age of fifteen. Leaves Heriot’s at 5 1 CHAPTER V. THE CALL TO ART. Henry not precocious — A goldsmith’s apprentice — The home-life — The country round Stockbridge — The outlook from Heriot’s — Gilli- land’s workshop and locality — The stirring of Art — Painting miniatures — Guesses at Raeburn’s education in Art — Native in- telligence and tuition. It has been stated that Raeburn did not attract atten- tion by betraying- any symptoms of precocity. They may, of course, have merely escaped observa- tion, but it is more likely that the circum- stance is chiefly due to the discipline of Heriot’s and the scant opportunity given for the unauthorised display of an awakening gift. Whatever unshaped feelings he may have experienced, Raeburn was, in any event, rather backward than precocious in evincing a recognisable genius for art. Taken from school at the age of fifteen, the mo- mentous question of a profession or calling Appren- fi rs t to k e se ttled. It is pointedly Raeburn Backward rather than Precocious recorded that his genius did not decide for ticed to a Goldsmith He ^ad, in other words, no clear pre- ference. Ultimately he fixed upon the industrial art of 52 Stockbridge and Vicinity a goldsmith, and was accordingly apprenticed to Mr. Gilliland, who had reached a certain eminence in the business, and whose shop is located by Chambers in a dark alley which ran between Parliament Square and the front of the Old Tolbooth. The home-life of Raeburn from infancy to manhood is a total blank. While his parents were alive, assuming that they lived in Stockbridge, and the probability is that they did, the boy had a delightful play- ground in the immediate vicinity of his home. All about the country is beautiful, from Corstorphine Hill in the south-west down to the beach at Granton on the Firth of Forth, some three miles away in the north-west. Long after Raeburn’s day the way to Granton was by Black’s Entry, a country road more nearly resembling a quiet lane of rural England than a highway of Scotland. For many years after Raeburn’s death the district retained its charm of rustic life and freedom for young- sters, even those of his then tender age, who were given to holiday-roaming. By the light of imagination we may see him in his rambles by loch, hedgerow, and quarry — all within a radius of two miles — but he would certainly have been a more real figure could we have had but a glimpse of him shouting after the Queensferry four-in-hand, or invading the policies of Craigcrook, not yet tenanted by Jeffrey. When taken to Heriot’s, he had, outside the Hospital grounds, the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links close at The Boy's Home-life and Play- ground 53 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. hand, and all the country southwards, now largely given over to villadom, as far as the Braid Hills and Liberton. Towards the east he was within easy reach of the King’s Park, could climb the precipitous front of Salisbury Craigs, and even the leonine summit of Arthur’s Seat. He could make the round of St. Margaret’s, Dunsappie, and Duddingston lochs, and, in passing, look in at the old village where a good many years later (1805) the Rev. John Thomson began his ministerial work. It must be assumed that, when he took to goldsmithing, Henry lived with his brother at St. Bernard’s House, Stockbridge. If so, in his daily walk to Gilliland’s in the Luckenbooths, close by 7 St. Giles’s Church, he traversed the site of Ldinburgfi . Looked to the rapidly-growing New Town. Its eastern the Younv P ar ^’ ' m neighborhood of St. James’s Goldsmith ^ c I uare an d the old Theatre Royal, had been built, but the ancient town was still the city, and Raeburn looked upon a widely-different scene from that presented by the Edinburgh of the twentieth century. In his youth, Raeburn’s Edinburgh was almost all to the south of the ravine (then a lake) dividing the Castle from Calton Hill; a piled-up mass of many-storeyed buildings carried down the ridge running from the Castle to Holyrood Palace. In the midst of it was the place of his daily labour, and here in the dark alley aforesaid art found him. Whatever he may have previously felt or thought, at Gilliland’s he became fully conscious of an im- 54 Goldsmith and Jeweller remembering - his a special gift of expression. It sketches at school, form of and con- gradually forms, it The Coming of Art pelling desire and may be that, Raeburn resumed them in the caricatures of his companions, tinued trifling with art until, assuming better and worthier became a serious pursuit. Was his art spontaneous or due to external sugges- tion? Andrew thinks the former, Cunningham the latter. There is no reason why it may not have been partly both, example touching a dormant faculty to active life. Why should the promptings of his everyday . . •11 VCL1716CI T/tls Cjilliland is described as __ . goldsmith, and both branches of his craft were eminently adapted * to training the taste of his apprentice. More than that, design and ornament called for draughtsmanship. Nothing more was necessary to stimulate to produc- tive action the natural gift which Raeburn possessed. It is admittedly in no case easy to reach the first manifestation of the artist-nature. To some the faculty comes like another sense. They know nothing of its coming, and can neither remember nor imagine them- selves without it. Others can recall a time of unrest, when they seemed to labour in travail under an uneasy burden of inexpressible, because unshaped, feeling and inarticulate thought. They can also very often re- call some special circumstance or incident, seemingly work be ignored ? jeweller as well as trifling, which g-uided them accidental and often means of relief. Almost invariably they began 55 to a to Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. imitate in drawing the things they saw. In such fashion art is rooted in realism. A naturalistic motive is the first inspiration. To Raeburn art must have come with exceptional directness. If less extensive, Edinburgh was more self-contained than it is now. It was gradually ap- proaching the zenith of its career as “the modern Athens,” a recognised centre of literature, education, and very soon of art. It was, to all intents and pur- poses, the capital of a distinct, though not a separate, country. It was also a patron of various forms of Possible art * Considering Raeburn’s age at the ^ r time of his apprenticeship, and the social Sources of .. . , . M . f . Knowledge P osl ^ lon °* ^ 1S family, it is incredible that, f M th^d as ^as keen asserted, he began to paint miniatures before he had ever seen a picture. The art-instinct might lead a youth of six- teen to imitate by pencilled forms, but hardly to paint miniatures. The adoption of a special and conven- tional form of art gives more than a hint of instruction. That he is not known to have received such is only to say that his training in artistic methods is involved in the cloudy uncertainty which envelops the whole of his early life. One fact, however, must not be overlooked, that when he first went to Heriot’s, the Trustees’ Academy classes had for a few years been meeting in one of the College class-rooms. They had been held there for eleven years when (in 1771, the year of Sir Walter Scott’s birth) he went to Gilliland’s. The College is 5 6 Sir John and Lady Clerk (p Miniature-Painting within a few minutes’ walk of either place. He may have got some instruction from Delacour and Pavilion, and it may be noted that in the year of his entrance upon his apprenticeship, the mastership of the Academy was assumed by Alexander Runciman. It is not likely that these movements in the comparatively young Academy escaped Gilliland, whose business would almost compel him to take notice of any local institu- tion founded for teaching ornament and design. Per- mission to attend the classes would only have been in keeping with the more than friendly relations he established with his apprentice. If the latter had no teaching, but discovered minia- ture-painting for himself, it might be shown by a living parallel that he did nothing incredible. . rpi , , . . Miniatures lhat such was the case is, however, . highly improbable. Raeburn preceded the flW leaders in Scots miniature-painting by about twenty years — George Sanders (1774-1846), William Douglas (1780-1832), W. J. Thomson, R.S.A. (1771-1845), and Alexander Robertson — but the art had been very successfully practised in England at least since the time of Nicholas Hilliard in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. That some works of the English miniaturists should have reached Edinburgh is not beyond the bounds of probability. They may have passed through Raeburn’s hands in the ordinary course of a goldsmith’s business. If he saw only one, there is in other evidence of his lively native intelli- gence ground sufficiently solid to found a belief that 57 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A, he saw quite enough to induce him to attempt por- traiture by similar methods. It is only his due to remember that it was chiefly “native intelligence” that directed him to the leadership of Scots portrait-painters. Without any apparent effort he mastered the instruments of art, and as easily left his first teachers behind. From their fragmentary hints he evolved a technical mode and a Native In - Q f own> Like the landscapes of te igence Alexander Fraser, Raeburn’s early portraits betray few of the marks of trial-pieces. They give out hardly a whisper of the “’prentice hand” of a novice experimenting in colour. The manual training got at Gilliland’s co-operated with Raeburn’s instinct for art in his acquisition of a measurable command of technique. In the most natural way he passed from pencil-drawing and sketches of his companions to miniature-painting, and from miniatures in water-colour to life-size portraits in oil. and Tuition 38 CHAPTER VI. raeburn’s teachers and early works. A goldsmith’s training — Drawing and design — Goldsmithing and miniature-painting — Early miniatures — Darwin memorial trinket — “A young man of great genius” — Gilliland and his apprentice — Introduction to David Martin — The “ Secret of Titian” — False charge and rupture — Martin’s style — Raeburn tries oil-painting — Its effect upon his miniatures — His indenture virtually cancelled — His early works in oil-colours — “ George Chalmers of Pitten- crieff ” — Who taught Raeburn to paint landscape ? — The effects of later foreign study upon manner — Stevenson’s hypothetical por- traitists — The value of scholastic teaching — Raeburn almost wholly self-taught. That Raeburn acquired a certain amount of manual dexterity and accuracy as a draughtsman from his work at the goldsmith’s goes without saying. These qualities fitted him for miniature-painting, to which he appears to have turned soon after settling into harness at Gilliland’s. He found sitters for practice c .,, r , . r \ . Sitters for among his friends and associates. In time • , ... , . „ , . Miniatures his works attracted the attention of his master, whose treatment of his apprentice is the best available evidence of Raeburn’s growing skill. His miniatures, nevertheless, have been so totally eclipsed 59 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A, by his oils that he is almost unknown amongst minia- turists. Two, of uncertain date, were included in the exhibi- tion of his portraits held at Edinburgh in 1876. The earlier of these is a likeness of David Deuchar, engraver and etcher, and evidently belongs to the Gilliland period. It is formal to the very verge of stiffness, but has all the firmness and decision of a painter sure of his practice, and mainly intent upon rendering a literal account of his subject. To the painter, art was obviously nothing more than an instru- ment for recording the facts of reality. The second miniature is one of Dr. Andrew Wood, and is obviously later than the Deuchar. The style is more mature, the zp 7 colour more mellow, but the difference is Minia chiefly felt in the painter’s awakening to the , fact that Nature draws less than she models, tures 7 ,, Deuchar " an< ^ addition of expression to correctly , ffn outlined features. He already began to T rr realise that to limn soul and character, to impart personal vitality to his pigments, is a painter’s subtlest problem, and, even in so far as mere likeness is concerned, of at least co-ordinate importance with the accurate presentment of face and feature. During the whole course of his apprenticeship, Raeburn’s energy and industry were most exemplary. One valuable piece of evidence touching his share in the industrial work of the Gilliland establishment is found in “A Tribute to the Memory of Sir Henry Raeburn,” by Dr. Andrew Duncan. Dr. Erasmus 60 A Mourning Trinket Darwin, the author of the Botanic Garden , a poem esteemed in its day, and of other works indicative of genius, had a son named Charles, who is now likely to be chiefly known as the uncle of the famous Charles Robert Darwin. He was a pupil in the medical class taught by Dr. Duncan. Unfortunately, while working in the dissecting-room with a wounded hand, Charles contracted blood - poisoning, and death ^ brought his medical studies to an end. Memorial That seems to have happened about 1778, Trinket when he was twenty years of age. He had given proof of exceptional capacity by winning the gold medal of the Hisculapian Society. Amongst those who mourned him most deeply was his teacher. “ On the death of young Darwin,” Dr. Duncan says, “ I was anxious to retain some slight token in remem- brance of my highly-esteemed young friend, and, for that purpose, I obtained a small portion of his hair. I applied to Mr. Gilliland to have it preserved in a mourning ring. He told me that one of his present apprentices was a young man of great genius, and could prepare for me in hair a memorial that would demonstrate both taste and art. Young Raeburn was immediately called, and proposed to execute on a small trinket, which might be hung at a watch, a muse weeping over an urn, marked with the initials of Charles Darwin. The trinket was finished by Raeburn in a manner which, to me, afforded manifest proof of very superior genius, and I still preserve it as a memorial of the singular and early merit both of Darwin and Raeburn.” 61 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Speakin< nearly half a within a year of Raeburn’s death, and century after the incident he was detail- Dr. Duncan’s memory may have been His account, nevertheless, is so circumstantial, that one is constrained to believe that Raeburn was still an apprentice, and that the trinket was really the work of his hands. It will be observed that Gilliland spoke of his appren- “ A Young ir ^’ Man of dimmed by the lapse of time. Great Genius i tice as “a young- man of great If done, as many of his experiments in miniature must have been, during working-hours, Raeburn could not have expected them to escape his master’s eye. Master and apprentice may have worked side by side. Under the ordinary indenture the obligations laid upon them are mutual. The master is taken bound to teach his business to his apprentice ; the latter’s time during working-hours is not his own but his employer’s. It is, therefore, quite possible that Raeburn showed Gilliland specimens of his painting to get his opinion of them, and perhaps hints for their betterment. By taking his master into his confidence he was only acting honourably, and might, furthermore, gain fuller opportunity for painting minia- tures openly. That, in any case, is what happened. For a few years before the term for which he was bound expired, Raeburn was really a portrait-painter; nominally, he was being initiated in the goldsmith’s craft. The legal instrument seems to have been superseded 62 The Apprentice Goldsmith turns to Por- traiture David Deuchar at first by a tacit understanding-, and afterwards by a verbal agreement in this wise : When Gilliland dis- covered the genius plainly working in his apprentice, he, with an unselfish generosity, as wise as it is rare, decided to aid its development by allowing Raeburn every reasonable opportunity for its exercise. That he had an artist-genius in his workshop, awoke in him an active sympathy. This he began to show, as in Dr. Duncan’s case, by praising his apprentice to his customers, and sub- sequently, as he found that Raeburn’s skill warranted his recommendation, by securing him commissions. The situation was curious and anomalous, and yet had in it an amusing element. Cunningham speaks of Gilliland as a mild and worthy man; facts prove him to have been a highly enlightened employer. He did not find it undignified, in commercial phrase, to ^ Liberal “canvass for orders ” for his apprentice. Master One led to another, and, as the miniaturist’s reputation spread, commissions came pouring in at such a rate that goldsmithing gradually receded into the background. While the tide was flowing Raeburn made the ac- quaintance, probably through Gilliland, of David Deuchar, to whose miniature reference has been made. As he was considerably older than Raeburn, and after- wards gained some little distinction by his etchings after Holbein and several Dutch and Flemish painters, he must have had some knowledge of art, but of any influence he exercised over Raeburn, or of any instruc- tion given him, nothing is known. 6 3 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. A far more important event to Raeburn was his introduction by Gilliland to David Martin, who about the year 1775 held a good position in Edinburgh as a portrait-painter, and enjoyed an extensive practice both there and in London. Martin had studied under Allan Ramsay, and while acting as his assistant attended the drawing academy in St. Martin’s Lane. Starting upon an independent career, he adhered to the finical but polished manner which Ramsay had made the vogue. When he settled in Edinburgh he was under forty years of age, and had nearly a quarter of a century of his working-life before him. It may be that his skill declined, and that his practice shrank; or it may be that he felt himself eclipsed, as he certainly was, by the abnormally rapid development of Raeburn’s art. In any event, he withdrew from the obviously unequal rivalry, and died in London in 1798. Still, Martin remains an outstanding figure in the life of Raeburn. From his works Raeburn obtained the most important part of such education in artistic •fnethods as he ever received. As Martin was in Edin- burgh in 1775, and Raeburn was painting oil-portraits at least so early as 1776, it must have been soon after Martin’s arrival from London that Gilliland took Raeburn over to the New Town, and introduced him to Martin at his studio in St. James’s Square. The latter, according to Cunningham, was all courtesy and con- descension. On his side, Raeburn, we are told, was so greatly astonished and delighted that afterwards, when 64 David Martm, Painter in Oil William Ferguson of Kilrie (p. 136). David Martin his own name stood high, he was heard to declare that Martin’s kind words were still in his ears and his paintings before him. “The portraits of that artist,” adds Cunningham with happy propriety, “were to him what the verses of Fergusson were to Burns, and the result was not dissimilar.” The precise extent of Raeburn’s indebtedness to Martin cannot now be measured. The moral and in- tellectual results of their brief intercourse were probably greater than the artistic. The works he saw gave him What Raebiirn Learned from Martin an encouraging hint of what he might do, widened his horizon, and enlarged his view of art. But if he carried any of the diffi- culties he met in exploring the intricacies of technique to Martin, he got little help to surmount them. The elder artist lent him portraits to copy, but did not tell him how they were painted. He explained none of the processes of art, divulged none of the secrets of the studio, seemed dis- posed rather to guard them as mysteries. As Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson puts the case, he seems, like many other British painters, to have thought that art depended upon certain tricks to be kept as jealously concealed as the secret of Samson’s strength. “ Martin evidently believed in the i Secret of Titian ’ myth,” says Stevenson, “which still obtains credit, and consequently felt that he was, like the possessor of a famous jewel, in danger from thieves.” He accordingly gave Raeburn no real insight into the practice of painting, 65 F The ' ‘ Secret of Titian’ * Myth Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. kept trade secrets to himself, and left his young acquaintance to grope his way by the help of natural aptitude and instinct. Martin’s reticence, in all likelihood, proved in the end a decided advantage to his so-called pupil. The truth seems to be that, almost from the first, he looked upon Raeburn with jealousy, saw in him a coming rival, felt what Cunningham calls a presentiment of eclipse. Even the lending of pictures for copying purposes came soon to an end. Martin so far forgot himself as to tax Raeburn with having sold one of the copies he had been allowed to make. The charge was indignantly denied, and the young painter sought no further favours in St. James’s Square. He g*ot the encouragement of example, the strength of wider vision, and, fortunately, nothing more. The word “fortunately” is used deliberately. Martin had experience, had studied in Italy as well as under Ramsay, and he painted well in the small style of his master; but he had no originality, and the deft skill he possessed he consequently used as a man struggling with a foreign language. This may be gathered from two portraits by him in Edinburgh. They are cramped, smooth, inartistic, the hesitating productions of a man of uncertain gait, who had no self- confidence and never felt sure of results. Even in de- preciating Raeburn he was not original: “The lad in George Street,” said he, after Raeburn’s return home in 1787, “painted better before he went to Rome.” 66 Martin the Scottish Hudson Oils and Miniatures Oils on Miniature - So of the “ Giuseppe Marchi,” Hudson exclaimed to Reynolds: “By G— , Reynolds, you don’t paint so well as when }^ou left England. ” Looking- back, the conclusion is unavoidable that Martin’s want of amia- bility was Raeburn’s g-ood fortune. With less appre- hensive jealousy, he might have imparted his own tig-ht and commonplace manner to Raeburn, and so have in- capacitated him for great work and disabled him even for rivalling his own plodding and mechanical mediocrity. Raeburn’s tentative efforts to work in oil had a good effect upon his miniature-painting. It became bolder, and betrayed less microscopic attention to detail. His practice increased, and Gilliland ff ec ^ °J allowed him all necessary freedom for follow- ing his new career. Business, however, . . could not be altogether overlooked. Paint- P am ting ing miniatures at the rate of two a week, Raeburn could give neither time nor attention to goldsmithing. He was earning money rapidly, and upon it a compromise was made. Gilliland gave him all his time to himself, and got in return a compensation in money for the un- expired term of his apprenticeship. A year previously he had been working at the bench, copying Martin’s portraits, painting miniatures, and trying what he could do in oil. The copying and goldsmithing being both abandoned, he could g'ive himself up wholly to minia- tures and oils. If the Martin episode and the new agreement with Gilliland be both ascribed to the year 1776, the most acceptable view of his movements is that the oils — including the portrait of George Chalmers, of 67 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Pittencrieff, done that year — were painted at his brother’s house, and the majority of his miniatures at the goldsmith’s. The making of the Darwin trinket places him at Gilliland’s in 1778, and no mention is made of his having a separate studio until a few years afterwards. He must accordingly be imagined oscillat- ing between St. Bernard’s and Gilliland’s for at least two years, 1776-78, as work demanded attention at either place. In the latter year his apprenticeship and miniature-painting probably came to a simultaneous close, and almost at once his future took on a warmer and brighter colour. These years, say from the ages of nineteen to twenty- two, were busy and pregnant. His scheme of life was completely revolutionised. He began to turn against miniature-painting as trivial, when seen in the broader outlook furnished by oil-painting. That he was devoting a good deal of time to sketching landscape is seen by the Pittencrieff portrait of 1776. The background curtain is looped up so as to show, through a window to the sitter’s right, an imposing ruin set in a landscape. For an untaught novice of twenty, the figure is remarkably well-drawn and painted, although the expression is somewhat watchful, and has in it more of questioning doubt than of the repose of confidence. Let us, however, look through the window. The build- ing is firmly drawn, and the treatment of earth and sky shows observation as well as feeling. The lower sky is filled with a light which touches the edges of the upper 68 Early Portraits in Oil- colours An Early Portrait clouds, and with nice judgment balances that upon the face. There is no crude bungling of the chiaroscuro. The light comes in from the right of the picture, and is carried across the canvas without the slightest change of direction. It falls, that is, upon the left face and front of the sitter, and upon the side of the building seen through the window. Its reconciliation with the light in the sky is of minor importance to the broad effect. The question arises at this point, Who taught him to paint landscape ? Was it Gilliland the goldsmith, or Deuchar the etcher, or Martin the Society portrait- painter? It was, in all likelihood, none of them. The question touches the broad subject of his training and style. Raeburn afterwards visited London, and for two years resided in Italy, and these incidents will be intro- duced in their proper place in his biography; but he was twenty-nine when he left home. Grant that a true artist — one, that is, who never relinquishes the idea of progress, or falls into the stagnation of immovably moulded mannerism, but is always advanc- . . ing — is a student and a learner to the last, ) ciunng he will still make fewer modifying additions am ^ to an individually developed style at twenty-nine than at nineteen. His receptive faculty may be lively and elastic, but, having less to learn, he is less impression- able. The consciousness of his now maturing power gives him self-reliance, and he is less ready either to swear allegiance to a master or to graft wayside borrowings upon a system reared upon experience and thoroughly tested by long-continued practice. 