Raeburn Part 1

Raeburn.

by James L. Caw.

When in 1810, Henry Raeburn, then at the height of his powers, proposed to settle in London, Lawrence dissuaded him. It is unnecessary, as it would be unjust, to insinuate that the future President of the Royal Academy had ulterior and personal motives in urging him to rest content with his supremacy in the North. Raeburn was fifty-five at the time, and, after his undisputed reign at home, even his generous nature might have taken ill with the compet.i.tion inseparable from such a venture.

Lawrence's advice was wise in many ways, and Raeburn, secure in the admiration and constant patronage of his countrymen, lived his life to the end unvexed by the petty jealousy of inferior rivals. Nor was recognition confined to Scotland. Ultimately he was elected a member of the Royal Academy, an honour all the more valued because unsolicited. Yet, had the courtly Lawrence but known, acceptance of his advice kept a greater than himself from London, and, it may be, prevented the perpetuation and further development of that tradition of n.o.ble portraiture of which Raeburn, with personal modifications, was such a master. For long also it confined the Scottish painter's reputation to his own country. Forty years after his death, his art was so little known in England that the Redgraves, in their admirable history of English painting, relegated him to a chapter headed "The Contemporaries of Lawrence." Time brings its revenges, however, and of late years Raeburn has taken a place in the very front rank of British painters. And, if this recognition has been given tardily by English critics, the reason is to be found in want of acquaintance with his work. He had lived and painted solely in Scotland, and Scottish art, like foreign art, so long as it remains at home, has little interest for London, which, sure of its attractive power, sits arrogantly still till art is brought to it. But Raeburn's work possesses that inherent power, which, seen by comprehending eyes, compels admiration. The Raeburn exhibition held in Edinburgh in 1876 was quite local in its influence, but from time to time since then, at "The Old Masters" and elsewhere, admirable examples have been shown in London; and recent loan collections in Glasgow and Edinburgh, wherein his achievement was very fully ill.u.s.trated, were seen by large and cosmopolitan audiences.

And the better his work has become known, the more has it been appreciated. Collectors and galleries at home and abroad are now anxious to secure examples; dealers are as alert to buy as they are keen to sell; prices have risen steadily from the very modest sums of twenty years ago until fine pictures by him fetch as much as representative specimens of Reynolds and Gainsborough. Fas.h.i.+on has had much to do with this greatly enhanced reputation, but another, and more commendable cause of the appreciation, not of the commercial value but of the artistic merit of his work, lies in the fact that the qualities which dominate it are those now held in highest esteem by artists and lovers of art. Isolated though he was, Raeburn expressed himself in a manner and achieved pictorial results which make his achievement somewhat similar in kind to that of Velasquez and Hals.

PLATE II.--CHILDREN OF MR AND THE HON. MRS PATERSON OF CASTLE HUNTLY.

(Charles J. G. Paterson, Esq.)

Painted within a year or two of Raeburn's return from Italy, some critics have seen, or thought they saw, in this picture the influence of Michael Angelo. Be this as it may, the handling, lighting, and tone and disposition of the colour are eminently characteristic of much of the work done by Raeburn about 1790.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate II.]

I

If, during the last century, Scotland has shown exceptional activity in the arts, especially in painting, and has produced a succession of artists whose work is marked by able craftsmans.h.i.+p and emotional and subjective qualities, which give it a distinctive place in modern painting, the more than two hundred years which lay between the Reformation and the advent of Raeburn seemed to hold little promise of artistic development. During the Middle Ages and the renaissance the internal condition of the country was too unsettled and its resources were too meagre to make art widely possible. Strong castles and beautiful churches were built here and there, but intermittent war on the borders and fear of invasion kept even the more settled central districts in a state of unrest. Moreover, the fierce barons were at constant feud amongst themselves, and not infrequently the more powerful amongst them were banded against the King. Of the first five Jameses only the last died, and that miserably, in his bed. The innate taste of the Stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in the Court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial relations with the Low Countries and political a.s.sociations with France. Poetry and scholars.h.i.+p were encouraged, if poorly rewarded--one remembers Dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a benefice--and relics and old records show that even in those stirring times life was not without its refinements and tasteful accessories.

Yet only in the Church or for her service was there the quietude necessary for art work of the higher kinds. Then came the Reformation (during which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and decoration perished) severing the connection of art with religion and sowing distrust of art in any form.

Had the Union of the Crowns not taken place in 1603, it is possible that the art of painting might have developed much earlier than it did.

No doubt that event brought healing to the long open sore caused and inflamed by kingly ambitions and national animosities, but it removed the Court to London, and with that some of the greatest n.o.bles, while the change in the religion of the ruling house from Presbyterianism to Episcopacy, which followed, led to the Covenants and the religious persecution, and drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those cla.s.ses from whom artists mostly spring. Yet the logical rigidity of the Calvinistic spirit, while taking much of the joy out of life and opposing its manifestation in art, had certain compensating advantages.

Disciplining the mind, quickening the reasoning powers, and cultivating that grasp of essentials which makes for success in almost any pursuit, and not least in art, it helped very largely to make the Scot what he is.

During the peaceful years which immediately followed the Union, there was considerable activity in the building of country residences. Now that the country was more settled these were less castles than mansions, and the larger and better lighted apartments possible led to a good deal of elaborate decoration. Of this Pinkie House (1613) with its painted gallery is perhaps the most celebrated example. It is difficult, however, to determine how much of this kind of work was done by foreign, how much by native craftsmen, and as it seems to have exerted little influence upon the one or two picture-painters who emerged during the seventeenth century, one need not discuss the probabilities. So far as has been discovered, the only link between this phase of art and the other consists of the fact that George Jamesone (1598?-1644), the first clearly recognisable Scottish artist, was apprenticed in 1612 to one John Andersone "paynter" in Edinburgh, whose decoration in Gordon Castle is mentioned by an old chronicler.

As might be expected in the circ.u.mstances the "Scottish Van Dyck," as he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. He was followed by a few others, such as the Scougall family, Aikman Marshall, Wait, and the two Alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of portraitists between him and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) in whose work art in Scotland took a great step forward.[1] A few of Ramsay's predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre instruction--if any thing that existed could be dignified by that name--to be obtained in Scotland by a visit to the Low Countries or Italy, but Ramsay was the first to obtain a sound technical training. The author of "The Gentle Shepherd," to whom Edinburgh was indebted for its first circulating library and its first play-house, encouraged his son's bent for art, and after some preliminary study in London, Allan _fils_ was sent to "The seat of the Beast" beyond the Alps, where he became a pupil of Solimena and Imperiale and of the French Academy. Formed under these influences, his style possesses no clearly marked national trait, except it be the feeling for character which informs his finer work and makes it, in a way, a link between that of Jamesone and that of Raeburn. To this he added a delicate sense of tone and a tenderness of colour and lighting, a gracefulness of drawing and a refined accomplishment which were new in Scottish painting. His turn for charm of pose and grace of motive was p.r.o.nounced, and his portraitures mirror very happily the mannered yet elegant social airs of the mid-eighteenth century. More than that of any English painter of his day, his art possesses "French elegance."

PLATE III.--MRS LAUZUN. (National Gallery.)

Only one of the three Raeburns in the National Gallery is an adequate example. This is the picture reproduced. It was painted in 1795, and, while very typical technically, possesses greater charm than most of the portraits of women executed by him at that comparatively early date.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate III.]

Ramsay's activity as a painter coincided with a remarkable intellectual movement which, making itself felt in history, philosophy, science, and political economy, raised