69 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. When Raeburn left home he had been for nine years painting - portraits, and he may be assumed to have gone with a style of home-production in a forward state of development. That such was the case is established by the portraits which may with confidence be attributed to the period 1776-85. Let them be compared with those done after 1787, when he returned from Italy, and the difference is not so marked that a confident and exact discrimination can be made between the results of foreign study and those of naturally ripening power. It is easy to imagine Raeburn receiving lessons in youth, but as we do not know what instruction, if . any, he derived from Gilliland, Deuchar, magine anc i Martin, it is a strained hypothesis jl CCLCrlCTS • . • J L which brings into the field innominate J . teachers of whose mere existence nothing t'Fdlt'lt'KS • . • • • 0 is known. Portraitists in various media, able to initiate Raeburn into the ordinary rudiments and practice of painting, may have been, as Stevenson virtually suggests, as plentiful in Edinburgh as black- berries in September, but the name of not a solitary one has survived. Surmise has no data to go upon. The very lack of tuition more probably threw Raeburn back upon his own resources, and contributed to his comparative independence of his time and surround- ings. Even if he had a choice of obscure teachers, they were not likely to have escaped from the grooves of tradition and convention. They could have taught Raeburn very little. There is nothing in his work 70 Probationer to ground a belief that in that way he was taught anything. If, in fine, all the teaching that Raeburn is known to have got be carefully weighed, an impartial inquirer must needs find himself gradually driven back upon Cunningham’s account of the young painter’s struggles during the probationary period. According to this authority, when relieved from the routine and drudgery of the workshop, Raeburn let ambition loose, and began to look beyond a miniaturist’s career. It was then that he formed a little gallery or studio, possibly at St. Bernard’s House, and seriously took up painting in oil. Emboldened by the success of his first sketches, he tried life-size portraiture, found it less difficult than he had been led to anticipate, and devoted himself to it to the end. What follows is too emphatic and circumstantial to be paraphrased: — “His first difficulty was the preparation of his colours, putting them on the palette, _ and applying them according to the rules ot ^ art as taught in the academies. All this he . . had to seek out for himself : and there is no 1 l E ina l ty doubt that the thought which such knowledge cost him, and the labour and the time which it took to master so many obstacles, were well worth all the lectures thrice repeated of the skilful and the ingenious.” As Martin churlishly refused his help, Cunningham continues: “ Raeburn had to make experiments, and drudge to acquire what belongs to the mechanical labour and By such trying means 7i not to the genius of his art.” Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Evidence he achieved hard-won success. His reputation soon spread throughout the city, and while commissions for miniatures increased in number, his life-size portraits in oil began to attract attention, and for them also sitters multiplied. “And so much,” says Cunningham, “did his powers expand with space, that the latter soon outrivalled the former, and grew so much in request, that he resolved to relinquish miniature-painting entirely, and to abide by the easel.” The subject of Raeburn’s training derives its chief importance from its bearing upon his originality and _ style. The evidence of Dr. John Brown Dr Tohn _ * J , may, for that reason, be introduced in Browns support of Cunningham. Raeburn, we are told, first showed his turn for art by caricatur- ing his comrades. Afterwards, “without any teaching,” he made miniatures of his friends. He next passed from the delicacies and minuteness of miniature to his bold “ square touch” in oil. “ He had to teach himself everything,” says Dr. Brown, without pausing to make exceptions, “drawing, the composition of colours, in which doubtless he employed largely Opie’s well-known mixture, ‘With brains, sir.’” It is only by isolating Raeburn in his youth that the qualities which, in his later life, give its distinctive character to his art, and make his position unique among British portrait-painters, can be understood. It can never be definitely known how much of the individuality of artists is due to the want of scholastic tuition. The more systematic and the more arbitrary 72 Admiral Lord Duncan (p. 1-57). Self-taught Raeburn almost wholly the training-, the less hope is there of originality in the result. The pupil himself maybe stifled, his personality crushed, during the training process. In that case, he goes out into the world carrying the name-plate of a school, and loaded with its conventions. Had Raeburn been taught the best methods of the past, he might have made use of them in painting his own impressions, the r i • • , , Self-taught conceptions ot his own mind and senses. J * Not knowing them, he escaped the danger, to which Ramsay, Reinagle, Martin, and a legion besides succumbed, of losing his identity in tradition. Keeping to nature, and changing as he found nature change, he passed in safety the slough of mannerism, and is accordingly found in closer affinity with some of the older Masters than with painters of his own day, and of immediately preceding generations. He helped to build a Scots art, upon no provincial scholasticism or rule-and-square dogma, but upon principles as broad as the universe, and as old as Art. He did so because he was almost wholly self-taught. 73 CHAPTER VII. MARRIAGE. The fateful year 1778 — Raeburn’s appearance — Stevenson’s word- portrait of him — His versatility and many pursuits — Painter, modeller, architect, builder, mechanician, gardener — His manners — Taken in hand by Society — A companion in poverty — A herring dinner — John Clerk, Lord Eldin — A woodland vision — A lady sitter — A romance — Anne Edgar, Countess Leslie — St. Bernard’s House — Deanhaugh House — The Cunningham fiction exploded — A happy marriage — A sketch of Mrs. Raeburn — The end of Dean- haugh House. The year 1778 was the most important of Raeburn’s life. Some time in the course of it he entirely threw off the light fetters of the friendly goldsmith, although only to place himself in bonds of a tenderer but stronger sort. The causes which obscure his early life affect also his personality, and narrative at times is led along the dangerous line of deduction from known results. There is no sketch of Raeburn in early life, either artistic or literary. That he was self- reliant, resourceful, and courageous, a man to mould circumstance, is apparent from the story of his life. He was a Borderer, and seems to have been cast in the hereditary Border 74 Raeburn’ s Personal Appear- ajice Personal Appearance mould. But there is no contemporary picture of him telling how he looked and lived. One biographer speaks of his tall, striking figure — he stood fully six feet two in his boots — and fine, open, manly countenance. Dr. John Brown sees him in his portrait, handsome, kindly, and full of genius. In another part of his sympathetic attempt at por- traiture, after passing a number of Raeburn’s portraits in review, the creator of the immortal Rab speaks regretfully of his “fine, old friend.” “We have been nobly entertained,” he continues; “it has been a quite rare pleasure to rest our mind and eyes on his character and works — to feel the power of his presence — his great gifts — his frank, broad, manly nature.” It is quite likely that he was fond of company, and able to hold his own in conversation ; but Stevenson, who thus speaks of him, is restricted to Raeburn’s portrait A # The of himself in describing him and reading . his character. The portrait, in truth, has ain ^ er 111 in it so much vitality that there can be little ™ error in accepting it as an example of the necromancy of art; and it is so realistic and inseeing an exposition of character, that the painting of it cannot be otherwise viewed than as a species of personal divination. Of one truth it is eloquent — Raeburn knew himself. To Stevenson his face is strong and shrewd, but neither unsympathetic nor unkindly. It tells him also of the self-criticism and the consequent desire for im- provement which never left Raeburn. The rest of the word-portrait, even were it less of a likeness than it 75 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. appears to be, would be interesting 1 simply because it is drawn by one so observant and penetrating as R. A. M. Stevenson was: — “A forehead broad and ample at the brows and neither too lofty nor too salient above, eyes wide open, wide apart, serene and attentive, a nose large rather than high, and spreading at the nostrils, a long [deep is apparently meant] upper lip, a broad chin, and a mouth straightly and firmly slit across the massive face, suggest a man of real emotions and practical genius rather than one given to fictitious fancies and poetic reverie. This fine type of face . . . always accompanies sense and observation; but in Raeburn it appears at its best, balanced by a due allowance of tolerance, the con- templative faculty and the instinctive good feeling we see in a dog, ennobled by natural wisdom, fired by p sympathy and humour, refined by intellect, sentiment, and the habitual practice of an portrait of a ^sorbing and intellectual art. He looks Raeburn w ; se> fearless, independent; a friend, not a flatterer; a man of counsel, who would not forget the means to an end if one should ask his advice upon a project. In the case of his own art he took wise counsel with himself, and though rich, am- bitious, and in his youth untrained, he made himself a sound craftsman and an interpreter of nature rather than a skilled adapter of styles, and a clever student of decorative venerated mannerisms.” That is probably as near Raeburn as we shall ever get. There are, nevertheless, in the face signs of 76 Versatility qualities which Mr. Stevenson has overlooked. In the square strong jaw are energy and force of character, in the firmly-compressed lips will-power, and the whole face, dominated by the flashing eye, scintillates with intelligence. There is in it more mental power than feeling, more strength than refinement. Sir Walter Armstrong credits him with thorough- ness, but not with concentration. It is doubtful if the one quality can exist without the other. He was versatile, and not only gratified tastes of abnormally wide range, but found outlets for the overflow of ebullient energy in many different directions. It is not desirable, in picturing his early manhood, to anticipate activities which did not manifest them- selves in operation for some time after 1778, but a rapid outline may give reality to him at the virtual beginning of his career. He painted, is said to have modelled, and sketched. Healthy and high-spirited, we can see him in his wanderings over Scotland armed with sketch-book and rod, for he was an en- ersa til l ty thusiastic angler, a golfer, and a practised archer. His splendid physique needed the oiling of exercise, and his temperament portsman compelled some kind of action. The counterpart of this was mental restlessness. His busy brain would tolerate neither loitering nor idleness. So he came to look into mechanics, practical shipbuilding, and the principles of naval architecture, which led him to make and test three-foot models finished in a style 77 of the Artist- Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. worthy of an ex-goldsmith. He also studied archi- tecture, planned and built his own studio, and laid out and built all the better part of Stockbridge. In connection with that he developed what Cunningham quaintly calls “a sort of abstract love for the subtle science of the law.” He paid strict attention to the formal observances of religion. Courted in society, he was seen at his best at home. He was a skilful gardener and a learned florist. One accordingly reads with a sympathetic sense of the fitness of the climax that he devoted many an evening hour to searching out the secret of Perpetual Motion ! Counting time by years, such men never live long. In experience, each one of them is a Methusaleh. Raeburn’s want of method, his ignoring of order, has been a sore trial to his biographers. His pictures are for the most part undated, and he left no writings from which his personality can be constructed. He was the direct opposite of the dreamy experimentalist in colour. He was essentially a man of action. He lived in a day as much as another man lived in a week, compressed into a decade the other man’s century. He unconsciously observed the distinction between living and either dreaming or vegetating. But he never entered the earthly Nirvana, knew nothing of the spiritually-pregnant peace of cultured repose. As to his personality, at twenty-two he certainly exercised a charm. Judging him by the effect he had upon others, as construed by their conduct, he 78 In Society Personal Charm must have been singularly lovable, and have possessed the imperious fascination which justifies Armstrong’s phrase: “His desires were seconded by , all his friends.” His will became theirs; ae urn s his schemes and objects they made their own. Such power is akin to hypnotic control. For lack of a more intelligible phrase, it may be called personal magnetism. Implicit credence may be given to the “ courteous manners ” with which Raeburn is invested by Cunning- ham. They were a very necessary part of his profes- sional stock-in-trade. As his reputation spread, his social movements took a wider range. As a rising artist he might have been admitted to the houses of the wealthy and titled, but being in addition a good conversationalist, distinguished in bearing, in every way a highly-presentable young man, Edinburgh at large was glad to open her doors to him. His grand- son says in happy phrase that his conversa- tion in some degree resembled his style of painting — there was the same ease and simplicity, the same total absence of every kind of affectation, and the same manly turn of sense and genius. The rich and noble, we are reminded by Cunning-ham, invited him to their tables and gave him free access to their art-collections, “and as he was a diligent student, he missed no opportunity of improving his style or increasing the natural force of his colouring.” Young, well-mannered, good-looking, and clever, 79 Society Opens its Arms and Doors Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Raeburn had the world before him; but he had one failing. He was poor, without ever feeling the pinch of real poverty. He must be supposed to have been living with his brother, and contributing what he could to the maintenance of the establishment at St. Bernard’s. The life of a young artist pushing his way into practice, who has caught the eye of Society, and who goes on sketching excursions, is, however, an expensive life. To have shrunk into seclusion for the sake of economy would, at the same time, have been professional suicide. Applied to Raeburn, the word “ poverty ” must be read relatively. What it meant to him was judicious expenditure. His pocket-money was necessarily limited, and his idea of economy not so much the planning of what he could buy as deciding what he could do without. At that stage he had at least one companion in mis- fortune — the subsequently famous wit, lawyer, and cynic, John Clerk (see Plate), who later sat on A Com- the bench of the Court of Session as Lord pan ion in Clerk was then a young advocate, Poverty waiting for practice and fees (. Anglicb , a briefless barrister), fond of pictures and of painting, in which, according to Dr. John Brown, he had some of that family gift which, in the case of Mrs. Blackburn, blossomed out into rare and exquisite work. Through his mother, Susanna Adam, Clerk came of artistic stock, and his aesthetic tastes may be the explanation of his companionship with Raeburn. They also account for the statuette of the Crouching Venus which Raeburn 80 Dr. Spens (p. 141). A Herring Feast most suggestively introduced into the later of two por- traits of his friend. Dr. John Brown describes it in a few strokes: — “John Clerk, his ‘herrin’ friend,’ ugly and snuffy, shrewd and subtle; the Crouching Venus among the law-papers — beautifully drawn — indicating John’s love of art.” A story — so good as to give rise to a wish that it were a little more credible — illustrative of the straitened circumstances of the two young men, is told by Cunningham, and explains Dr. Brown’s allu- sion to a “ herrin’ friend.” He says that as the one had to buy costly colours and the other expensive books, they were at times so short of cash that they hardly knew how to live until their coffers were replenished. In view of Raeburn’s circumstances, and considering that Clerk was a son of John Clerk of Eldin, and grandson of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, the above statement that they some- times “ hardly knew how to live ” must be taken with a liberal pinch of salt. The story, however, runs that on one of these occasions of scarcity, Clerk invited Raeburn to dine with him at his lodgings. Hastening thither, as if hunger gave him speed, Raeburn found the landlady spreading the table-cloth, upon which she placed two dishes. In one were three herrings, in the other three potatoes. Clerk was annoyed and per- plexed, and the conversation that ensued is given in Dr. Brown’s Scots: — “ Is this a’ ? ” said Clerk to the landlady. “Ay,” she replied, “it’s a’.” 81 John Clerk's Hej' ring Feast G Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. “A’!” he answered, angrily. “Didn’t I tell you, wumman, that a gentleman was to dine wi’ me, and that ye were to get six herrin’ and six potatoes ? ” In later days of plenty, as a matter of course, over the walnuts and wine, the two successful men were fond of recalling the hard times of their early manhood. It is almost a relief to learn that sitters to Raeburn began to wax numerous. Once or twice in his narrative, Cunningham arouses suspicion of his strict truth. His introduction to Raeburn’s marriage is almost certainly apocryphal. We are told that the painter earnestly wished to master A P tt ^ an< ^ sca P e an< 3 historical composition. On Trr 77 y one occasion, when on a sketching excur- Woodlana . , . r c . . , , y. . sion, his line ot vision was crossed by a lady so lovely as to give additional charm to the scene before him. Into his drawing of it he accordingly introduced her, like a sunbeam into a shadowed dell, as Gainsborough once did upon a similar occasion. Cunningham suggests an artistic reason, but Art does not account for the painter’s memory of his woodland vision. Some time afterwards, at any rate, a lady of small stature, but fair to look upon, presented herself at the painter’s studio, and asked if he would paint her portrait. It is pretty to watch the little comedy. Remembering the face, Raeburn was interested, and, perhaps with even a little more than his customary animation, conducts his fair visitor to a chair and prepares for work. His sitter watches him and sees 82 Marriage A Lady- sitter, a Romance , and Marriage that, if not altogether an Apollo, the painter was a very fair eighteenth-century representative of the ideal type of manhood. As he puts a new canvas upon his easel, he tries to be pleasant, and the lady notes that he speaks well, and that his manner is easy and polished. Raeburn did not lose his head, and when he comes to take a look — professional, of course — at his sitter, he sees a pleasant-faced little lady, attractive but not fascinating, plump but graceful, obviously of a warm temperament, and with soft, confiding eyes. She was demure and self-possessed, as became a lady of thirty- four, twelve years older than Raeburn him- self. Better acquaintance led Raeburn to see that she had wit and sensibility, and rising regard lent inspira- tion to his brush. There is authority for saying that the resulting portrait was fine. Unfortunately it has disappeared. The courtship was short. In about a month they were married, and at twenty-two the painter found himself in possession of “an affectionate wife and a handsome fortune.” The quotation is from Cunningham. The love-story is pretty, but romance has a way of evaporating under inquiry. The lady was Ann Edgar, daughter of Peter Edgar, laird of Bridgelands, Peebles- shire, and factor to the Earl of Selkirk. About ten years prior to meeting Raeburn, she had married one of the Aberdeenshire Leslies of Balquhun, James, who won abroad the title of Count. She bore him three 83 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Raeburji Weds a Widowed Countess children — a boy (who was accidentally drowned) and two girls — and, on his death, was left in possession of a goodly property. Raeburn, therefore, got the Countess Leslie to wife, and with her two step-daughters and material inde- pendence. Marrying a widow with a family has a pronounced flavour of the prose of matrimony, but the union turned out well, and Raeburn even succeeded in winning the affections of his step-children. The Leslie property included the house and lands of Deanhaugh, which had, in fact, been the Count’s residence and continued to be that of his widow. In the juxtaposition of St. Bernard’s and Deanhaugh the Cunningham story virtually disappears. St. Bernard’s stood on the banks of the Water of Leith, on a site at that time green and smooth to the river’s edge. It was reached by a broad avenue of trees and shrubbery, and was surrounded by fields and a fine orchard of apple and pear trees. Close by . ran an avenue of stately elms, on the right of escnp - was g ar d en> There was also, it appears, an Antiquary’s Tower — “Ross’s Folly,” as it was locally called, out of left-handed compliment to the owner — demolished in 1825 to make room for Ann Street. Part of the avenue and the rookery survived (1820) in St. Bernard’s Crescent. Cunningham says that “ the steep banks were then [about 1788] finely wooded, the garden grounds varied and beautiful, and all the 84 tion of St. Bernard’s House Deanhaugh House seclusion of the country could be enjoyed without the remoteness.” The ornamental bridge, Mr. Andrew tells us, the beautiful grottoes and terrace walks which led to Deanhaugh House and St. Bernard’s gave place to streets of new houses, even before the final demoli- tion of the Antiquary’s Tower. It should be added that, after standing in a state of disrepair for several years, the Well was thoroughly restored by William Nelson, the eminent publisher, to whose public spirit as a citizen Auld Reekie otherwise owes much. It is decidedly suggestive that there was a common approach to the two houses. Mr. Andrew finishes the picture: — “Old Deanhaugh House has also,” he says, “ been swept away to make room for the extension of Leslie Place. It was the oldest self-contained mansion in the locality— a plain, unpretending build- ing of three storeys, with its adjacent offices. ae urn s Yet, in former times, when standing in the midst of its own grounds, its surroundings were very beautiful and picturesque. Situated a little back from the banks of the Water of Leith, a short avenue branching off from the entrance to the house of St. Bernard’s led to its principal entrance.” From this it is fairly clear that if the occupants of Deanhaugh were not acquainted with those of St. Bernard’s, they were not kept apart by local barriers. There is, at any rate, no reasonable basis for the Cunningham story. So far from seeing the Countess Leslie when he was on a sketching excursion, Raeburn might have seen her, and been seen by her, when 85 Married Hovie Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. standing at his own door. There was nothing unusual in a well-to-do woman having her portrait painted, especially as in a little suburb like the Stockbridge of that day, it is impossible that she had not heard of her neighbours, the brothers Raeburn — William the manu- facturer, and Henry the portrait-painter. In the simple language of his great-grandson, Raeburn “ fell in love with his sitter, and made a very fine portrait of her.” After the marriage, he transferred himself and his be- longings to Deanhaugh House, and spent about ten years in it before returning to St. Bernard’s. The only description of Mrs. Raeburn is based upon a later portrait done by Sir Henry after many years of wedded life. This is the Tweedmouth portrait (see Plate), that of a matronly, comfortable lady of upwards of forty, with eyes that tell of tenderness, of smiles, good nature, and a healthy, sunny disposition. The mouth is firm, but there is more sweetness than resolution in the face, and it is eloquent of quiet contentment. Judging by the expression rendered in their portraits, she probably added a soft and win- ning loveliness of character to her husband’s masculine force and more robust vitality. Their mutual affection knew no waning. Their home was so happy that for restful peace, sympathetic companionship, and pleasure, Raeburn need never have left his own fireside. To complete the story of Deanhaugh, Sir Henry appears to have had his studio there down to 1787. It was subsequently occupied by one of his step- daughters, Mrs. Ann Inglis, whose husband had died in 86 A Sketch of Mrs. Raeburn Mrs. Inglis and Boys Calcutta, leaving - her with two boys, Henry Raeburn Inglis and Charles James Leslie Inglis. The former was Sir Henry’s favourite step-grandson, and he painted the boy holding a rabbit as his Royal Academy diploma picture. The boys and their mother lived at Deanhaugh. When Mrs. Ingdis died, the old house was almost surrounded by buildings; on three sides, in fact, it was completely shut in. Being - no longer suitable for its original purpose as a private mansion, it was divided amongst a number of families, and in the degradation of a tenement-house it stood, says Andrew, for many years, “as something - that now had no right to be there.” In such fashion it passed into oblivion long - before its demolition. The End of Dean- haugh House 87 CHAPTER VIII. raeburn’s second education. Early years of married life — Peace but not idleness — Portraits between 1778 and 1785 — “Lord President Dundas” — “Mrs. Ferguson, of Raith” — Double lighting — Succession of studios — Poverty and genius — Self-appraisement and ambition — The unattainable Ideal — The ultimate aim of Raeburn — He starts for Italy — A passing visit to Sir Joshua Reynolds — Lack of biographical data — His attitude towards the Masters — At Rome — Meets Gavin Hamilton — Advice of James Byres — Result of the sojourn in Rome. Raeburn’s marriage at twenty-two carries the narrative down to the year 1778, and the next event of importance to be recorded is his visit to London and Rome, 1785- 87. Seven years were thus passed in the quietude of Deanhaugh, the first seven years of married life. Children were growing up around the painter; he had many friends and no declared enemies; on good terms with the world, free from financial care, feeling the warming glow of rising success, contented and happy, he followed art in peace. These are the years to which it is most pleasant to ascribe Cunningham’s imaginary picture of him walking on the banks of the river with his wife, looking at the flowers in the garden, or sketching landscape backgrounds for his portraits. 88 Early Years of Married Life Sir Walter Scott (p 150) Lord President Dundas Portrait of Lord President Dundas They were years of peace but not of idleness. It is said, indeed, that he painted portraits sufficient to make him independent of Mrs. Raeburn’s fortune. At this period the regret that he did not date his portraits is most keenly felt. In the catalogue of the Edin- burgh exhibition of his works in 1876, No. 85 is “ Robert Dundas, of Arniston,” second Lord President of the Court of Session of that name, and son of the first Lord President Dundas. His portrait is said to have been painted “about 1787.” In that year, how- ever, Dundas died, so that the portrait was either painted in the last year of the judge’s life or before Raeburn left for Rome in 1785. The latter alternative is probably the right one, although it must be noted that Mr. J. L. Caw ascribes it absolutely to 1787. There is a copy of the portrait in Parliament House, Edinburgh, and a careful examination of it leads almost inevitably to the adoption of the earlier date. The face, and especially the eye, seem suggestive rather of vitality and intellectual activity than of the near approach of decay. The artistic qualities of the work, again, do not point to Raeburn’s more mature post-Italian style. The President wears his judicial robe of red and black, with white band falling from the neck. The wigged head is set against a brown curtain; the chair in which he is seated is studded green leather, and is turned at an angle from left to right. Place the carnations of the massive face and beautifully modelled hands in such a scheme of colour, 89 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. and a very little consideration shows that the result cannot possibly be the full Raeburnesque harmony. The point, nevertheless, is not insisted on, for, as in the Sinclair and Macnab portraits, Raeburn had a mar- vellous faculty of bringing- seemingly irreconcilable facts into artistic unity. It may, however, be added that the drawing of the left arm is questionable, and that the hands— particularly the shapely right, grace- fully hanging over the end of the chair-arm — have a prominence never accorded them in Raeburn’s later works. There can be no hesitation in accepting the ascription of “ Mrs. Ferguson, of Raith,” and her boy and girl, to 1781, the period under consideration. The scheme of colour is very simple and pleas- “ Mrs. Ferguson, of Raith, and Children J ig — the lady and girl in white, the boy in brown, foliage also brown, with land- scape setting. The lighting is akin to that in the “Chalmers of Pittencrieff.” A side- front light is thrown upon the figures, and a sun-lit sky illuminates the background. It is a bold experiment, but justified by the artistic result, and was frequently repeated by the artist in after years. Mrs. Ferguson has a somewhat conscious look, the painter obviously not having reached his later power of putting his sitters at their ease. This, too, is one of many cases in which Raeburn is not happy in his presentment of children, his success with whom is most brilliantly demonstrated in “The Binning Boys” (see Plate). These pictures were apparently painted at Dean- 90 Progress and Poverty haugh. It is at least highly probable that, on his marriage, Raeburn merely carried the tools of his craft across to his new home. Prior to that, there can be no doubt that his studio was u ccession at St. Bernard’s. In 1787, on his return °f l0s from Rome, he took his first separate studio in George Street. At this point Cunningham becomes reflective. He dwells upon the crushing effects of poverty, how it forces genius to acts of uncongenial drudgery, and, fettering the man of power, prevents him from following out his mental concep- tionswith the vigour essential to full success. Poverty and Genius Against this gloomy background the fact is thrown into high relief that, through his marriage, Raeburn had attained the blessedness of comparative wealth. We are asked to believe that he suddenly began to worry over a consciousness of imperfect skill, and to thirst for self-improvement by studying the best models. The command of money stirred his ambition, and led him to realise more clearly than he previously had done the necessity of travel and of study in “the nursery of art.” In all this there is probably a modicum of truth, but Raeburn did not hastily awaken to his own technical inferiority. He was in no hurry to exchange Edinburgh for Rome, self-training for indoctrination by the Masters with more skilful methods. He was still a young artist between twenty-two and twenty-nine, and at that time of life the majority of men who are flattered by the 9i Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. assurance of success, and by the first trumpeting^ of fame, are apt to feel something quite different from diffident self-depreciation. The statement is Cunning- ham’s that Raeburn’s name was heard of beyond Edinburgh, and that he was regarded as one whom genius and fortune had united to raise. Whether this be fact or fancy, Raeburn was not the man either to be inflated with self-admiration or to sink into self-distrust. He was pre-eminently gifted with common-sense, was well-balanced and self-critical. He had, however, reached that period when many men turn from self-confidence to self-examination, and he probably found himself wanting. This feeling is quite distinct from ambition. It is an ennobling dissatisfaction with the highest accomplish- ment. No artist ever complacently thought he had solved the great secret of art, had explored all its mysteries, and reached perfection. The tend- ency is in the opposite direction. As the hill is climbed the view expands. A greater to be done ever rises above the greatest that is done, a better above the best. The higher they rise the higher they would rise, and the more clearly they see floating in the upper ether of life that unattainable Ideal which is never reached. It tempts the great artist to the exertion of his fullest strength, the highest development of his gift. It is an elusive phantom he pursues through life, and, at last, to reach it becomes his thought of paradise. These sentences contain little more than the plainer 92 The A rtisi’s Unattain- able Ideal Rome contemplated prose of the conversation of Sir Noel Paton, a great painter and a countryman of Raeburn. He probably shared the feeling- they express. The better he painted, he would be unlike the majority of eminent painters if he did not see the farther into the possibilities of colour. The next stage is to become conscious of the tantalising Inexpressible, and to long for a fuller, more adequate command of artistic speech. As Raeburn passed through the years 1778-85 that carried him from twenty-two to twenty-nine, the realisation of inadequacy would certainly become more painful. The fresh delight of youth in the novelty of art was being exchanged for manhood’s desire for the ampler exercise of undeveloped power. Thus Raeburn went to London, and thence to Rome. At the present day young painters in quest of instruc- tion look for it in Paris. In the eighteenth century they went to Rome. So in 1785, accompanied by his wife, Raeburn set out towards the South. Starting for Italy They first stopped in London, that Raeburn might pay his respects to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and here uncertainty at once begins. Very little is really known of either the practical objects or the facts of Raeburn’s Continental excursion. A good deal may perchance be compressed into the phrase — It was the custom for painters to go to Rome, and he went. He may have been impelled by a sense of deficiency, but there is no reason for believing that he had in view so clear an object as might have been inferred from the sketching of a plan of study. 93 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Of his doings in London, of the length of his stay there, and of what he saw, did, and studied in Rome, there is almost no certainty. He kept no diary, wrote no letters home; and if on his return he said anything of his sojourn in the Italian capital, stated any of his impres- „„ „ sions, related anything concerning either his Want of . . J own occupations or the mute instruction he got from the Old Masters, it has nearly all ca ata p asse( ^ into oblivion. It is also to be re- membered that Raeburn was a man of measurable maturity, with views and a style of his own. Assuming that he went to learn, that he even longed to drink at Rome’s deep well of art-learning, he was likely to be critical as well as absorbent, to temper enthusiasm with judicial caution, and to accept the lessons of the past under personal reservation. With what has been said in the sixth chapter, this may be sufficient to indicate the attitude in which Raeburn was likely to approach the Masters. In London he called upon Sir Joshua, and was well received. According to Cunningham, “he produced some of his portraits,” which passed him at once into Reynolds’s favour and friendship. But, we are told, he was not a disciple of Sir Joshua, had neither the honour nor the advantage of studying under him — at the best, a doubtful assertion. Their parting must be described in Cunningham’s own language : — Raeburn “ever after- wards mentioned the name of Sir Joshua with much respect — related how he counselled him to study at Rome, and worship Michael Angelo in the Sistine 94 With Reynolds London and Reynolds doubt by Chapel ; and how he took him aside, as they were about to separate, 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.’ This generous offer Raeburn declined with due thanks.” From the production of “ some portraits” to the offer of money, the story is re-told for what it is worth. Rae- burn seems to have had an amiable habit of grateful retrospection, as he is represented looking back under a like sense of personal r 7 , • a/t • , _ . L ' s Sir Joshua obligation to Martin and Byres (of Rome), as well as to Reynolds. Sir Joshua’s par- simony and avarice are elsewhere left in Cunningham himself. He imparts, in fact, to biography many of the charms of fiction. If Reynolds really offered Raeburn money, he must have had more knowledge of his young visitor than could have been derived from a mere passing call and a sight of “some of his por- traits.” One authority suggests that, notwithstanding Cunningham’s disclaimer, the tradition may be well founded that Raeburn was for a few weeks a pupil of Sir Joshua. Alternatively, he may have worked for a time in London, and submitted some of his copies to Reynolds. Lengthy intercourse would have given the latter an opportunity of knowing something of Rae- burn’s character as well as of his artistic ability. It is said by another that Sir Joshua permitted the young man to work for a month or two under his guidance. The only known facts are that Raeburn went to 95 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. London, called upon Reynolds, and left for Rome. Speculation may be continued until doomsday, but nothing more can ever be known of the Scots painter’s visit to the metropolis, unless Cunningham be accepted. Towards the latter part of 1785 the Raeburns reached Rome, and that they owed something to their country- The Raeburns reach Rome man, Gavin Hamilton, has previously been mentioned. probably had a thorough knowledge Meeting •with Gavin Hamilton He of the art-treasures of Rome, acquired in the course of historical studies of Italian art, and may have been useful to Raeburn in directing him to the works of art he ought to study, but the extent of their intercourse is matter of conjecture. Any artistic sympathy between them cannot be assumed. Hamilton was deep in the history and progress of art, and his own painting was chiefly of the literary order, based largely on Homer. Stevenson describes him as a kind of dealer, an excavator, and a painter of classical subjects. Occasionally he turned to Scottish history. Brydall gives a very interesting sketch of him, in the course of which is mentioned his Schola Italica Picturce, engraved by Cunego, and published at Rome in 1773. In it he traces the pro- gress of the styles of Italian painting from Leonardo da Vinci to the time of the Caracci. Concerning his excavations Brydall has this to tell: — He was so successful that the superstitious Romans circulated a report that he had sold his soul 96 Treasure hunting •with the Devil Dr. Adam (p. 157). Associates in Rome to the Devil, in consequence of which Old Nick had undertaken, by the hopping of a blue flame, to point out the exact spots under which the works of ancient art were buried. However that may be, Gavin’s pictures found their way into the Hamilton Palace collection, and those of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Hopetoun. In Italy he found a patron in the Prince Borghese, who also purchased many of his excavated treasures. Some of these went to the enrichment of the British Museum and of various Continental collections. From all that is known of Raeburn, he is very unlikely to have felt any deep interest either in Hamilton’s classical art, with its monotonous, dull, poverty-stricken colour, or in his Schola, or in his antiquarian finds. Where the two men may have touched was on the social side, for Hamilton is said to have endeavoured to follow the Old Masters in the state and style in which he maintained his studio, “in which he was always ready to receive and advise budding Raphaels with introductory letters from his own country.” Another of Raeburn’s associates in Rome was James Byres, known as the Cicerone, a Scots gentleman who had served as an officer in Lord Ogilvie’s regiment in the French army. “ His chief title to remembrance,” Sir Walter Armstrong says quaintly, “is the fact that he was once the owner of the Portland Vase.” His intercourse with Raeburn can only be guessed at, except- ing a piece of advice recorded by Cunningham, “never 97 h James Byres, and his Advice Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. to copy an object from memory, but, from the principal figure to the minutest accessory, to have it placed before him.” The same author states that in after-life, when speaking of his studies in Rome, Raeburn always said that to Byres he owed whatever advantage his visit had brought. This probably means that Byres told him how to derive the greatest benefit from the study of the Masters. He afterwards painted for his own gallery of friends — in which Hamilton has no place — a portrait of Byres, which Dr. John Brown saw at Charlesfield, and describes as of the first quality, broad and felicitous. “The ruffles of his shirt,” says the Doctor, “ are of dazzling whiteness, as if bleached by the burn side.” All else is surmise. Knowing one or two of those he met in Rome is manifestly totally different from know- ing Raeburn’s pursuits in Rome. One thing may be taken for granted, that he did not busy himself there with a quest for ideas, but for knowledge. Mention is made of Reynolds’s guarding the golden mysteries of his art. The deeper mysteries of the old Italian Masters were undoubtedly the subjects of Raeburn’s inquiring study in Rome. He is accordingly likely to have been more deeply moved, and more completely fascinated by Raphael, Titian, and Leonardo, than by the marvellous creations of the Sistine Chapel. He would care little about Botticelli’s frescoes so far as conception went, but he might have been caught by the decorative abstractions of the great master of line. He would naturally turn with indifference from the pursuits 98 Roman Studies of Gavin Hamilton that he might try to unravel the matchless technique of Velasquez. The only possible construction of Raeburn’s pro- longed sojourn in Rome, in fact, is that while there he went for two years to school, found a lesson in every picture, a teacher in every Old Master. He may be assumed to have lived and worked in Rome as he did in Stockbridge, and purpose would take definite shape from what he saw. If the advice of Byres to paint only what he had before him be added to his own „ 7 , rr , _ Results of concentration of every effort and faculty 0 . . . , f . _ , . . J Sojourn in upon the practical solution of the problems Rome of technique — light, colour, drawing, line, and modelling with the brush, everything that entered into the mastery of the Old Masters as skilled craftsmen — a fair idea may probably be formed of what Raeburn did in Rome, and of the benefit he derived from his visit. 99 CHAPTER IX. SETTLED IN EDINBURGH. Raeburn’s first separate studio — George Street — Succeeds to St. Bernard’s House — Feuing and law — Builder and client — Studio in York Place — Scotland at the close of the eighteenth century — Edinburgh still a metropolitan centre — Old and new Edinburgh — The city expands — The “Modern Athens” — A centre of learning, literature, and art — Raeburn’s models. First Separate Studio After two years of Rome, Raeburn made directly for Edinburgh, halting at neither Paris nor London. He Raeburn’s went awa y ’ m * 7^5 an< ^ returned in 1787, and thus, at the age of thirty-one, virtually settled the plan of his future life. His first step was to take a studio more central and more convenient for sitters than Dean- haugh. He found a suitable place in George Street, the superb thoroughfare which runs along the top of the New Town ridge, having Princes Street parallel with it on the south, and Queen Street on the north. There is about the street of Raeburn’s choice an air of spacious and quiet magnificence which gives it a dis- tinctive character amongst the streets of Edinburgh. It stands in no need of architectural embellishment. A Mag- nificent Street 100 Heir to St. Bernard’s Through each cross street, between St. Andrew and South Castle Streets, there is a different southern view, involving a different set of associations. From east to west, however, the dominant features of the prospect to the south are the piled-up buildings of the Old Town, and the massed batteries and barracks of the Castle. The corresponding view on the north leads off to the blue waters of the Forth and the hills of Fife. The material facts of Raeburn’s subsequent life are so few that it may be better to group them than to observe a strictly chronological sequence. In about a year, on the death of his elder brother William, he succeeded to the house and lands of St. Bernard’s. This led him to give up Dean- haugh, and to move into St. Bernard’s He Succeeds to St. Bernard's House To the mansion a good deal House, which had been his father’s home, and was the place of his own birth. He never afterwards left it. of land was attached. As the ground was adjacent to his wife’s property, he was enabled to lay it all out upon one comprehensive plan. By doing so he became the real founder of the suburb of Stockbridge. He appears to have both let on perpetual lease or feued and built, and it was in connection with these matters that he developed that “abstract love” of law to which reference has been made. In feuing or leasing he occasionally dealt with building speculators, who were not always punctilious about adhering to the letter of a bargain. A turn of taste was enough to lead to the abandonment of IOI Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Raeburn’s plans; to bring them to reason he had recourse to law. If litigation led to acuteness, it also developed in Raeburn too absorbing an . appreciation of the scientific subtleties of Law-suits , ... , , i law. He did not, perhaps, become posi- tively litigious, but he was somewhat too near Parlia- ment House, the great centre of Scots law and lawyers. The combination is incongruous, but he succeeded in adding a love of law to a love of architecture, and, whether looked at as serious affections or as mere dissipations, they are both expensive pursuits. Cunning- ham adduces evidence of the real existence of both : — “ I have often heard a skilful builder speak of Raeburn’s intimate acquaintance with all the economy of a structure. ... Nor was a witty lawyer whom I knew, one long disciplined in Scottish law, less rapturous about the delight which the painter took in his own learned profession. ‘ Of all our clients he was the most enthusiastic, and at the same time the most acute and shrewd. He dearly loved a ganging plea [a lawsuit in progress], and smiled to see diffi- culties arise which promised a new case. He was, as Prior says of another matter, “a great lover of that same”; but do not misunderstand me: he desired to oppress no one, and never waged war but for his own rights, and to keep his plans free from blemish, perfect as he had laid them down.’ ” Between painting, building, gardening, angling, and golf, Raeburn may be assumed to have spent the years immediately following his return from Rome. He 102 Builds a Studio began then the energetic, many-sided, and exceptionally full life he lived to the last. It remains to be sketched a little more in detail as subsidiary to his Versatility and Success His York Place Studio artistic environment. There is only one further change to record. At his studio in George Street he had a gallery well worth visiting, but, as his practice increased, he found himself cramped for space, and as Edinburgh had nothing suitable to offer, he decided to build for himself. The site he chose was in York Place, the eastward extension of Queen Street towards Picardy Place and the chain of streets uniting Leith to Edin- burgh. The painting-rooms, according to Cunningham, were on the street floor above the area flat; the first floor was made into a spacious gallery, lighted from the roof, and measuring fifty-five feet long, thirty-five feet wide, and forty feet high. The building was No. 16, but is now No. 32 York Place, and must have been greatly altered inter- nally since Cunningham wrote. It bears a carved palette on its facade, with an inscription referring to Raeburn’s occupancy; and the name “Raeburn House” is fixed above the cornice at the spring of the roof. Mr. Colvin Smith, R. S.A., as mentioned in the next chapter, followed Raeburn. He took the place in 1827 and is understood to have remained in it down to his death in 1875. The studio is still tenanted by an artist, Mr. A. E. Borthwick, but the rest of the building is variously occupied. With the removal of his studio to York Place, in 1795, Raeburn settled himself for life. 103 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. At any period, either before or since his own day, Raeburn would have ranked high in art. He rose far above any of his Scots predecessors, and there is in his average work a happy mingling of realism and pure art which still gives a Raeburn a distinctive and commanding place in an exhibition gallery. But for prompt recognition by people of all ranks and tastes, for material success, for the attainment of a ruling position far above rivalry, and — by reason of the wealth of eminent and famous subjects at his command — for investing portraiture at once with the interest of a personal record and something of the dignity of history, his coming was most happily opportune. At his birth, Scotland was passing through the throes accompanying a transfer of allegiance. The Stuart fever of 1745 had not exhausted itself. At any moment there might have been a recrudescence of disloyalty to King George. Jacobite sentiment was everywhere rampant, to the scandalised disturbance of douce Hanoverianism. Scotland was partner in the United Kingdom, but contained within herself separatist ele- ments which modified the reality of the Union. Rae- burn came at the parting of the ways, when Scotian thg continued existence of the new was at Close of v j rtua py assured, but the old was not dis- T 8 th credited. If self-interest looked forward, Century sen timent looked back. Scotland preserved her individual nationality as a precious and distinct possession, which remained unaffected by political 104 Henry Mackenzie (p. 159). Old Edinburgh measures. The national life survived in Kirk, Law and Law Courts, the system of education and Uni- versities, in literature and language. In her only recorded words, Lady Raeburn spoke in the broad, but musical, Scots vernacular. All over the country it remained the language of gentle and simple. It was difficult, even if it were desirable, for Scotsmen to realise the larger, grander, more inspiring life of a Briton. In Raeburn’s day the intensely patriotic love concentrated upon Scotland interfered with dreams and visions of; wider political relations. The result was that Edinburgh was still a metro- politan centre, besides being a self-contained civic organism. It had institutions, interests, and customs peculiar to itself, its own society, its own code of manners. It had not fallen into in Ur ^ • i r still a provincialism. Countrymen everywhere, ol all grades and engaged in all pursuits, M e tr o p°hs churchmen, artists, lawyers, authors, looked to Edin- burgh as their capital. For the most part, they had no ulterior objective in London. When Burns, for example, looked out into a wider world, he went to Edinburgh, and met many of the men amongst whom Raeburn’s life was led. The Scottish type of man and woman still existed in all its purity. In trying, if only for a moment, to restore Old Edinburgh, it is not to be forgotten that Raeburn got his lessons in goldsmithing in a forgotten nook in the Old Town. Cunningham speaks of the creation of the New Town of Edinburgh amid corn- Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. fields and copses, where grouse and blackcock had been sought for with dog and gun within the memory of men still living (1829), having awakened a spirit of “architectural adventure,” which Raeburn shared. At his birth, the braes between Stockbridge and the city were pure country, with only a house or cottage . here and there. The city, as has been shown f (P* 54)’ was con fi ne d to the ridge between the J Castle and Holyrood. This crowding round 171 urg heart of historic Scotland, and seeing every day such monuments of the past as the Castle, St. Giles’s Cathedral, Holyrood Palace, and the man- sions of many of the nobility, all tended to keep alive the spirit of distinct nationality. The people clung to the old, hallowed site. Wynds and “ entries” ran down the steep incline on either side of the High Street into the valley east of the Nor’ Loch on the north, and down into the ravine where the Cowgate leads westwards to the Grassmarket on the south. These narrow outlets existed all the way down to the Palace, descending into the North Back of the Canongate on one side and the South Back on the other. And on the hill and flanks houses rose like magnified versions of the cliff-dwellings of the Zunis or Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona. They were truly “ piles stupendous,” twelve storeys high and even more. When the city fairly overflowed its narrow bounds, the first tendency was southwards, past the southern city-wall in Infirmary Street, the College, and Old 106 New Edinburgh Greyfriars’ Church. In a short time, however, the movement in that direction was checked, and only revived about the middle of the nineteenth century. The burghers looked northwards a y in ^out and saw greater possibilities on the crest J Town of the high bank running west from the Calton Hill and the ground gliding gently down- wards from its summit towards the Forth. They accordingly planned a new city there, to relieve the congested High Street and Canongate and their gloomy offshoots. They had marked out the streets already named — Princes, George, and Queen Streets — many terraces, squares, places, and crescents besides, and were building when Raeburn was born. To secure communication between the Old Town and the New, they built the North Bridge while he was still a boy. This material expansion was therefore coincident with the artistic and intellectual Revival. The one almost seems the counterpart of the other. With the change, moreover, Edinburgh awoke to a new life. New tastes were engendered, and new civic ambitions were awakened. There does not appear to have been any diminution of the sentiment distinctively Scots — the great landmarks of history above-mentioned, the fortress, the cathedral, and the palace are there to this day — and even if there were, the feeling of nationality was replaced by local pride. The burghers had no need to pray for “ a guid conceit o’ oorsels.” They already had it, and it was well-grounded. “Royal” Edin- 107 The ‘ Modern A thens ” Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. burgh became from year to year increasingly royal. It still continued to be the heart and brain of Scotland. “Modern Athens” sprang from the deserted wynds and courts of Old Edinburgh. The fame of its University was carried far and its medical school especially had a universal reputation. The English-speaking world looked towards it as the centre from which were poured the romances of “The Author of ‘Waverley.’” The poems of Scott, “ Douglas ” Home, and the successive editions of Burns made it a home of the Nine; “Maga” with “Christopher North” and The Nodes Ambrosiance , combined with the Edinburgh and Francis Jeffrey to make it both feared and respected in criticism; Con- stable, Ballantyne, Blackwood made it a publishing centre; the Nasmyths, Thomson of Duddingston, and Raeburn himself gave it solid standing in the world of art, and in music its reputation rested upon George Thomson and Johnson, publishers, and Neil Gow, the fiddler. Cunningham enumerates Blair, Hailes, Karnes, Mackenzie, Woodhouselee, Robertson, Hume, Logan, Monboddo, Boswell, Blacklock, Adam Smith, Hutton, Ferguson, and Dugald Stewart as with others known to fame and distinguished for their wit living in Edin- burgh, and mostly in friendly intercourse with each other. Blair was professor of rhetoric and belles lettres ; Mackenzie was the kindly critic of Burns and author of The Man of Feeling; Hailes, Karnes, Hume (not the historian but Professor of Scots Law), and Wood- 108 Great Contemporaries houselee were lawyers, and to their names may be added those of Lord Justice-Clerk Braxfield, Lord President Dundas, Lord Newton, Lord President Hope, Lord Eldin, and the Hon. Harry Erskine; Dr. James Hutton and Sir David Brewster may be taken to represent science; Robertson is the historian and Principal of the University; and Adam Smith is he of The Wealth of Natiofis. Edinburgh was full to over- flowing of all kinds of activities, and its Society repre- sented the nobility, the learning, the wit, and the beauty of Scotland. Raeburn opened his studio in George Street in the same year that Burns published the first Edinburgh edition of his poems. The Edinburgh here sketched is that into which the painter entered on his return from Rome, and between 1787 and 1823 it would almost appear that all the notables not only of Edinburgh but of Scotland — Highland chief and Lowland doctor and judge — passed through his studio. He painted the majority of those named, an entire generation of the men and women of Scotland, and, as Henley says suggestively, if he was fortunate in his subjects — “scarce anywhere could he have found better models ” — they were thrice fortunate in their painter. The Portrait- painter’s Field 109 CHAPTER X. HOME AND STUDIO. Raeburn’s productiveness — His son and the home circle — The fascina- tions of building — Hospitality and helpfulness — Anecdote of David Roberts, R.A. — Character and home-life — Raeburn in his easy- chair — Lady Raeburn and the youngsters — A pony and a queer character — Further traits of Raeburn — The delight of portrait- painting — His working habits — His treatment of sitters — His faculty of mind-reading — Cunningham at his studio — Raeburn’s use of conversation — A sitter’s experience — Dr. John Brown and Raeburn’s platform — Sir Walter Scott’s opinion of Raeburn — A formula of method. It were difficult to imagine a more invigorating and more inspiring setting for an artist-life than that sketched in the last chapter. Raeburn had before him a field for portrait-painting which, in opulence and variety, rivalled that which surrounded Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was not so prolific as Sir Joshua — having probably painted some seven or eight hundred pictures to Reynolds’s two thousand, — but he was hardly less successful, and the number of his portraits must have been kept down by the variety of his other pursuits, and by the conditions of his home life. He had his own children around him, his two step-daughters until they married, and in course of time grandchildren. In each one he found a new and distracting care. i io The Home Circle The Household at St. Bernard’s The latter were the offspring- of his second son, Henry. In 1812 Henry married a charming lady, Miss Charlotte White, of Howden, by whom he had a family. Raeburn appears to have held Henry in exceptional affection, and to have found a special pleasure in his society, for he took him and his family to live with him, and was often accompanied by him on his sketching excursions. It was no temporary arrange- ment, but lasted throughout their lives. As making yard-long ship models was one of the home occupations of their grandfather, trying them in Warriston Pond would no doubt be one of the forms of amusement he provided for Henry’s youngsters. He once fell head- long into the Pond, and was with difficulty got out by his servant. Gardening made further inroads upon his time. He was a “ keen ” golfer; his love of the game waxed rather than waned, and he is found — 7th June 1823 — playing a round with Professor Duncan on Leith Links not many days before his death. Further time was necessarily consumed by occasional indulgence in fishing and archery. But of all his pursuits, apart from painting, building appears to have been the most fascinating. It almost amounted to a passion, the existence of which was well known amongst his friends. Of this there is convincing evidence in a picture by Sir William Allan. The scene is laid in the house of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, and the wale of Edinburgh’s men of genius are gathered Raeburn’s many Pursuits 1 1 1 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. round the board. Professor Wilson has set the com- pany in a roar with one of the sallies of wit characteristic of “Christopher North,” and in the middle of the fun Raeburn sits absorbed, quietly tracing- with his wet forefinger upon the table the foundation plan of his new town of Raeburnville at Stockbridge. Every one under- stood the allusion. He kept, according to Andrew, practically open door to such foreigners and travellers of distinction as had any claim upon his attention. Young artists he was always ready to befriend, to advise and help, and they were not always thoughtful in making inroads into his busy life. If, by reason of professional en- gagements, he could not see them during the day, he made engagements with them for the early morn- ing hours before sitters were afoot. As a critic of the work of others, when his opinion was asked, he was candid but liberal, hearty in praise, but a niggard in blame. His kindliness towards even a child touched by the art-genius may be best illustrated by anecdote. Walk- ing one morning in the garden, he came upon a little boy, a stranger, who held up, it is said, a piece of paper to deprecate summary ejectment. Looking at it, Raeburn found it to be a fairly well done drawing of a Gothic window in his library. He told the young artist to come back when he liked, but by the gate, and not over the wall. He gave the boy all possible encouragement and instruction, and his kindness bore good fruit, for the A Story of David Roberts, R.A. I 12 Henry Raeburn (p. 161). Anecdote of Roberts young draughtsman of the window came in time to be David Roberts, R.A. Roberts was the son of a poor shoemaker in the neighbourhood, and at the time of his adventure at St. Bernard’s was attending a “penny schule ” at Stock- bridge. In after years he chose the line of art indicated by the drawing which brought' him under Raeburn’s notice, and rose to the highest rank as a painter of architectural subjects. He had no rival in the branch of his choice. He travelled far and wide upon the Continent, in Egypt and the Holy Land, and it is significant that to the first exhibition of the Scottish Academy his contribution was “The Chapel of St. Jacques, Dieppe.” None can tell how far Raeburn’s words of kindness and early lessons went to the making of a relatively great career. Roberts was the foremost of those who succeeded Nasmyth. In such manner, by instruction, sympathy, and encouragement, Raeburn lent his influence to the advancement of the art he practised. The traits of character revealed by incident and story explain how Raeburn won both the esteem and the affection of his associates. He was a large- t 't f hearted, pre-eminently a lovable man, never too deeply engrossed in his own manifold aracter pursuits to be indifferent to those around him. He was too happy, too healthy to be irritable. He was of too warm a temperament to leave another in the chill of apathy. There is a statement on record of his having lost 113 1 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. money by becoming security for a relative, and another of his son having got into commercial difficulties. The two rumours may refer to only one misfortune. If true, Raeburn does not appear to have made any sign of financial embarrassment, to have allowed loss either to disturb his equanimity or to break in upon the industry and regularity of habit with which he followed his pro- fession. Of the home life at St. Bernard’s there is the sketch by Mrs. Ferrier, Professor Wilson’s daughter, fresh and vital, being, in fact, made from life. It appears to have been written for Dr. John Brown, and goes back to a period when the writer was about six years old. About 1820 her family lived in Ann Street, from which the avenue leading up to St. Bernard’s was entered. She was a frequent visitor there in childhood, and what she saw may be held broadly descriptive of one side of life in the Raeburn household for twenty-five or thirty years : — “ With the Raeburn family we were very intimate as children and school companions. Sir Henry and Lady Raeburn and their son [Henry] and his wife, with three children, comprised the family party. The great portrait-painter, as far as I can recollect him, had a very impressive appearance, full, dark, lustrous eyes, with ample brow and dark hair, at this time somewhat scant. His tall, large frame had dignity in it. I can well remember him seated in an arm-chair in the evening, at the fireside of the small drawing-room, newspaper in hand, and his family around him. His usual mode of 114 Sketch of the Home Life at St. Bernard’s Home Life address to us when spending the evenings, while he held out his hand with a kind smile, was, ‘ Well, my dears, what is your opinion of things in general to-day?’ These words always filled us with consternation, and we huddled together like a flock of scared sheep, vainly attempting some answer by gazing from one to the other; and then with what delight and sense of freedom we were led away to be seated at the tea-table, covered with cookies, bread and butter, and jelly! From this place of security we stole now and then a fearful glance at the arm-chair in which Sir Henry reclined. “After tea we were permitted to go away for play to another room, where we made as much noise as we liked, and generally managed to disturb old Lady Raeburn, not far from the drawing-room, where we had all been at tea on our best behaviour in the presence of her great husband. This old lady was quite a character, and always spoke in broad Scotch, then common among the old families, now extinct. I can never forget the manner in which we uproarious creatures tormented her, flinging open the door of her snug little room, whither she had fled for a little quiet from our incessant provocations and unwearied inventions of amusement, which usually reached the climax of throwing bed- pillows at her and nearly smothering her small figure. At this juncture she would rise up, and, opening the door of a cupboard, would bring out of it a magnificent Lady Raeburn among the Children bunch of grapes, which she endeavoured to divide among us with these words of entreaty: ‘ Hoot, hoot, 1 *5 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. bairns, here’s some grapes for ye; noo gang 1 awa’ an’ behave yersels like gude bairns, an’ dinna deave [deafen] me ony mair.’ For a short time the remedy effected a lull in the storm, which, at the least hint, was ready to set in with renewed vigour. She would then throw out of a wardrobe shawls, turbans, bonnets, and gear of all sorts and colours, in which we arrayed ourselves to hold our Court, Ann Raeburn being very often our Queen.” Mrs. Ferrier’s memory manifestly goes back rather to the wild ongoings of herself and Sir Henry’s romping grandchildren than to the normal conduct of the house- hold at St. Bernard’s. Still, there is no other similar vignette of Sir Henry at home, no parallel sketch of a Scots tea-table, and nothing at all resembling the vigorous drawing of the meekly submissive Lady Raeburn, vainly flying from the rough youngsters who tyrannized over her, at one moment half-smothered with pillows, at another queening it over the assembly of the fancy-dress young courtiers. Out-of-doors the children enjoyed a similar freedom. Sweet must have been the temper and strong the affection that tolerated their familiarities and madcap pranks. Mrs. Ferrier continues : — “Beyond the walls of the house we used to pass hours of a sunny forenoon in drawing a yellow child’s coach, which held two of us, who were as usual en- veloped in shawls and decorated with feathers and flowers for our masquerading. There was a black pony; I remember well its being led up and down the 1 16 Silly “ Shelly” Out-of- door Romping long- avenue by an old nurse with some one of the Raeburn children on it. When we were in quieter moods at play we used to go up four or five steps at the end of the passage leading to the great drawing-room, which was seldom entered except on company days. We children never quite felt at our ease when we stealthily opened the door of this large apartment ; we imagined there might be a ghost somewhere. “ There was a curious old beggar-man I must not forget to mention, who was fed and supported by the family, by name Barclay, alias ‘ Shelly,’ so called not from the poet, but from his shelling the peas, and who lived in some outhouse. This old creature was half- witted, and used to sweep the withered leaves from the lawn, the pigs, etc. short of stature, of a most miserable aspect, on his head an old grey hat crushed over his face, which was grizzly with unshaven beard. He wore a long-tailed coat, probably one of Sir Henry’s, and always had a long stick in his hand. We wished to be very familiar with him, but were never at our ease, owing to his strange appearance and his shuffling gait. He exercised a great fascination over us and we used to ask him to tell us stories, he was nearly idiotic — ‘silly,’ to use a although common Scotch phrase. He often said, as he turned round and pointed to the banks of Adam and Eve at St. Bernard’s the river, ‘ Ou ay, bairns, I can weel remember Adam and Eve skelpin’ [running] aboot naket amang the gowans [daisies] on the braes there.’ At 117 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. times this dirty, uncanny old man got hold of a fiddle, on which he scraped with more energy than success.” All Raeburn’s pleasures were simple and manly, and seeing him in his arm-chair at home aids the realisation of the truth of the encomiums passed upon him. His character was without spot or blemish; he wore “the white flower of a blameless life.” His knowledge must needs have been varied, and as he had a quick sense of humour, a fund of anecdote, and could tell a Scots story with effect, it is easy to understand More about Sir Henry's Character and Manner his attraction as companion, as host, and also as painter. In Cunningham’s phrase, he did the honours of a handsome house and an elegant table “with all the grace of a high-bred gentleman.” One good feature of his character and conduct is that at home he was not given to talking about his work. Armstrong acutely notes that none of those who have described him outside his studio bring his art into the picture at all. When he daily turned the key in his studio door, he seems to have been careful to lock his art inside. He gave it so many hours a day and no more. He may either have thought it idle to brood over his work, to think of it except when he was actually doing it, or he may have formed the healthy habit of clearing his mind for other things. In any case, there is no reason to doubt that, although no rapt enthusiast or morbid devotee, he was happy in his profession. He often, in fact, declared himself charmed with the work of the day, and spoke of 1 18 Studio Habits portrait-painting as the most delightful thing in the world. His sitters went to him in their happiest moods, with their pleasantest faces, and always left him delighted to find that they looked so well on canvas. According to Cunningham, he congratulated himself upon his profession’s leading to neither discord nor dispute, “ a circumstance much to the credit of his own tact and prudence.” Of his working habits here is Cunningham’s sketch : — “ 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 o JT * children, walked up to his great room in 32 York Place, now [1829-33] occupied by orking Colvin Smith, R.S.A., 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 pre- ferred painting the head and hands to any other part of the body, assigning as a reason that they required least consideration. A fold of drapery, or the natural ease which the casting of a mantle over the shoulder demanded, occasioned him 1 1 9 Rules with Sitters Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. 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 ahvays 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 utmost 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.” The above picture really belongs to the George Street period, and it is either Andrew or Dr. John Brown who shifts the scene to the York Place gallery. Regarding Raeburn’s apparently intuitive grasp of character, it came of sympathy rather than analysis. He, perhaps unconsciously, brought himself en rapport with his subject as the first step to “painting the soul.” He was himself so thoroughly human in all his tastes, pursuits, and even in his weaknesses — his interest in law, his quest of perpetual motion — that he readily understood humanity. Cunningham visited the studio in 1805 or 1806, and his impressions are remarkably clear-cut in outline. 20 Sir John Sinclair (p. 163). Inside the Studio The Studio Gallery His astonishment was great; he had never before seen works of art, or at least of genius, and had no concep- tion of the spirit and mind that could be embodied in colour. Being Scots he was especially struck by sundry Highland chiefs “ all plaided and plumed in their tartan array,” “whose picturesque dress and martial bearing contrasted finely with the graver costume and sterner brows of the Lowlanders.” After these he was led to dwell upon the family groups, women and children set against landscape backgrounds, with streams dashing down wooded slopes or loitering in level holms. Allan had a clearer eye for the picturesque than the artistic. But that on which his attention finally settled “was the visible capacity for thought which most of the heads had, together with their massive and somewhat gloomy splendour of colouring.” Raeburn certainly had a great advantage in the decided cast of feature found in his This chapter promises to be a mosaic — but a mosaic of living impressions, and so perhaps better than a catalogue raisonne of inaccessible works. In Raeburn’s case, in an altogether exceptional way, the painter grows out of the man. “ We see him,” says Dr. John Brown, “ in his spacious room in York Place, hearty ^ and keen, doing his best to make his sitters ' ^ look themselves and their best, instead of rown s looking ‘as if they couldn’t help it.’ He estimo?iy had a knack of drawing them out on what their mind was brightest, and making them forget and be them- 21 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. selves. For is it not this self-consciousness — this reflex action, this tiresome ego of ours which makes us human, to which man owes so much of his misery and great- ness ? What havoc it makes of photographs, unless they be of dogs or children, or very old people, whose faces like other old houses are necessarily picturesque!” There are several descriptions of Raeburn at work, gauging his sitters as well as painting them, in both the intellectual and the artistic travail of produc- tion. One sitter innominate writes : — “ He spoke a few words to me in his usual brief and kindly way — A S'tt ’ ev ^ en ^y put me into an agreeable mood ; . and then, having placed me in a chair on xpenence a pj at f orm at th e enc j 0 f h; s 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 a few minutes more. I had sat to other artists; their way was quite different — they made an outline care- fully in chalk, measured it with compasses, placed the canvas close to me, and looking me almost with- out ceasing in the face, proceeded to fill up the outline 122 A Sitter’s Impressions with colour. They succeeded best in the minute detail — Raeburn best in the general result of the expression ; they obtained by a multitude of little touches what he found by broader masses ; they gave more of the man, he gave most of the mind. “ I may add that I found him well-informed, with no professional pedantry about him ; indeed, no one could have imagined him a painter till he took up the brush and palette; he conversed with me upon mechanics and ship-building, and, if I can depend upon my own imperfect judgment, he had studied ship-architecture with great success. On one of the days of my sittings, he had to dine with me at the house of a mutual friend; our hour was six, and you know how punctual to time we of the North are; he painted at my portrait till within a quarter of an hour of the time, threw down his palette and brushes, went into a little closet, and in five minutes sallied out to dinner in a trim worthy of the first company. I sat six times, and two hours together.” A good deal more of Raeburn’s method is described by Dr. John Brown, who seems to write from personal observation, although his name does not appear in the list of the painter’s sitters. The Doctor’s day was later; he knew Macnee; his own portrait , was painted by Sir George Reid. He Ur7 l S says that, “Like Sir Joshua, Raeburn se °J a placed his sitters on a high platform, a J orm shortening the features, and giving a pigeon-hole view of the nostrils. The notion is that people should be 123 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. painted as if they were hanging- like pictures on the wall, a Newgate notion, but it was Sir Joshua’s. Raeburn and I have had good-humoured disputes about this. I appealed to Titian, Van Dyck, etc., for my authorities ; they always painted people as if they were sitting opposite to them, not on a mountebank stage, or dangling on the wall. “This great question we leave to be decided by those who know best. His manner of taking his likenesses explains the simplicity and power of his heads. Placing his sitter on the pedestal, he looked at him from the other end of a long room, gazing at him intently with his great dark eyes. Having got the idea of the man, what of him carried farthest and ‘ told,’ he walked hastily up to the canvas, never looking at his sitter, and put down what he had fixed in his inner eye; he then withdrew again, took another gaze and recorded its results, and so on, making no measurements. His hands are admirably drawn, full of expression, and evidently portraits.” One witness corroborates another, and the last to be summoned is Sir Walter Scott, whose recollection of the painter was communicated to Morrison after Raeburn’s death. Sir Walter was much affected by the event, and regret may have vitalised Sir Walter Scott on Raeburn his memory: “ I never knew Raeburn, I may say, till the painting of my last portrait. His conversation was rich, and he told his story well. His manly stride backwards, as he went to contemplate his work at a proper distance, and, 124 The Painter’s Method when resolved on the necessary point to be touched, his step forward, were magnificent. I see him, in my mind’s eye, with his hand under his chin, con- templating his picture; which position always brought me in mind of a figure of Jupiter which I have some- where seen.” His method may, on Stevenson’s suggestion, be reduced to a formula: (i) He posed his sitters upon a raised platform ; (2) he placed his easel either beside or behind his model, and did not copy a face by constant reference to the original, but laid it down by a series of swift impressions committed to memory; (3) he used only unprepared blank canvas ; (4) he painted with a free hand, without a mahlstick or other support; (5) he made no preliminary drawing, but began at once to model with the brush in colour; (6) he made no measurements; (7) he did not tire his sitters, but kept them only from an hour and a half to two hours; (8) the number of sittings ranged between four and six ; (9) °^ nu a he aimed his conversation at bringing out * character and living interest; (10) the forehead, chin, nose, and mouth were his first touches; (11) a fold of drapery, or the disposal of a mantle, cost him more study than a head. He made a pleasure of every sitting, a friend of every sitter. He did not treat his subjects as lay-figures, but reached truth by freeing them from self-consciousness and constraint, and infusing into them something of his own anima- tion. Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. The difficulties of such a method are more obvious than its advantages, and yet the latter are great. Its simple directness made for naturalistic truth. Neither was time thrown away upon preliminaries, nor was the painter’s first fresh enthusiasm allowed to evaporate while they were being performed. Having read as well as posed his sitter, he did not allow the first sitting to pass without stating the conception he had formed of his subject-model, and indicating the general artistic effect he intended to work out of the facts before him. 126 CHAPTER XI. POSITION AND PRACTICE. The end of Martin’s rivalry — Convention and Nature — In charge of the genius of Edinburgh — Forced flesh-painting — Raeburn painted nothing but portraits — A layman’s estimate of him — Artistry and likeness — His first commissions after settling — A soldier’s portrait — The Clerks of Penicuik — The Fergusons of Raith — The Taits of Harvieston — A naval hero — Morrison versus Cunningham — A London counsellor — Raeburn’s practice regarding backgrounds — The Spens portrait — “Singing Jamie Balfour” — Painter to the aristocracy. When Raeburn settled down to his life-work in Edin- burgh he had many advantages, and he had no rival. Martin held out for a time, and predicted a subsidence of the tide which was carrying David Martin withdraws in Despair “the lad in George Street” over his head into favour and patronage. He was dis- appointed; Raeburn’s reputation knew no ebb, and Martin gave up a hopeless competition in despair. Raeburn made no concession to the finical Ramsay- Martin convention. He had a feeling for colour which led him far from the lifeless monotony of Gavin Hamilton’s palette and the poverty of Ramsay and his followers. He looked to no precedent, listened to no 127 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. teaching that obstructed the direct way to Nature. His only standard was life. The crowd may neither under- stand Art nor be capable of appreciating artistic quality, but it can understand Nature, and is quick in its perception of Convention and Nature the breathing realism of life. It thus happened that, as one writer phrases it, the genius of Edinburgh was committed to Raeburn’s keeping at a time when science, poetry, and philosophy had made the city a centre of intellect and creative ima- gination. It was Raeburn’s good fortune not only to be afterwards honoured by his Sovereign, but through- out life to be portrait-painter extraordinary tenee to ran k, beauty, and genius generally. It n j, is said that he was over-anxious to sustain an , an ^ f ame as a colourist, that he planted in y the cheek the rose rather than the lily, and that thus his pictures contracted the vice of ultra- redness. The charge does not apply to the great majority of Raeburn’s works. “Ultra-redness” is, as a rule, nothing more than the ruddy hue of healthy life. The judgment of a layman-critic is usually the most intelligible to laymen, and supplies the clearest explana- tion of their appreciation. Such a layman-critic in Raeburn’s case is Dr. John Brown, and the elements a Raeburn yields to his analysis are exactly identical with those that appeal to the favourable judgment of the many. He has the courag'e of his convictions, and boldly places Raeburn beside the world’s greatest portrait-painters. To justify ranking him so high, Dr. 128 Lord Newton (p. 164). Ideality Brown enumerates Raeburn’s breadth and manliness, his strength and felicity of likeness and character, his simplicity and honesty of treatment, all attributes that are found only in men of the first genius. Raeburn stands nearly alone among the great portrait- painters in having never painted anything else. This, however, the Doctor insists, does not prove that he was without the ideal faculty. No man wanting , , . , , Ideality in it can excel as a portrait-painter, can make „ . r r Pnrtrmt- the soul look out from a face. The best . . likeness of a man should be “ the ideal of him painting realised.” As Coleridge used to say, “ A great portrait should be liker than its original;” it should contain more of the best, more of the essence of the man than ever was in any one living look. “In these two qualities,” Dr. Brown continues, “Raeburn always is strong; he never fails in giving a likeness, at once vivid, unmistakable, and pleasing. He paints the truth, and he paints it in love.” Instead of realising the ideal of a sitter, it would possibly be nearer the truth to say that Raeburn generalised his sitters. He made no arbitrary selection from the elements they yielded to analysis, but massed the ingredients and painted the result. He thereby reached a larger, broader general truth than if he had restricted himself to one facial expression, one passing phase of character. He built men and women out of a number of rapidly consecutive impressions, each one true, but only a part of the complete truth — the indi- vidual sitter in outward form, inward character and 129 K Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. mind. By generalising particulars he reached composite individuality. After his return from Rome to Edinburgh, till his death, his life is described as busy, happy, and vic- torious. Full of work, eager, hospitable, f faithful in his friendships, homely in his “L . habits, he was one of the best-liked men of lofession ^ jjj e mac j e j-h e double personal ap- peal, and he did the same in art. By reason of the happy union of supremely able artistry with realistic fidelity, he won the critical approbation of the guild, and the frank admiration of all ranks of people. Almost at a step he rose to the summit of his profession in Scotland. As it is impossible to consider his pictures in chrono- logical order, the best course to follow will be by selecting typical works. It is, however, almost certain that through Professor Andrew Duncan — his early employer for the Darwin trinket — he got his first oppor- tunity, after his Italian experience, of attracting the attention of Edinburgh. This would appear from Duncan’s “Tribute to the Memory of Raeburn.” It is there stated that the Harveian Society virtually introduced him to public notice by employing him for a portrait of William Inglis, one of the ^ ie m original members of the Harveian, and, Harveian sa y g << Tribute,” “the chief restorer of Society ^he Ludi Apollinares at Edinburgh, games annually celebrated on the Links of Leith, at which there is an admirable combination of healthful exercise with social mirth.” The Society next commissioned 130 Early Commissions a portrait of its President, Alexander Wood. Raeburn also painted at this time his first portrait of Professor Duncan himself, founder of the Royal Public Dispensary. It is a full-length and became the property of the Royal Medical Society. Thirty years later, or thereabouts, he painted a second portrait of Dr. Duncan for the Royal College of Physicians. The above triad of portraits — the “Duncan,” “Wood,” and “ Inglis ” — along with those of “Lord President Dundas ” (see Chapter VIII.) and “Lord Eldin” — Raeburn’s old “ herrin’ ” friend, John Clerk — and others unknown caught the eye of Edinburgh. “Principal Hill of St. Andrews” is also grouped with early works, and as the “Eldin” is one of Raeburn’s most penetrating interpretations of character, so the “ Hill ” is one of those richest in the promise of coming power. The “Eldin” here referred to is that done about 1787 — not the one with the Crouching Venus (see Plate and page 80) — when the subject was plain John Clerk, a rising young counsel. It is a three- quarters length, in which Clerk appears in an advo- cate’s wig and gown. There is no mistaking the lawyer- like expression — astute, knowing, satirical. Shortly afterwards a co-ordinate triad of portraits passed into the Senate Hall of the University, those of “Principal William Robertson,” the his- torian; “Professor Adam Ferguson,” who earned^ also wrote history, and held successively the chairs of Natural Philosophy and Moral Philosophy; " Lord Eldin ” and Raeburn's Character- reading Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. and “Lord Provost Thomas Elder.” The last-named is entered in Mr. Caw’s Raeburn catalogue with a note that it was painted for Edinburgh University in 1798, eleven years after Raeburn took his George Street studio. It is certainly later in style than the “ Robertson ” and “ Ferguson.” The Lord Provost is painted in his official robes, and wears the chain of office. The “ Ferguson” is warm in tone, the Professor dressed in black being set against a crimson curtain background. Principal Robertson is painted in clerical dress, possibly as signifying his well-known power in the pulpit. A fourth University portrait is that of “ Professor John Robison.” Like the others, it is a three-quarters length. He held the chair of Natural Philosophy, and in the background is a telescope, telling of astro- nomical studies. His dress — a white night-cap, and dressing-gown of striped red — also points to the student of the night. It is of this Student of ^ rQSS that Dr. Brown — so often quoted and e to be quoted as the possessor of a wide personal knowledge of Raeburn’s subjects — writes in his enthusiastic way: — “Did you ever see a dressing- gown so glorified? And the night-cap, and the look of steady speculation in the eyes — a philosopher all over.” There is no clue to the date of this picture; but considering the face and expression in connection with the Professor’s death in 1805, there can be no great error in ascribing it to about the latter part of the ’nineties. Somewhat earlier is a military portrait, that of 132 The Clerks of Penicuik “Andrew Agnew,” in the uniform — red with yellow facings and one epaulette — of a lieutenant of the Twelfth Regiment. It is of the picturesque military type, still brilliant although the painter has softened the bright colours into tone. The powdered hair he has used with rare intelligence to enhance the freshness of the carnations and to impart solidity to the finely modelled head. It is the work of a craftsman, skilled in handling his materials, who knew his trade. A notable portrait of 1795 is that of “ Chief Baron Robert Dundas of Arniston,” but a more remarkable and an earlier work, belonging to about ^ 1790, is an oblong canvas containing the two figures of “Sir John Clerk, Bart., of er . S . Penicuik, and Lady Clerk” (see Plate). enicui They stand like lovers in a landscape, through which a stream makes its devious way, the same perchance that meanders through The Gentle Shepherd , by Habbie’s Howe. Sir John wears a broad-brimmed, slouch hat, dark coat, and light breeches ; Lady Clerk is in white, and wears no head-dress, leaving the sun to work its magic through her hair. His right arm is extended, as if pointing out something in the land- scape to which, his face being turned towards his own left, he appears to be calling his companion’s attention ; his left arm is caressingly carried round his lady’s waist. Her left hand hangs downwards, looping up her dress, in the sheen of which it is well-nigh lost; her right rests confidingly upon her husband’s shoulder, over which it makes an attractively effective appearance. I 33 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Lady Clerk’s face is indicative of attention but is some- what stiffly constrained, hard-set, and artificial in respect of expression, as compared with Sir John’s. The peculiar effect of the work comes from the illumination. The light comes in from the left, high and behind the figures, so that as Sir John is taken full-front, except the slight turn of the head, his back is towards it. It falls upon Lady Clerk’s right face, and across the kerchief folded upon her bosom, merely touching Sir John’s extended arm and right side into shape. His face, nevertheless, is lighted up under the overhanging hat-brim, and that is the centre of the artistic problem and of the painter’s ingenuity: Sir John’s face is seen in the light reflected from Lady Clerk’s dress. To add to the interest of this work the Clerks were relatives of John Clerk, Lord Eldin, Raeburn’s life- long friend, and it is, as Cunningham suggests, worthy of notice, as a work of the painter’s youth or early manhood, and also, he adds, for the truth of the like- nesses. The Clerks were, moreover, patrons of art. On the ceiling of Penicuik Hall, Alexander Runciman painted his twelve illustrations of Ossian, including the Bard singing to Malvina, and the really wonderful “ Death of Agandecca.” An earlier and weaker work, belonging in all likeli- hood to the earlier ’eighties, is a portrait of “ Sir Ronald Ferguson,” in connection with which the entire Raith group, except “ Mrs. Ferguson ” and her two children already commented on (p. 90), may be con- 134 The Fergusons of Raith The Fergusons of Raith sidered. General Sir Ronald Ferguson, G.C.B., is represented as out shooting, with gun and dog, set in a wide landscape. The general conception of the picture brings it into line with the Clerk portraits. It may have belonged to the early ’nineties, a few years before a full-length of Sir Ronald done in 1795. Next comes a pleasing oblong, painted in prevailing tones of soft grey, in which are set against the sky two half-length youths, “ Sir Ronald and Robert Ferguson.” The elder, Sir Ronald, in grey, is in full light on the left, and holds a full-drawn bow; Robert is in shadow towards the right, dressed in brown and grey. The relative value of tints has been nicely calcu- lated. It gives emphasis to the modelling, and makes the net colour-result a low-toned harmony. As a study in design it is remarkable, it might almost be called unique, in Raeburn’s practice. Its outstanding features are the setting of Robert’s shadowed head in a tri- angular frame composed of the arrow, the upper arm of the bow, and the bowstring, and the continuation of the hard line of the latter in the softer receding line of Sir Robert’s cut-away coat, where also the upper triangle reappears in reduced form. This Robert, with his queer, “ auld-farrant ” face, maybe the same who came to be Member of Parliament, and was painted by Raeburn a year or so before his death. There is also a “William Ferguson, of Raith,” with his third son, in which the harmony of brown and grey again makes itself felt, although the softer tones are *35 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. warmed by the red and yellow of the vest. This son, described by Mr. Caw as “ William Ferguson of Kilrie, ^ third son of William Ferguson of Raith,” • appears in a separate portrait, the most rXCLI'TYL'LTLP’ 11 L L ' Portrait * distinctly charming of the Ferguson group (see Plate). Its date is probably before 1790. The artist painted an oval frame as a setting for the head and bust of the boy, who wears a black jacket, a yellow vest, and a white shirt open at the neck and chest. The light comes in from the left, touching only the nose and right side of the face, which looks slightly down- wards, and is for the most part in shadow. It is a fine, smiling, oval, well-bred face, of a distinctively aristo- cratic cast, after the well-known type found in Shelley, and Raeburn has made the most of it. He has pro- duced a captivating portrait of great artistic merit, and redolent of youth, beauty, and pleasure. A few of Raeburn’s most remarkable and suggestive portraits belong to the ’nineties, although, taking them in the mass, his latest works are his best. His “John Tait of Harvieston,” with his grandson, is in every way noteworthy and interesting. The colour is rather low, pitched in a key of cold grey, but the char- acterisation is superb. The face is of the pronounced Scots type, which made the greater part of Raeburn’s opportunity, strong and shrewd but kindly, stern and resolute of will but containing the elements of ready humour. It belongs to the closing years of the eighteenth century. Another striking picture, “Viscount Duncan” (see 136 James Wardrop of Torbanehill (p. 165). - A Naval Hero Plate), the hero of Camperdown, and captor of De Winter, belongs to the same period, having been painted in 1798 for the Incorporation of Shipmasters, Trinity House, Leith. It is a full-length; the Admiral wears the uniform of his rank; he stands beside a table bearing a chart, upon which the finger-tips of the left hand rest; the right hangs by the Admiral’s side. Dr. John Brown thinks it of the true, heroic type, worthy of hanging beside Reynolds’s Lord Heathfield, holding in his hand the Key of Gibraltar. The Doctor continues: “It is the incarnation of quiet, cheerful, condensed power and command. The eyes are bright, almost laughing, and at their ease — the mouth fixed beyond change, almost grim — the whole man instinct with will and reserved force. The colouring is exquisite, and the picture is in perfect condition.” This is well within the mark, but in the drawing of the figure Raeburn is not seen at his best. Morrison reports a conversation between Sir Walter Scott and Raeburn, which can be applied to the Duncan picture, although, considering dates, it is more likely to have referred to the portraits of either Admiral Inglis or Admiral Maitland, or other hero of the sea. “ I wish,” said Sir Walter, “that you would let us have a little more finishing in the backgrounds. Sir Thomas Lawrence, I understand, employs a landscape- painter.” The Hero of Camper- down 37 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Of that I do not approve,’* said Sir Henry. “ Landscape in the background of a portrait ought to be nothing more than the shadow of a landscape ; effect is all that is wanted. Nothing ought to divert the eye from the principal object — the face; and it ought to be something in the style of Milton’s Raeburn and Landscape Back - grounds Death ; — ‘ The other shape — If shape it might be call’d that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be call’d that shadow seem’d, For each seem’d either.’ I am at present painting an Admiral, and had some thought of asking my friend, the Minister of Dudding- ston, to paint me a sea; but, on second thoughts, I am afraid that Mr. Thomson’s sea might put my part of the picture to the blush.” Writing in 1843, Morrison may not be quite accurate in his rendering of what passed, although from what is said of him by Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg, he must be held one of the most trustworthy of witnesses. His credibility is a matter of importance, as he is the only witness to be called in the last scene of all. Other- wise, in view of Raeburn’s practice, the words put into his mouth are remarkable. They must be construed as indicating the strict subordination of setting to figure, of background to portrait-subject. Even to that extent they cannot be brought into accord with Cunningham. He says that one of Raeburn’s critics objected to his Backgrounds azure backgrounds, and that certain Royal Academicians were desirous of rooting out the heresies of the time. One of them wrote Raeburn as follows: — “ I congratulate you on the great improvements . Your Advice from a Royal Academi- cian which you have made in your backgrounds, pictures are now altogether beautiful. There is no beautiful head and finely- executed figure ruined by a systematic background; everything is in harmony, and your subject has fairplay. ... I beg you to pardon this forwardness ; I have ever felt a great interest in your reputation, and been much morti- fied when, year after year, you persisted in a manner that was so disadvantageous to your fame. Pursue your present plan, and your immortality is certain.” No hint is given by Cunningham of either the date or the writer of this letter. Mrs. Heaton, in her (1879) edition of Cunningham’s Lives , says confidently, “This honest critic was no doubt Wilkie,” a dictum at variance with both the style and the substance of the letter. It is not at all like an utterance of the diffident and reticent Sir David. In the first place, Wilkie was Raeburn’s junior by nearly thirty years. Raeburn was exhibiting in the Royal Academy when Wilkie was a boy of seven. In the next place, it was not Wilkie’s way to offer unasked criticism and gratuitous advice, and far less to predict immortality. Cunningham goes on to say that the changes in the backgrounds, mentioned in the letter, were made in obedience to the reiterated remonstrances of friends 39 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. ham versus Morrison in London, and were in accordance with a taste which, without hesitation, Raeburn pronounced corrupt and unnatural. “He condemned the alterations, and said he had exchanged nature for affectation.” This is . hardly credible. It is at utter variance * with Raeburn’s position in the Morrison conversation. It is possibly appropriate to paint a Highland chief in tartan in a landscape of misty mountain and lonely valley, pro- vided its realistic grandeur do not belittle his Chief- ship. Such landscape ought to be but a shadow, a dream of his Highland home and realm. The opinion, furthermore, is unavoidable, that Raeburn himself preferred the practice he followed in his best pictures. R. A. M. Stevenson goes right in the teeth of Cunningham, holding that, when he resorted to the unreal scenic background so much used by English portrait-painters, Raeburn did so against his own will and better judgment. It is unnecessary to go so far to the opposite extreme. In the mean lies the fact that, while his taste was immature and his style not fully formed, Raeburn painted scenes for back- grounds. He followed the same course in his later practice when his subject seemed to require it. Steven- son appears to go nearer the absolutely right construc- tion of Raeburn’s habit when he says that the prevailing English fashion did not agree with his direct and honest style of work, with the bold, square touch by which he emphasised the light in the variously inclined planes of 140 Raeburn's Practice in Back- grounds “Dr. Spens” the flesh. What follows is unquestionably sound : — Raeburn’s own style “ was incompatible with pretty elegance, spotty colouring, and theatrical disposition of the canvas. It went best with the solemn, natural simplicity of Velasquez, the Dutchmen, and the Flem- ings.” To assume that Raeburn was so little of an artist as not to see this for himself is folly. All such reasoning, of course, runs directly counter to Cunning- ham, and throws doubt — if it can be said to leave a doubt — upon the distinction he imputes to Raeburn, between nature and affectation. An extreme illustration of the point occurs in the portrait of “ Dr. Nathaniel Spens” (see Plate), painted in 1791 for the Royal Company of Archers, or which he was a leading member. I he Doctor stands in archer’s uniform, with his bow full-drawn, against a landscape back- ground. The portrait carries to a white heat the realistic appreciation of Dr. John Brown. He knows no nobler portrait. He cannot get away from the eye, the firm legs, the gloved hands, the cock of the bonnet. He pounces upon “the emblem dear” at the archer’s feet — “a sturdy Scotch thistle bristling all over with the nemo me .” “This great picture is done to the quick, tense with concentrated action.” “ There is true genius here.” So far as they go, these opinions are right, even if somewhat over-stated ; but realistic feeling, as dis- tinguished from critical judgment, rarely goes below the artistic surface. In such cases Raeburn adapted 141 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. treatment to subject, style to patronage. He tempered art and craftsmanship with politic judgment. The Royal Archers wished the presentment of a prominent member to hang in their hall. Raeburn supplied them with what they sought — a living bowman taken in the act. He did not try for the subtlety of Rembrandt, or the grave, mysterious simplicity of Velasquez. He was content to paint life and nature in a plainly literal manner, and these qualities brought back the attention of the art-world to Raeburn when this Spens portrait was exhibited at Burlington House in 1875 or there- abouts. It re-established him in popular favour, and made his power and skill known. The combination of literalness with restraint makes the greatness of the picture. It is a strong, thoroughly masculine work, and if the design is somewhat fragmentary, the model- ling is solid and, with the well-calculated pose and action, makes for the naturalism at which the painter aimed. To about the same time, or it may be a year or two later, belongs the portrait of “James Balfour,” done for Golfers’ Hall, Leith. “ Singing Jamie ” is inging re p resen t e d in the act of singing his favourite Jamie song, “When I hae a saxpence under my Balfour thoom [thumb].” The picture has a curious little history, which Dr. Brown must be allowed to tell : — “You hear the refrain — 1 Toddlin’hame, toddlin’hame; Round as a neep [turnip] she cam’ toddlin’ hame.’ Mr. Melville, of Hanley, with whom have perished so 142 “ Singing Jamie Balfour ” many of the best Edinburgh stories, used to tell how he got this picture, which for many years hung and sang in his hospitable dining-room. It was bought, at the selling-off of the effects of the old Leith Golf- house, by a drunken old caddie for 30s. Mr. Melville heard of this, went to the ancient creature, and got it for 40s. and two bottles of whisky. James Stuart of Dunearn offered him (Mr. Melville) £ 80 and two pipes of wine for it, but in vain. Sir David Wilkie coveted it also, and promised to pay for it by a picture of his own, but died before this was fulfilled.” It is catalogued now as belonging to Mrs. Babington. In this case also the naturalistic quality of the portrait is that which carries it into favour. It may be inci- dentally artistic, but its chief value lies in its realisation of “ Singing Jamie Balfour.” Taking all the portraits mentioned collectively, it is seen that Raeburn did not paint pictures of or for the bourgeoisie. Edinburgh was aristocratic, and he painted chiefly the aristocracy of either title or intellect. That accounts for Patrons in the much of his good fortune in having so many A ristocracy sitters representative of Scotland. He not only painted the genius of Edinburgh — he perpetuated the Scottish type. 43 CHAPTER XII. PORTRAITS OF BURNS AND SCOTT. Did Raeburn paint an original portrait of Burns ? — The poet’s move- ments — Raeburn’s whereabouts — The Nasmyth portraits of Burns — Raeburn’s evidence on the subject — Portraits of Sir Walter Scott — One painted for Constable, 1808 — How it got to Dalkeith Palace — A second full-length now at Abbotsford — Its history — Two half-lengths of Scott — Scott’s opinion of the two — A tangled story cleared up — Allan and Raeburn. Frequently has the question been raised, and lightly dismissed unanswered, as to whether Raeburn painted Did Burns an or ^ na ^ portrait of Robert Burns. Both , circumstantial and written evidence favour a bit to . „ 7 ~ negative answer. When the poet first went IxCLCbllTTl • 0 1 to Edinburgh, on the 27th of November 1786, Raeburn was in Rome. Burns lingered in the city until the following summer, made a Border tour, a short run in the Western Highlands, paid Ayrshire a flying visit, and was back in Edinburgh on the 7th of August 1787. On the 25th of the same month he started upon his long Highland tour with “Willie” Nicol, and returned to Edinburgh on the 16th of Sep- tember. Early in October while waiting for a settle- ment with Creech, his publisher, he went with Dr. 144 John Wauchope (p. 165). A Burns Myth Adair to Harvieston, going by Stirling and up the Devon Valley. He was in Edinburgh again on the 20th of October, and went off on an unknown date to look after the farm he ultimately took in Dumfriesshire. He also visited Ayrshire; early in December he met with the accident which confined him to his lodgings for a few weeks. In spring, in the middle of the Clarinda episode, he went to Glasgow, Mossgiel, and Dumfries, and in March, 1788, was again in Edinburgh, after taking Ellisland, and seems to have left the capital finally on the 24th. Raeburn would probably be settling into his George Street studio when Burns was touring in the north. Prior to that the poet-artist had met many of the painter-artist’s friends and subjects — including Blair, Dugald Stewart, and Henry Mackenzie. It may, accordingly, seem strange that, although moving in the same circle and knowing the same people, the painter and the poet should never have met, but there is no evidence that they did. It must be remembered that Raeburn was in Rome during Burns’s halcyon days, in 1786-87, in the society of the capital, and when Raeburn came home Burns’s time and attention were fully occupied throughout the autumn and winter of 1787-88, until he left the city. There are, nevertheless, several references to Rae- burn in connection with portraits of Burns, which may here be recounted preparatory to their dismissal. Alexander Nasmyth painted three portraits of Burns —the original in the National Gallery of Scotland, 145 L Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. one painted for George Thomson, and the one known as the Auchendrane portrait. The Thomson picture The Nasmyth Portraits of Bur?is National Portrait catalogued as is passed in 1858 to the Gallery, London. It having been painted by Alexander Nasmyth, and retouched by Sir Henry Raeburn. The latter statement is not known to be sup- ported by any testimony apart from the catalogue. Robert Brydall says that to enumerate Raeburn’s portraits would be to name the most eminent Scotsmen of his day, “including the poet Burns, whose portrait he painted about 1803 [when Burns had been seven years in his grave], for Cadell and Davies, which is now, unfortunately, lost.” The statement of fact is true, but the language is misleading. There is Raeburn’s own evidence upon the subject. There were in the Craibe-Angus collection five docu- D 7 7 ments bearing upon it, the genuineness of which has not been questioned. In a letter to Cadell and Davies, of the 14th of November 1803, Raeburn says: “I have finished a copy of Burns, the poet, from the original portrait painted by Mr. Nasmyth. I have shown it to Mr. Cunningham, who thinks it very like him.” The reference here must be to Alexander Cunningham, Burns’s friend and correspondent, who sat to Raeburn for his portrait, and thus in all likelihood came to be asked for his opinion of the Burns. On the nth of December, Raeburn again wrote to the London publishers: “ I enclose you a receipt for the case con- 146 Own Evidence A Copy of Nasmyth taining Burns’s Portrait. I have twenty guineas for a portrait the size of Burns’s. I do not wish you to remit the money to me.” The receipt is that of the shipping company, the portrait having been forwarded from Leith, and Raeburn drew a bill for £21 upon the publishers in payment of the copy. Finally, he wrote them on the 22nd of February 1804: “ Nothing could be more gratifying to me than the approbation you expressed of the Copy I made for you of Robt. Burns.” These extracts must be held to settle the question. So far as known, Raeburn had no sittings from Burns, and painted no original portrait of him. Next to Burns comes Scott, of whom Mr. Caw enumerates six portraits. One of these was done in Scott’s youth, and one, in the possession of p > y f the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, is a replica. TJT 7 , J . , , . . _ Sir Walter About the remaining tour, which hold a Scott place in literature as well as art, there is a great diversity of opinion, and there are many variant statements. The first was painted for Constable in 1808. On the sale of his effects it was acquired by the Duke of Buccleuch, and after hanging for a time in Dalkeith Palace was transferred to the ducal residence of Bowhill. It is a full-length. Scott, dressed in black and wearing Hessian boots, sits upon a ruined wall with “ Camp” at his feet, and in the distance are Hermitage Castle and the mountains of Liddesdale. “ Camp ” is the English bull-terrier of which Sir Walter wrote on the day of its death, that he could not dine out because “ a very dear friend ” had died. *47 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Lockhart calls this a noble portrait. Dr. John The 1808 ^rown as ^ s ^ there was ever a more poetic Portrait P ortra i t °f a poet. More critical testimony r ri , . is that of Mr. John B. Saurey Morritt, who, writing of Scott as he appeared in 1808, says : — “ His person at that time may be exactly known from Raeburn’s first picture, which had just been executed for his bookseller, Constable, and which was a most faithful likeness of him and his dog ‘ Camp.’ The literal fidelity of the portraiture, however, is its prin- cipal merit. The expression is serious and contempla- tive, very unlike the hilarity and vivacity then habitual to his speaking face, but quite true to what it was in the absence of such excitement. His features struck me at first as commonplace and heavy, but they were almost always lighted up by the flashes of the mind within.” Of this portrait Scott wrote to the Constables on the 12th of January 1809, asking that it should be con- sidered as done at his debit and for himself, and promising that it should be forthcoming for the fulfil- ment of any engagement they might make for having it engraved. In his Journal, on the 12th December 1826, there is a very touching reference to it. That was the year (1825-26) of the great failure, when Ballantyne went down, involving Sir Walter Scott to the extent of ^130,000. He writes of driving to Dalkeith but missing the Duke, and continues: — “ One thing I saw there which pleased me much, and that was my own 148 Sir Walter Scott picture, painted twenty years ago by Raeburn for Con- stable, and which was to have been brought to sale among the rest of the wreck, hanging quietly up in the dining-room at Dalkeith. I do not care much about these things, yet it would have been annoying to have been knocked down to the best bidder even in effigy; and I am obliged to the friendship and delicacy which placed the portrait where it now is.” This portrait was subsequently hung in the Library at Bowhill. How it got there will be explained by- and-by. Raeburn painted a second full-length portrait of Scott in the following year, 1809, for which he had several additional sittings. He added to the canine companions of his sitter, and changed the ^ ie I $°9 background to the valley of the Yarrow. Portrait This picture had a curious history before of Scott it reached Abbotsford. In a note to Scott’s Journal, Mr. David Douglas, who both edited and published that most interesting of Diaries, says that this portrait was handed over to Mr. James Skene, of Rubislaw, at the time of the novelist’s financial catastrophe, and remained in his possession until 1831, when he returned it. The circumstances are detailed by Mr. Douglas in another note (ii. 368). He says : — “ Mr. Skene tells us that when No. 39 Castle Street was ‘ displenished ’ in 1826, Scott sent him the full- length portrait of himself by Raeburn, now at Abbots- ford, saying that he did not hesitate to claim his protection for the picture, which was threatened to be 149 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. paraded under the hammer of the auctioneer, and he felt that Skene’s interposition to turn aside that buffet might admit of being justified.” Mr. Douglas goes on to quote from Mr. Skene’s Reminiscences, where it is said that when Scott’s health began to break, and the plan of his going abroad was proposed, Mr. Skene thought it would be proper to return the picture. To that end he had a most successful copy made of it for himself, “an absolute facsimile.” This action of Mr. Skene’s very aptly forestalled a wish expressed in a pathetically confused letter to him from Scott, dated from Abbotsford the 16th of January 1831. Scott asks Skene to have the portrait copied, and to send him the copy, “ as Walter will probably be anxious to have a memorial of my better days.” As noted by Mr. Skene, he kept the copy and returned the original. On the 16th of June 1826, Scott wrote in his Journal, “ I got yesterday a present of two engravings from Sir Henry Raeburn’s portrait of me, which (poor fellow) was the last he ever painted, and certainly not his worst.” The portrait referred to is described as that painted for Lord Montagu in 1822, but that is a mistake. Mr. Douglas’s note is slightly obscure, as he obviously confounds the original with what he calls the replica. Raeburn painted two half-lengths of Scott in 1822-23 (see Plate), of which Morrison’s account is the most circumstantial. He says that Raeburn had expressed regret to him that Sir Walter had declined again to sit to him, as he thought that his previous portraits of Scott 15 ° Scott as a Sitter had a heavy look. He found the romancist a restless sitter. Scott, on the other hand, complained, “Not only myself, but my very dog growls when he observes a painter preparing his palette.” Morrison, however, succeeded in persuading Sir Walter to sit, although he did it grudgingly. “I have been painted so often,' he said, “that I sick of the thing, especially since, with the excep- am tion of Raeburn’s old portrait, I can only see so many old shoemakers or blue-gown beggars. Even Lawrence, whose portrait is in progress, has been thinking more of the poet than the man. Scott an Unwilling Sitter ‘ The poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling is what he is aiming at; but I anticipate a failure. Raeburn’s portrait looks down, and Sir Thomas’s too much up. I think that something between the two would be better; I hate attitudes.” 1 When Scott met Raeburn for the first sitting, he told him he might find a customer for the picture. “You may for a copy, Sir Walter,” Raeburn replied; “ but the portrait that I am now painting is for myself, although it may find its way, in time, into your own family.” A copy of this portrait, Morrison adds, was painted 1 In the Messrs. Jack’s Edinburgh edition of Scott (1903) are no fewer than twenty-one portraits of Sir Walter, including those by Sir Edwin Landseer, Sir William Allan, and one, comparatively little known, by Sir Francis Grant. Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. for Lord Montagu; “but the original is in the posses- sion of the painter’s only son, Henry Raeburn, Esq., of St. Bernard’s.” According to Mr. Douglas, ^ aier Lord Montagu got his choice of the two. The one he took remained at Ditton, near S Windsor, until 1845, when, on Lord Mon- tagu’s death, it became the property of his son-in-law, the Earl of Home, and was removed (1889) to The Hirsel, Coldstream. Mr. Douglas continues: — “The replica remained in the artist’s possession, and the engraving referred to [by Scott] was made from it by Mr. Walker, and published in 1826. ... I do not know what became of the original, which may be identified by an official chain round the neck not intro- duced in the Montagu picture.” Morrison describes this “official” chain as “such as Scott used to hang his whistle or dog-call by,” and, to make its identity sure, adds that the same kind of chain is painted round Sir Walter’s neck in the last portrait by Raeburn. As Sir Walter gave Morrison a medallion portrait of him- self — a glass casting from the wax by Henning — suspended from a similar chain, the latter may have had it before him as he wrote. In the quotation from Mr. Douglas the words “replica” and “ original ” are undoubtedly applied to one and the same picture. Of the two half-lengths, which were painted at the same time, Mr. Douglas has traced one to The Hirsel. He says the other remained in the artist’s possession. That, however, is the one with the chain round the neck. On Raeburn’s death it 152 Mrs, James Campbell (p. 169). A Ducal Critic passed to his family, and, according to the catalogue, was lent by them to the Raeburn exhibition of 1876. It was acquired from them by Mr. Arthur Sanderson. This, and not the Montagu copy, is the picture that was engraved in stipple by Walker in 1826. The two pictures are very much alike, and Lockhart describes the Montagu as “a massive, strong likeness, heavy at first sight, but which grows into favour upon better acquaintance — the eyes very deep and fine.” Scott’s opinion of Raeburn’s work would have been interesting, but unhappily the statements of it do not agree, and to Sir Walter’s own words the preference must needs be given. Morrison thinks the half-length by far the best likeness of Scott ever painted. “After two or three sittings,” he says, “ Sir Walter was highly pleased. ‘ I wish,’ he said to Raeburn, ‘none but your portraits of me were in existence. A portrait may be strikingly like, and yet have a very disagreeable effect.’” It happens that there are two letters extant, in one of which Sir Walter gives an estimate of Raeburn widely different from that ascribed to him by Morrison, and yet reconcilable with it. They refer to an unpainted portrait, and come in between the full-lengths of 1808-9 and the half-lengths of 1822-23. The first, from the Duke of Buccleuch to Scott, seems to have been written in April 1819, and contains a remarkable specimen of criticism. “ My prodigious undertaking,” the Duke writes, “of a west wing at Bowhill is begun. A library of forty- *53 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. one feet by twenty-one is to be added to the present drawing-room. A space for one picture is reserved over the fire-place, and in this warm situation I intend to place the Guardian of Literature. I should be happy to have my friend ‘ Maida ’ appear. It is now almost proverbial, ‘ Walter Scott and his Dog.’ Raeburn should be warned that I am as well acquainted with my friend’s hands and arms as with his nose — and Van Dyck was of my opinion. Many of R.’s works are shamefully finished — the face studied, but every- thing else neglected. This is a fair opportunity of producing something really worthy of his skill.” Scott replied from Abbotsford, on the 15th of April 1819, and said he would be proud and happy to sit, but the Full- length Portraits “ I hesitate a little about Raeburn, unless your Grace is quite determined. He has very much to do; works ^ just now chiefly for cash, poor fellow, as he . . can have but a few years to make money; pinion oj anc j h as twice already made a very chowder- headed person of me. I should like much (always with your approbation) to try Allan, who is a man of real genius, and has made one or two glorious portraits, though his predilection is to the historical branch of the art.” The Allan referred to is Sir William Allan, P.R.S.A., whose works in history and romance seem to have appealed to Scott on the side of his imagination and antiquarianism, and so to have led to the preference expressed in this letter. In portraiture, Allan does not *54 Scott and Raeburn approach Raeburn, although it must be admitted that in the full-lengths Scott does look somewhat “ chowder- headed,” dull, and uninspired. His depreciation of Raeburn is manifestly due to his not having then seen the later half-lengths painted three years sub- sequently, which justify the change of opinion mentioned by Morrison. They, moreover, lend the latter a credibility which might otherwise be in doubt, for it must be kept in mind that he wrote in 1843, and it takes a long memory accurately to report words spoken twenty-one years previously. The portrait asked by the Duke of Buccleuch was never painted, and the “warm situation” reserved for it in the library at Bowhill came in that way to be ultimately filled by the first full-length painted for Constable in 1808. Another discrepancy arises upon a minor point. As mentioned above, Morrison makes out that Scott refused to sit a third time to Raeburn, and that it was only by his intervention that Sir Walter at length reluctantly consented to do so. This is either a mistake, or applies exclusively to the “ chain” portrait Raeburn painted for himself. Otherwise, the facts, as given by Lockhart, are that Lord Montagu asked Scott to sit, “ without delay for a smaller picture on his own behalf.” A hearty and prompt assent is given in a letter from Abbotsford, of the 27th of March 1822. Sir Walter wrote that he would arrange with Raeburn when he returned to Edinburgh in May. T 55 Lord Montagu’s Half- length of Scott Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. The result, of course, was the Earl of Home’s half- length, now at The Hirsel, the ideal Scott, nowise “chowder-headed,” but intellectual, full of the fire of imagination, and touched with humour. This is the portrait reproduced in our Plate. One feature recalls a phrase of Dr. John Brown — “the pleasant mouth that has a burr in it.” i5<5 CHAPTER XIII. SOME PORTRAITS OF PROMINENCE. A lesser Arnold — Francis Horner, M.P. — Raeburn’s gallery of friends — Jeffrey, Cockburn, and Henry Mackenzie — The Raeburn family group — Raeburn in collaboration — Sir Henry and Lady Raeburn — “The gem of all” — The Macnab — Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster — Raeburn’s highest as executant — Lord Newton — The Wardrop and Wauchope portraits — A summary of practice. Some of Raeburn’s portraits are notable by reason of their subjects ; others as works of art apart from their subjects. Only a lesser Arnold was “Dr. Alexander Adam,” Rector of the Royal or r _^ 1 °J High School of Edinburgh, and his portrait, painted about 1808, is one of Raeburn’s most successful readings of character (see Plate). He had firmness for rule, and sympathy to win his pupils’ affection. Fourteen of them commissioned the portrait. In gown and dress of black, with his fine sagacious face, so curiously expressive of love and laughter, he looks the ideal Rector. The right hand is extended as if to still the unseen boys. It recalls to Dr. John Brown the story of Adam when dying. Lifting up his thin hand, he said: “But it grows dark, boys; you may go.” If not himself renowned, he won renown 157 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Sydney Smith 07i Francis Homier through such pupils as Scott, Jeffrey, Brougham, and Cockburn. Another of his pupils was “ Francis Horner,” whose portrait Raeburn has also made a revelation of a singularly attractive personality. There was ability but no greatness in Horner, although his practical achievement might have been great had he, who died at thirty-nine, been permitted to plough his furrow to the end. He was beloved by his friends and universally esteemed. Of him Sydney Smith said : “The commandments were written on his face, and I have often told him there was not a crime he might not commit with impunity, as no judge or jury who saw him would give the smallest degree of credit to any evidence against him.” His nature was sweet, his character spotless, and he possessed a full measure of the practical moral qualities — industry, method, consistency, and the reasonableness which enabled him to measure himself, and to know the work in life he was fitted • l r to do. He sat for a time in Parliament, „ J 1 and during his candidature succeeded so far in putting aside the proprieties that, mirabile dictu , he “kissed some women that were very pretty.” But that side of politics is not the one best fitted to what is known of the prudent, modest, common-sensible Francis Horner. In the portrait, Raeburn shows more of the well- intentioned, virtuous citizen and student, than of the Parliamentarian, more of the kindly controller of 153 Parlia- mentary Candidate The Home Gallery The Painter’s Private Collection affection than of the political partisan. The original was painted in 1812 for Leonard Horner; the above opinion is based upon a replica done in 1817 for the Speculative Society. The face is not strongly marked or decided in either feature or expression; its wise neutrality made the painter’s difficulty, and is the evidence of his skill both in art and in getting at the inner man. Besides Mr. Sanderson’s Scott, Raeburn painted many portraits for his own private collection. One of these was that of “ Lord Jeffrey,” which went into the possession of the Earl of Rosebery. The brown eyes are especially fine, full of the light of intelligence, and the expressive mouth is shapely. The whole face is eloquent of such a character as imagination might ascribe to Jeffrey, acuteness for the advocate, balance and penetration for the judg*e and critic, a kindly suavity for the man. “Lord Cockburn ” was also one of the family group, his speaking eyes some- what sorrowful but hinting at a smile hiding behind the sadness. A third was “Henry Mackenzie,” author of The Man of Feeling (see Plate), which went out of the family circle into the National Portrait Gallery, London. It is a work of much interest, by reason of both quality and subject. The face is the key to a life, a type of manhood, amiable and reflective but uninspired, the shapely lips compressed but expressive of neither power *59 " The Man of Feeling ” Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. nor firmness of will. Mackenzie wrote in a style of freezing and mannered propriety much sad and sad- dening fiction, composed holding his handkerchief to his glistening face with a pen dipped in tears, and kept his readers with constantly-swimming eyes. One critique goes further to his immortal credit than all else he wrote, and that was his generous appreciation of Burns and the recognition of his genius. He had wit and penetration enough to have something more than a glimmering idea of the power and originality of the Bard who, like a new-risen star, had burst upon Edinburgh’s society and men of learning. He opened the way which led up to Carlyle and Taine. The Raeburn group consisted of five, besides a portrait of Sir Henry’s eldest son Peter, painted by the lad himself when dying of consumption, and given by him to his mother. A second was a portrait of Sir Henry’s step-daughter, Jacobina Leslie, who married Daniel Vere of Stonebyres, Sheriff-Substitute of Lanark- shire. Mrs. Vere is taken as if asleep, her head on a pillow. Of the others Dr. John Brown’s racy notes may be given in very slightly altered form. He men- tions a very curious portrait of Raeburn’s son Henry and his horse — not that now at Dalmeny in which the boy is mounted on a grey pony. It seems that Sir Henry only painted the horse, which is strong, real, and perfectly drawn, and that the son was painted after his father’s death by John Syme, “remembered by some of us for his wooden pictures. Anything 160 The Raeburn Family Group Mrs. Campbell of Ballimore (p. 170). At Charlesfield more ludicrous than the strength of the horse’s por- trait and the weakness of the man’s I never saw. It is like meeting with a paragraph by the worthy Tupper, or some other folk we know, in a page of Thackeray or Swift.” In the Dalmeny picture, painted in the ’nineties, the boy and pony are in full-length (see Plate). The draw- ing is admirable and the handling firm. The light comes in high from the left, and the face is in shadow except the lower side of the cheek and chin, which are partly illuminated by the light reflected from the white flowing collar. The difficulties of the colour-scheme, which includes a yellow sky and a scarlet jacket, have been successfully overcome. Probably about the same time Sir Henry painted Lady Raeburn ; his own por- trait belongs to about 1815. Dr. John Brown saw them at Charlesfield when in the possession of L. W. Raeburn, Sir Henry’s grandson, and youngest son of Henry. “The drawing-room,” he says, “is crowded with perfections. When you enter, above the fireplace is his own incomparable portrait, than which — as our President of the Royal Academy says — ir enry no better portrait exists ; it glorifies the little a \ \ ^ a dy room, and is in perfect condition; the en- Raeburn graving gives no full idea of the glow of the great dark eyes, the mastery of touch, the ardour and power of the whole expression. Opposite him is his dear little wife, comely and sweet and wise, sitting in the open air, with a white head-dress, her face away to one side of the 161 M Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. picture, her shapely, bare, unjewelled arms lying crossed on her lap.” Next to the very powerful portrait of Dr. Andrew Thomson, great preacher and ecclesiastical pugilist, “ is the gem of all, a little oval picture of Eliza Raeburn, his eldest grand-daughter, who died at six; there she is — lovely, her lucid blue eyes, her snowy bosom, her little mouth, just open enough to indicate the milk- white teeth, the sunny hair, the straightforward gaze, the sweetness. It is not possible to give in words the beauty of this ; Correggio or Giorgione need not have been ashamed of it, and there is a depth of human expression I have never seen in them ; she was her grandfather’s darling, and she must be of every one who looks at her, though she has been fifty years in her grave.” Henry’s eldest daughter married Sir William Andrew, and the portraits of Sir Henry, Lady Raeburn, and Henry on his pony were for a time in their possession. Lord Tweedmouth subsequently acquired the two former, and Lord Rosebery the latter. Eliza may still be in the possession of the family. Concerning portraits of Highlanders, it must suffice to say of “The Macnab ” that Sir Thomas Lawrence is reported by Morrison to have pronounced it the best representation of a human being he had ever seen. The Laird, dressed in Highland costume, the uniform of the Breadalbane Fencibles, of which he was Pictorial Portraits of High- landers Lieutenant-Colonel, stands at full-length in a Highland 162 “ Sir John Sinclair ” landscape. He is not an attractive subject. He was, we are told, a “character,” and the portrait shows more of the “character” than of either the officer or the Highland chief. It is, nevertheless, a powerfully conceived and painted picture, done with the masterly ease of Raeburn in the plenitude of his power. At about the same date — 1795-1800 — comes the typical “Sir John Sinclair, Bart., of Ulbster” (see Plate), in the uniform of a militia officer, scarlet coat, tartan trews and plaid, sporran, holding his feather bonnet in his right hand depending by his side, a red and buff sash, and yellow lacings in the trews. The head, wreathed round with its fleece of wavy locks, is one of the finest Raeburn ever had for a model. The face is aristocratic, imperious, but expressive of bravery and inborn nobility. The painter’s problem was ob- viously with a dress which, although picturesque in fact, is difficult in art, and Raeburn solved it by dint of consummate skill, admirable technique , good taste, and sheer audacity. Out of the discords of colour and the tartan pattern he has somehow contrived a harmony. And yet no selection attracts attention, and no departure from the realism of details makes itself felt. The picture was at the Glasgow International Exhi- bition in 1901, and the Exhibition scarcely held an equal study, so deep and so informing, of fearless and clever brush-work. Beside it, other portraits, or the majority of them, were simplicity itself. As an executant, Rae- burn probably never rose above the “Sinclair.” How did he do it? In the first place, he accepted the facts. 163 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. They were there before him, and it was his business to make the most of them. He began by concentrating attention upon the head — his usual practice. To do this he first half-concealed the hands, the right partly hidden by the bonnet, the other doubled back, the knuckles resting upon the hip, so that little more is seen than the wrist. To emphasise the head, he set it against the dark clouded background of the upper sky, and so brought it into strong relief; the costume he treated in a diametrically opposite manner, softening the scarlet and Sinclair tartan by the cool grey of the lower sky, and slightly shadowing the lower part of the figure. But a yet finer and more subtle skill is found in the almost elusive grading or modulation of the brighter tints. In regard to them, suggestion almost insensibly takes the place of the crude statement of reality, and the device is justified by ocular facts. The eye that naturally seeks the noble head takes but comparatively cursory cognisance of the dress, for, after duly meet- ing all the claims of truth and fidelity to his model, Raeburn’s object was the portrait of a man, and not that of a uniform. The “ Sinclair” is probably unique in the painter’s practice. That does not mean it is his most artistic work. There is an impressive breadth in his “ Lord Newton” (see Plate), and its modelling is so solid that it might have been chiselled out of stone — “ full-blooded, full- brained,” says Dr. John Brown, “taurine with poten- tial vigour. His head is painted with a Rabelaisian richness; you cannot but believe when you look at the 164 The Painter’s Highest The Painter's High- water Mark vast countenance the tales of his feats in thinking and in drinking, and in general capacity of body and mind.” The word “taurine” is most happily used. It is fitly descriptive of a man who, Mr. Caw reminds us, was popularly known as “The Mighty.” Very deftly has Raeburn subordinated the grossness of his massive model to the idea of power. In respect of all the finer, more evasive, qualities of art, a portrait which made for itself a centre, and became a standard of comparison, in the Edinburgh Loan Exhibition of 1901 is that of “James Wardrop of Torbanehill” (see Plate). In masterly achievement it stands at or near the summit of Raeburn’s work. The shading is a miracle of delicacy, a triumph shared by eye and hand, and the modelling has a tenderness and reserved strength which the painter never excelled. The aged face rises from the dark background with a spirituality akin to that of sculptured marble, and a beauty that baffles description, a beauty of its own both human and artistic. Akin to it in conception and polished treatment is the “John Wauchope” of the National Gallery of Scotland (see Plate). What special quality in his models moved the painter cannot be told, although it may be guessed at, but both the “Wardrop” and the “Wauchope” por- traits bear evidence that his artistic consciousness was stirred to its depths. His brush seems to have hung upon the features with a lingering love, as if unwilling to lay the last touch upon the canvas, and so, in finished com- 165 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. pleteness, to leave the heads it had created and vitalised. In theWauchope,the lighting is supremely well managed. The eyes, upper lip, and neck are in shadow thrown by brow, nose, and chin from an almost directly overhead light, giving decided form to the well-marked features, and softening the expression into all that can be imagined of gentleness, mildness, and suave urbanity. Further selection might, by excess of detail, defeat its object — the elucidation of Raeburn’s style and adaptability to changing models. There are the “Dr. Adam,” “Francis Horner,” “Jeffrey,” “ Cockburn,” and “Mackenzie” portraits to stand for the gift of painting character and personal intellectual idiosyn- crasies ; the young “Raeburn” and “Sinclair” for dexterity and colour ; the “ Macnab ” for veracity ; the “Newton” for the triumph of artistry over matter; and the “Wardrop” and “ Wauchope ” for the exquisite expression of aesthetic feeling, the sense of the beautiful in nature, which makes the loudest but sweetest appeal to art. Raeburn painted “ ‘ Grecian’ Williams,” “‘Christopher North,”’ “ G. J. Bell,” “Archibald Alison” of the Essay on Taste; “Professor Blair,” “John Thomson” the landscape-painter; Professors “ Pillans,” “Playfair,” and “Reid”; “ Chantrey,” “Constable” and “Creech,” publishers; “ Charles James Fox,” “Thomas Gladstone,” grandfather of W. E. Gladstone; “Warren Hastings,” and a host of other men of prominence. If they were all passed in review, no fuller knowledge of Raeburn could be got from the 1 66 A Sum- mary of Practice A Summary of Genius many than from the few. He had an eye for the picturesque and for all chaste forms of beauty ; his taste was pure and wide in range ; in interpreting character his intuition was genius; his eye was unerring and quick in seizing the graces of form, and in bringing assonances of tone out of discord ; and his hand was skilful to draw, model, and to weave the intricate web of harmonious colour. All these qualities have been illustrated in the few portraits chosen from his works. 6 7 CHAPTER XIV. PORTRAITS OF WOMEN. Raeburn as painter of women — His two greatest portraits— Mrs. James Campbell — Raeburn’s courtierlike deference to the sex — The emotional individuality of his women— The individual lost in the Ideal — A critic of the English school— The variety of nature pre- served by Raeburn — The fresh bloom of youth — “A great man was Raeburn ” — Mrs. Scott-Moncrieff — Style adapted to subject — Tributes to the beautiful. Long has the opinion been widely held that Raeburn was essentially a painter of men, and that his portraits of women are inferior. Cunningham, in all probability, r b first gave expression to this view, when he . said that in the treatment of female loveliness as ain ^ er Raeburn seldom excelled. He quotes a of t le ex corespondent to the effect that “in repre- senting beauty Raeburn always appeared to me to fail fearfully; his style of colouring, and his indefinite out- line, caught neither the roses and lilies nor the contour of youth and loveliness.” The sentence recalls Wal- pole’s amusing decision upon the contrasted merits of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Allan Ramsay: “ Mr. Reynolds seldom succeeds with women; Mr. Ramsay is formed to paint them.” Raeburn’s portraits of women include some of his 1 68 Mrs. Scott-Moncrieff (p. 173). “Mrs. James Campbell” best. Never probably did he, in respect of technique, rise above his “ Mrs. James Campbell,” and as a repre- sentation of beauty in age he never surpassed his “Mrs. Campbell of Ballimore.” If one The Climax of Technique were asked to name his two greatest por traits, there could be small risk of error in bracketing “Mrs. James Campbell” (see Plate) with “James Wardrop of Torbanehill.” Mrs. Campbell would, to all appearance, be between sixty-five and seventy when the portrait was painted, and the style of the painting points to about i8ioas the date of the work, in which year she would have been about the age indicated. Her face is strong and decided of feature, but not winning in respect of either expression or form. Its attraction lies wholly in what it gave the painter, an irresistible opportunity for the most nearly perfect modelling of which he was capable, and for supremely delicate transitions. The light comes in from the upper right side, and the hollows of the eyes and the deep-worn wrinkles of the cheeks seem filled with tinted shadows. The contours are softened into the roundness of life, and the chiaroscuro is managed with a consummate skill unsurpassed, if rivalled, in Raeburn’s practice. The masterly treat- ment gives the head a grandeur not its own. Its isolation from the dark ground by means of a high- crowned white cap ( Scottice , mutch), with broad ear- laps hanging down to meet the white neck-gear and wide collar, is a distinct stroke of genius. The shawl is a warm red, with mixed border of green, yellow, 169 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. and crimson. It is drawn round the shoulders and over the arms, and lends brightness to the simple scheme of colour. The hands are most cunningly disposed, so that nothing may carry the eye away from the splendid and massive old head. The brush-work is dexterous and fine, but there is not a hint of finical over- elaboration in the picture. It 'seems, on the contrary, to have been painted with a flying brush, as if the artist, warmed by enthusiasm and absorbed in admiration of his theme, were in haste to realise his first impression before it passed or was dulled by a less poetic vision. Rapidity of execution secured both vigour and ease, and these qualities, taken in conjunction with the faultless pro- priety of the colour-scheme and the obvious fidelity of the portrait to life, constitute its charm. It is impossible to look at it without feeling something akin to the pulsing enthusiasm of the rapt painter, and without recognising the absolute rightness of his work. Like the “ Wardrop,” the “Mrs. James Camp- bell” had a place in the Edinburgh Loan Exhibition or 1901, and, if Raeburn had no other claim to the rank of a Master, his right might safely be rested upon these two works. They rooted themselves in memory, and time can neither efface nor dim them. They compelled acceptance as standards of comparison. “ Mrs. Campbell of Ballimore ” (see Plate), as already said, is the type of female beauty in age. The carna- tions are singularly luminous. Neither has the rose faded from her cheek, nor the light from her eye. In 170 Raeburn’s Women Beauty in Age youth she must have been beautiful and winsome ; years have only invested her with a new _ J m # J 9 Jyt gflXCLLG fascination. Reflection upon these thing’s leads to the directly naturalistic aim of the painter. Art is linked with truth. Here also, and in many other portraits — “Miss Janet Suttie,” “Miss Margaret Suttie,” “Mrs. Scott- Moncrieff,” “Mrs. Cruikshank,” “Mrs. Wei- . wood,” “Mrs. Stewart of Physgill,” and r0US others of a similar order — the man Raeburn eference makes himself felt within the painter. His oman bearing partakes of the chivalrous deference of an old- school gentleman. The difference is felt between the character of his men and the emotional individuality of his women. In respect of the latter quality he stands apart from the leaders of the English school. Van Dyck led by sacrificing the individuality of his sitters’ hands. Turn- ing, like Allan Ramsay, his studio into a manufactory, he employed both men and women to serve as models for the hands. Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney went farther, and the grave indictment has been laid against them of allowing the ideal to swallow Jd ea i up the individuality of their sitters. There ^ is a suspicious sameness of type running j n ^{ v i^ ua i through the women of the school, to which the exceptions are rare. This feature led Collier to ask ( Nineteenth Century for 1896) if none of their innumer- able female sitters were broad-shouldered, if none of them had big, firm mouths and square jaws, if none of 171 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. them were of the magnificent robust type of the Venus of Milo or the women of Titian. He argued that they cannot all have been slim and dainty: — “ Indeed, we may go much farther. Some of them must have been fat. Do we ever find a stout woman in the painting of the school ? And some of them must have been short and squat, and some of them must have been downright ugly. But we never see them.” The monotony may be admitted without conceding the underlying assumption that unattractive women — the obese, squat, and ugly — ever sought the perpetua- tion of their unattractiveness in the studios of Reynolds and Gainsborough. The present point, however, is that Raeburn escaped the monotony. He secured variety by simply following nature, and yet could have Hannah woun< ^ e< ^ 110 self-pride. In “Hannah More” More as a n0 f asc i na ti n & model, neither grace j*yp e °f form nor beauty of feature, and yet how full of charm, with her dreamy eyes, her tossed chestnut curls, her dress and cap of white, is her portrait in the Louvre ! Without idealising, Raeburn made the most of a homely sitter. He arranged his facts to the best advantage. In “Mrs. George Kin- near” he had the full type of the Venus of Milo, but of more voluptuous bulk, and yet by posing, by ac- centuating the shapely right arm and hand, he imparted to his massive model both grace and beauty. These two portraits differ from each other nearly as much as from those of the two Campbells. In portraying the freshness of youth, the bloom of 172 “ Mrs. Scott-Moncrieff ” “A Great Man was Raeburn ” female loveliness, Raeburn was very successful. The “Mrs. Scott-Moncrieff ” (see Plate) is an outstanding- illustration both of his splendid artistry m . r ,. . .. c X • r u • The Bloom and of his appreciation ot the points ot his /. ^ 7 r r r ot h CVZCLLC model, and it is only one of a group. Here it T 7 . J o it LjOVCZITICSS is necessary to generalise. When the Rae- burn Exhibition was open in 1876, George Paul Chalmers, R.S.A. — than whom Scotland has produced no finer and more subtle colourist, and none with an eye more sensitive to the harmonies of colour — wrote a West- country friend: “You must come to see the Raeburns. They are fine and will interest you much. A great man was Raeburn.” Prior to that, Chalmers had been captivated by the “ Scott-Moncrieff,” as he must have been by the two “ Suttie ” portraits. A like perfectness ot round modelling can only be found in the master- pieces of art. The carnations are translucent and luscious, warm and deep. The “Scott-Moncrieff” is lapped in a sweet artistic perfume, rare and refreshing. Sparing glimpses of the red robe go, with the delicious flesh-painting, the dark-brown hair lightly tossed above the brow, and the white dress, to make a colour- scheme most simple and refined. Can we wonder that Chalmers loved the picture and copied it, as he did, with a loving brush ? In all his female portraits Raeburn worked out an intellectual in addition to the artistic problem. He adapted style to subject, a gracious manner to feminine grace. What has been said of the “Scott-Moncrieff” 173 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. can be adapted to other portraits. The pellucid quality of the carnations and the pearly radiance of the dress A T be of not mere ly P erta i n to the artistic pre- -ry , sentment of a handsome woman. They Beauty . . . J tell both of an artist’s admiration of colour and — as previously noted — a man’s deferential obeis- ance to female comeliness. Art, intellect, feeling, quick perception, refined taste, all work together in the creation of portraits as remarkable in technique as resplendent in beauty. To his gifts as artist Raeburn united a poetic sympathy which makes his portraits of women alike demonstrations of skill and tributes to the beautiful of which they are the revelation. 174 CHAPTER XV. LONDON CONTEMPLATED. Edinburgh or London — Goes to London and sees Wilkie — Meeting with Royal Academicians — Wilkie’s relations to the Academy — The portrait-painters of the Academy — Envious of Wilkie — Rae- burn’s mistake — Condition of the Academy — Room for Raeburn — Northcote, Hoppner, and Lawrence — Critics of Lawrence — Law- rence an interested adviser — Counsels Raeburn to return to Scotland — He goes home. Raeburn could hardly have been seriously dissatisfied with his position and practice in Edinburgh. The immediate cause of his entertaining a wish to leave it for London can only be surmised. None of his biographers has looked far into the subject. In con- nection with it, nevertheless, an interesting insight is obtained into the condition of the metropolitan art- world, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and particularly of the Royal Academy. In the year 1810, when doing the best work of his artistic prime, Raeburn contemplated either settling in London or having an alternative residence there. On the 2nd of March of that year, Sir David Wilkie states in his Journal that he had heard Raeburn was going to London, and that Hoppner’s house was to be taken for 175 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. him. The next entry seems to point to permanent residence. On the 12th of May, he says: — “ Had a call from Raeburn (the painter), who told me Raeburn goes to London and sees Wilkie he had come to London to look out for a house, and to see if there was any prospect of establishing himself. I took him, by his own desire, to see Sir William Beechey.” . . . “ 13th. Called on Raeburn, and called with him on several artists, who happened to be from home, or engaged.” On the 19th of the month another entry occurs, referring to Raeburn. There is abundant evidence that Wilkie was willing to further Raeburn’s views, and on the 4th of June his attentions reached their practical culmination — i ‘Went with Raeburn to the ‘ Crown and Anchor ’ to meet the gentlemen of the Royal Academy. I introduced him to Flaxman ; after dinner he was asked by Beechey to sit near the President [West], where his health was pro- posed by Flaxman; great attention was paid to him.” Wilkie undoubtedly did his best by Raeburn, but only upon the line of the latter’s selection. There is no evidence that the prudent Fifer volunteered any inde- pendent counsel. He did not point the absolutely best course for Raeburn to follow. With a little more out- spoken frankness, Wilkie could have tendered his visitor such practical advice as would have at once brought his London mission to a decisive issue. Rae- burn would almost certainly have left Edinburgh for 176 Miss Janet Suttie (p. 184). Wilkie and London the wider field of London. The fact appears to be that Wilkie could not see past the Royal Academy, of which he had, for a few months, been Wilkie a an Associate. His professional path at Timid the time was exceptionally thorny, and his Adviser life troubled. He was, furthermore, con- stitutionally disposed to peace, had none of the fighting instincts of his friend Haydon, and, as Raeburn un- folded his plan, he must have seen that a danger of compromising himself lurked in urging its abandonment for a better. His guidance was carefully measured by reference to a threefold consideration — for his fellow- members of the Academy, for himself, and for Raeburn. He temporised and Raeburn’s opportunity passed. The year (1810) in which Raeburn went to London upon his momentous errand, the result of which was to decide both his whole future life and the measure of his fame, happened to be that of Wilkie’s bitter experience of Academy intrigue in connection with the competition of Edward Bird, of Bristol, — a shadowy rivalry trumped up in the Academy. The year was also that in which the Academy most openly vented its spleen upon the hapless Haydon. Wilkie had sent to the Exhibition a comparative trifle, “The Wardrobe Ransacked” or “The Man with the Girl’s Cap,” and was advised by President West, Shee, and other members of the Council, to withdraw it as unworthy of himself, and likely to give rise to damaging comparisons with Wilkie in Trouble in 1810 Bird. He did so, and a report was circulated that 177 N Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. his action was equivalent to an acknowledgment of Bird’s superiority. Cunningham charges the Academy with jealousy, some of its members envying Wilkie’s sudden fame, others being mortified by the attention bestowed upon his “ pan-and-spoon style” in com- parison with their own essays in the high historic line. Wilkie, at all events, was filled with fresh doubts of the Academy. He was mortified by the imputation of defeat in an uncontested competition with a painter whom Seguier, Sir George Beaumont, and Haydon united in placing below him. The portrait- painters, some of whom combined historical painting with portraiture, were in the ascend- ant in the Academy, and all the evidence goes to show that they were envious of * er y_ an Wilkie the painter of genre, and determined am ative crus j 1 Haydon, the painter of history. ay 071 Th e latter kept the placid, peace-loving Scotsman, whom he loved and admired, in a continual fever. That same eventful spring Haydon was com- peting, against Wilkie’s advice, for a hundred-guinea prize with Howard, the chosen champion of the Academy, and all London knew that defeat was in store for the latter, although Haydon’s victory was not announced until the 17th of May. In the midst of personal chagrin, and worried by the combative and reckless Haydon, Wilkie was called upon to receive Raeburn, and, in considering his absorbing project, to repress himself. He took Raeburn amongst the Academicians, although he must have felt 178 Jealous Academicians Probable Attitude of R. Ads towards Raeburn that for them to act otherwise than with courteous insincerity towards a potentially dangerous rival from the North was beyond reasonable hope. This view of the situation prompts a thought, almost a conviction, that if, instead of in- dicating the course he preferred, Raeburn had made a beginning by simply asking Wilkie how to proceed relatively to an intended settlement in London, he would have been cannily told to settle in London, and to leave the Academy and its members alone. The words quoted from his Journal, “ by his own desire,” are significant. They imply Raeburn’s belief that the right thing for him to do was to make advances towards establishing friendly relations with the artists of London, and, although in doubt arising from the experiences of the past few weeks and from the feelings of the hour, Wilkie tacitly concurred. There is abundant proof that in the early part of the nineteenth century the Royal Academy was corrupted by jealousy, honeycombed with intrigue, and habitually guilty of selfish favouritism. Manifestly, any conceivable course would have been better than the one Raeburn marked out for himself. Why should the portrait-painters of the Royal Academy encourage a competitor to settle amongst them, with the rare qualities of whose work they had long been familiar ? He had exhibited with them at frequent intervals since J 79 2 — eighteen years without any practical recognition 179 The Royal Academy about 1800-10 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. from them of his genius and masterly technique. They had reason to fear lest in London he might force a way to the front, compel Academic honours, cut into their custom, and so divert to himself a goodly share of praise and pelf which otherwise would be theirs. Else there was abundant room for Raeburn. The year of his first appearance at Somerset House was that of Sir Joshua’s death, and after Reynolds there was none to be compared with Raeburn. Northcote’s portraits are comparatively coarse, and often common- place. Hoppner died on the 23rd of January of this same year, 1810 — hence Wilkie’s mention of his house being taken for Raeburn, — and when he went, Sir Thomas Lawrence wrote: “The death of Hoppner leaves me without a rival.” And what of Lawrence himself? He is artificial, drew from the stage more than from nature. His characters, in one critic’s view, have more of the affectation of fashion than of the truth of a large humanity. The Redgraves find less variety in his compositions than in those of his predecessors, and less art in his An Estimate of Sir Thomas Lawrence arrangements, but allow him a dexterity of execution which was all his own. Wilkie charges him with taking liberties with his subjects, with changing and refining the features before him. Opie said that Lawrence made coxcombs of his sitters, and his sitters made a coxcomb of Lawrence. Haydon accused him of flattering the vanities of the age, pampering its weak- ness and gratifying its meretricious tastes. His men 180 An Interested Adviser were touched with fashion and dandyism; his women were beautiful but not natural. The Redgraves con- clude: “While we are obliged to allow that Lawrence ranks below his immediate predecessors of the English school, it was hardly possible, at his death, to point to a successor likely to stand beside him in the opinion of posterity.” London, in fine, offered Raeburn a field without a possible rival, had he chosen to enter in and possess it. He had all Lawrence’s virtues in a fuller measure, and he had none of his faults, opposing strong vitality and natural- ism to Sir Thomas’s vicious artificiality. And yet, in fate’s irony, it was apparently Lawrence who succeeded in advising him to turn his face home- wards. How he was so persuaded is not known. That Lawrence was not a disinterested , ^ , Lawrence s b y “ Room for Raeburn in London Cunningham, adviser is suggested ^ | . Henley, and others. Cunningham was told ^ mC ^ that Raeburn dropped words by his own fireside which could only be construed as meaning that, in his view, “the President of the Royal Academy had been no loser by his absence from the field of com- petition.” As Lawrence only took the Presidency in 1820, Raeburn must have been well up in years, and nearing his end, before he used these words of con- structive disparagement. Henley is more bluntly cynical. By Raeburn’s acceptance of his counsel, Lawrence “secured himself in his position as the painter of fashionable and distinguished England. He 181 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. was wise in his generation, no doubt, but it is matter for lasting regret that he prevailed; for it is beyond question that Raeburn would soon have filled the larger stage, and it is reasonable to assume that his example might have passed into a tradition, so that his sane and vigorous genius would thus have been felt as a force in English portraiture even to this day.” In London, Raeburn would have risen to higher fame, perhaps have achieved a fuller artistic power, and certainly, as Henley suggests, have exercised a wider authority; but, on the other hand, he might have suffered from Academic infection. Where Wilkie, the moral son of the manse, was smitten, Raeburn might not have escaped. Honourable, high-minded, and pure, the Scottish master could ill have endured the wrangling, the cliques, and self-seeking littlenesses of the Royal Academy. In such an atmosphere he could not have been so happy as in the healthy air of Edin- burgh. His long reign in the art-world of Scotland might have further unfitted him for serving and waiting in London. He accordingly returned home, and at no other time is he known to have thought of leaving the Scottish capital. His London experience derives its chief importance from “what might have been” — wider fame for himself, and a broader influence as a sound and healthy exemplar, and an eloquently didactic precedent. When the Academy ultimately elected him an Associate, and then an Academician, its members were probably satisfied that he meant to remain in Edinburgh. 182 CHAPTER XVI. HONOURS AND DEATH. Dying in harness — Works of the closing years of life — Praises of Miss Janet Suttie’s portrait — A comparison with Sir Thomas Lawrence — No “fag-end” to the portraits of Raeburn — Elected Royal Academician — Diploma work — Italian and American honours — Admitted F.R. S. of Edinburgh — George IV. visits Scotland — Raeburn knighted — A “most royal jollification” at St. Bernard’s — An old-fashioned hostess — A Royal commission — His Majesty’s Limner for Scotland — Symptoms of decay — An excursion to Fife- shire — What was his last work ? — Death and burial — Lady Rae- burn and the family. Had the issue of Raeburn’s London excursion been different, his gallery of Scots notables had lacked many of its most prominent figures, and some of those the finest in art-quality. He painted without intermission to the end, almost, like Sir William Allan, dying with a brush in his hand. “Lord Newton” belongs to about this period (1810-15), as also does the “Lord Craig” in Parliament House, Edinburgh. After them — about 1818 — came “Sir William Gibson-Craig, Bart.”; “John Hay,” Master of Trinity House, Leith; the fine and warm- toned “Professor David Hume,” also in the Parliament House; the “ Kennedys of Dunure,” one or two of the “Mackenzies of Portmore,” “Lord Some of Raeburn's Later Sitters Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Meadowbank,” “Admiral Milne,” “Thomas Telford,” the great engineer; his best Scott, his own portrait; and, amongst ladies, the never-to-be-forgotten Misses Suttie. The “ Miss Janet Suttie” (see Plate) was done in 1820, and as the tale of the years allowed to Raeburn was nearing completion, the temptation comes to quote what Sir Walter Armstrong says of it, as showing that Raeburn suffered none of the death-in-life of slow decay, but died while his genius was at its brightest: — “The way in which he has done justice to the opulent charms of the young lady is an answer to those who say he could not paint a pretty woman. He has not only reproduced her beauty; he has kept the fire in her eye, the dew on her lip, the glow in her blood, and the kind thought for himself which moved her as she sat. There is more life and human feeling in this head than in any Lawrence I ever saw.” Within the opinion is a fact, and it is upon the latter that emphasis is here laid — namely, that there is no jy. d “fag-end” to the productions of Raeburn’s y brush, and that his latest portraits include J f some of his subtlest and most powerful. ae urn s *p a k en a i 0 ng with his originality, his inde- pendence of convention, and the circum- stance that not one of his foremost works was sent for exhibition out of Scotland, the matters noted may explain the late arrival of the honours of his life. At the last they sought him ; he did not seek them. Cunningham hints at his feeling uneasy by reason of the seeming neglect of the Academies, both at home and 184 “Boy with Rabbit” (p. 186). Enters the Royal Academy abroad, but Raeburn himself makes no sign of eagerly desiring their recognition. In one of his few letters he touches upon the subject. It was written to a friend in London in 1814, when he had four portraits in the Academy Exhibition, those of “Lord Seaforth ” and “Sir David Baird” and two unnamed. He says: — “I observe what you say respecting the election of an R.A., but what am I to do here? They know I am on their list; if they choose to elect me with- ..... A Letter out solicitation, it will be the more honourable to me, and I will think the more of it; but if ^ 0U f it can only be obtained by means of solicita- ca emic^ tion and canvassing, I must give up all hopes of it, for I would think it unfair to employ those means. I am, besides, out of the way, and have no opportunity. I rejoice in the worthy President’s in- creasing reputation ; it is pleasing and consolatory to see that additional powers come with the increase of years. Write and tell me what artists are about, and whether anything be indispensable for a person who desires to become a member of the Royal Academy. Were you sufficiently in health to see Somerset House during last exhibition ? I had some things there; but no artist of my acquaintance has been kind enough to write me one syllable on the subject, to say either what he thought of them himself, or what others thought.” Wilkie is said to have interested himself in securing Raeburn’s election, and his pictures of the year may have had weight with the Academy. Raeburn was, in any event, elected an Associate in 1814, and an 185 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. Admission to the Royal Academy Academician in 1815. He waited until 1821 before sending- “A Boy and Rabbit” (see Plate) as his diploma work. Thereafter, he was admitted member of the Imperial Academy of Florence; on 1st June 1817, an honorary member of the New York Academy of the Fine Arts; and in November 1821, a similar honour was conferred upon him by the Academy of Arts of South Carolina. He was also admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The next year is marked with a red letter in the annals of Edinburgh. In the autumn of 1822 George IV. paid his long-remembered visit to G * IV ^ co ^ anc ^ Raeburn was rather surprised to . * * receive intimation that the King intended to in Scotland , . c knight him, “as a mark or his approbation of your distinguished merit as a painter.” On the following day he went to Hopetoun House, and had there conferred upon him the rank of Knighthood, the King making use of the sword of Sir Raeburn receives the Accolade Alexander Hope. The handsome and courtierlike Raeburn made such an impres- sion upon his Majesty that he is said to have wished to make the knighthood a baronetcy, and to have been deterred solely by con- sideration for the memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who only secured the lesser honour. On the 15th of September 1822, Wilkie sent his sister an account of the ceremony, and of the festive gathering which followed at St. Bernard’s, so perfect an illus- 186 A Knightly Feast tration of the manners of the time as to warrant quotation: — “You would hear that one of the exercises of the Royal prerogative in Scotland was to confer the honour of knighthood upon Mr. Raeburn and W'lk ' Captain Adam Ferguson. This happened on the day the King left Scotland, and when tS ^ri cs he was at Hopetoun House. Collins and ^ estiye I, with a variety of others, were invited to dine with Sir Henry Raeburn the day after- t t- . i i , , Bernard s wards. Ferguson was there, and we had a most royal jollification. Sir Adam blushed even more than usual upon the occasion of his honours; and the ceremony was told us over and over, with new jokes every time. When dinner was over we drank to the new-made knights. Sir Henry made a very modest reply, in which he attributed his honours to the kind- ness and favour of his friends, who were present. Sir Adam said he could not make so good a speech as his fellow-knight had done, and that he would, if agree- able, sing us a song, a proposal we received with acclamation, when he sang us ‘The Laird of Cockpen,’ and afterwards, at our request, ‘The Turnemspike.’ Lady Raeburn would not allow herself to be called My Lady on any account, but was exceedingly hospitable to her guests, and pressed them to eat in the good old- fashioned Scottish style.” The King had expressed a wish that Sir Henry should paint a portrait of him, and invited him to London for that purpose, but Raeburn was never able to 187 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. comply. The distinction accorded him was grateful to public opinion, and by his fellow-artists was looked upon as a tribute to their common profession. In May 1823, the King- appointed Raeburn his “limner and painter in Scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights, privileges, and advantages thereto belonging.” Raeburn was then in his sixty-eighth year, but he had lived carefully and temperately, and was a young man for his years, to all appearances blessed We’o-J t of a fe ooc * constitution, and possessing J abounding health and vigour. Morrison, Years & .. 9 however, says that some time previous to his last illness he had shown symptoms of falling-off. Raeburn had said to him: — “ I sometimes lose sight of the picture on the easel before me, and stand still in a kind of dream, while the picture changes its aspect, and sometimes looks as if composed of many figures.” In the summer of 1823, an excursion was arranged in which Miss Edgeworth, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Samuel Shepherd, Sir Adam Ferguson, Sir Henry, and a number of others took part, under the leadership of Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam. They were to visit the Castle of Ravensheugh, and examine other remains and places of historical interest in Fifeshire. All were in high spirits and enthusiastic, none more so than Raeburn, who is said to have “ contributed largely to the enjoyment of the party.” They went to Pitten- weem, explored the ruins of St. Andrews, and had altogether a pleasant ramble. Morrison says: — 188 Nearing the End “During 1 their excursion the weather was hot; and Sir Henry, not accustomed to long walking, and ex- posed, although in summer, to the keen air of Fife, had taken cold; and particularly as, Sir Walter observed, he walked with his hat in his hand, Miss Edgeworth having hold of the other arm. On the day after his return, he walked to his gallery in York Place, and began to touch the portrait of a Mrs. Dennistoun, but was unable to proceed. He walked home and, with considerable headache, went to bed, whence he never arose.” Another account is that Sir Walter Scott sat to him for the two half-length portraits mentioned in Chapter XII., and that these were the last pictures he touched. He does not appear to have had any specific ailment. Living as he did, vitality seems to have been suddenly exhausted, and his constitution to have at once broken down. Like a high-mettled racer he ran his course till the life-cord snapped, then dropped and died. He was ill about a week, during which Morrison saw him for the last time: — “ Hearing of his illness, I called down late in the evening to inquire for him. The servants told me that every hope of his recovery was over, that he was lying motionless on his bed, and nes $ an that the family had retired. I mentioned to the servant in waiting (who used to arrange his palette) that I wished much to have a last look, to which he readily agreed. This was about twenty-four hours before his death. He was lying with his eyes 189 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. shut, but not asleep. I touched softly the hand which was lying - across his breast, — the hand which had been so often stretched out to welcome me.” Sir Henry died on the 8th of July 1823, and con- ventional expressions of regret were made by Lawrence and Wilkie for the Royal Academy, and at a meeting of the Edinburgh Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland. He was buried in the enclosure at the east end of St. John’s Church (Scottish Episcopal) at the west end of Princes Street, Edinburgh. His grave remained unmarked until a few years ago, when an anonymous admirer had a tablet let into the wall to indicate the spot where the painter was laid. Another anonymous connoisseur had a life-size statue of him by Pittendrigh Macgillivray, R.S.A., placed in one of the niches in the Scottish Portrait Gallery in Queen Street. Standing in the north-east corner turret of the building, Raeburn, by a happy thought of the sculp- tor, appears to be looking down York Place towards his old studio. His son Peter, previously mentioned as having died in youth, was buried in St. Cuthbert’s Churchyard, not far from his father’s grave in St. John’s. Lady Raeburn survived Sir Henry for ten years, and was thus rapidly nearing ninety when she died. Their family consisted of two sons, Peter above- mentioned, and Henry who succeeded to Deanhaugh and St. Bernard’s. Acquiring the estate of Howden with his wife, Henry a snug, old The Raeburn Family bought the property of Charlesfield, 190 Survivors Scotch house near Mid Calder, on a burn of its own, which paraffin has defiled with its stench and prismatic films” — as says the realistic Dr. John Brown. Henry had three sons, who all died childless, and five daughters. The eldest was the Eliza of Dr. Brown’s charming sketch (page 162), and the second has been mentioned as having married Sir William Andrew. Mr. William Raeburn Andrew, one of the sons of the latter, compiled a Life of his illustrious ancestor. CHAPTER XVII. THE ART OF RAEBURN. Raeburn out of his time and latitude — Comparison with men of the Italian Renaissance — Raeburn in Rome — The variety of Raeburn — Definiteness of detail — Landscape backgrounds — A portrait tells of sitter’s life — His teachers and originality — The Velasquez parallel —Raeburn and English artists — Test by comparison — Where Raeburn got the “square touch” — His middle period — His latest style — Treatment of details — Hands as details — The poetry of the sunbeam — Raeburn as colourist — His flesh-painting — Idealism and completeness of impression — Raeburn’s highest — History-painting and portraiture — Raeburn a forerunner. Frequently in surveying the career of Raeburn, and analysing his many-sided genius and his taste and constitution in the light of his diverse pursuits, the fancy presents itself that he was not a Scot of the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries, but an Italian of Renais- sance days born out of his time and proper latitude. He recalls Orcagna working at goldsmithing and mastering its technical details under his father, painting with his brother Bernardo, writing poetry — as Giotto did, but not Raeburn — and reaching his highest in architecture and sculpture. In enamels, intaglios, bas-reliefs and statuettes, mosaics, gilded glass and incrustations of 192 A Com- parison with A rtists of Italian Renais- sance Italian Precedents agates, he is said to have made the tabernacle of Orsammichele an epitome of the minor arts of mediaeval Italy. Or Raeburn brings up Brunelleschi, builder of the Duomo of Florence, goldsmith, sculptor, engineer, an artist who added the more mechanical faculty of a master-builder to the art of an architect; or it may be Ghiberti, goldsmith, painter, modeller of portraits, imitator of antique gems, and sculptor of the Baptistery gates at Florence. The goldsmith’s craft was in Italy considered the best training in design, and Botticelli is another who learned it before he turned to painting. Goldsmiths and A rtists Besides the knowledge and practice of design the industry involved delicate work- manship, and accurate modelling. Such education was widely considered practically indispensable to the successful following of an artistic career. The goldsmith’s shop was regarded as the gate to the higher arts. Besides those The Gate to the Higher Arts named, Symonds mentions Luca della Rob- bia, Ghirlandajo, and others as undergoing this education in finished nicety of handiwork before applying themselves to painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is said that when at Rome Raeburn gave so much attention to sculpture that, inspired by Michael Angelo, he seriously thought of up painting in favour of the sister Raeburn and J rpi i • , • i • p 1 • , • kS *cul / btu7*& art. Ihe only existing* relic or his practice r of plastic art is a medallion portrait of himself bearing, in 193 o Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. incised lettering-, the name “ H. Raeburn, 1792.” The material is that used by Tassie, to whom reference has been made as a modeller of paste portrait-medallions, but the style is not Tassie’s, and the work is not marked either by his customary details or by his signature. After examining- it closely, J. M. Gray ascribed it to Raeburn himself, who, he says, “was in the habit of occasionally practising- modelling-.” These several matters help the accurate measurement of the rang-e of Raeburn’s artistic gifts. His work ^ at Gilliland’s, his miniatures, portraits, his _ f , leanings towards sculpture, his modelling RctCOUYTl s • • • 1 . in relief, his experiments in architecture and master-building, his practice of the art- industry of model shipbuilding, his devotion to beauty — of nature, flowers, children, women, as attested by the sensitive appreciation of their beauty visible in his portraits — after making due allowance for the disparity between the goldsmith’s work done in Italy and that of Edinburgh, go to establish Raeburn’s affinity with the men of the Italian Renaissance. The resemblance is no less marked if regard be had to the many outlets he sought for physical activity — angling, golfing, archery, long pedestrian rambles, and the like. The Renaissance is characterised by abounding vitality, an unresting energy which ignored control. It overflowed into the arts, and ran riot in the most degrading passions and the foulest crimes. A similarly fecund vigour, but chastened and purified, animated Raeburn, and was at the root of his amazing versatility. 194 Landscape Backgrounds The results of his many-sided discipline and pursuits appear in his art. At Gilliland’s he acquired the prin- ciples of design and precision of treat- ^ r ment, and what he learned reappears in his . u . S °L “Ronald and Robert Ferguson,” “Dr. iscip me Spens,” “Sinclair,” “Macnab,” and other portraits. He imparted a certain definiteness to detail, but never descended to petty minutiae and tightness of handling. The merest suggestion has an effect, but it never so calls for attention as to destroy the balance and symmetry of the design, or to detract from the prominence of the centre of interest. This is felt alike in the border of Mrs. James Campbell’s robe or shawl, and in the landscape behind the Macnab. His rambles made Raeburn familiar with nature, but his studies and sketches he could Landscape • • • • j not utilise to the full. In portraiture his naturalism was concentrated in his per- i^CLiture sonal subject, and, when employed, landscape back- grounds were appropriately subordinated to his subject- proper. Raeburn’s rule is laid down in the course of his conversation with Sir Walter Scott (see p. 138), and he invariably acted upon it. The ‘ ‘ systematic background,” which his friendly London adviser cautioned him against, did not in truth suit his style. Extreme examples of it are found in Reynolds’s “Admiral Keppel” and “Nelly O’Brien.” If Raeburn ever saw the former, the inference from what he said to Scott is that he avoided taking it as a precedent. 195 Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. He was perfectly willing to abide by usage so far as to make a portrait tell something of the life and tastes of his sitter, as in the portraits of Reflections <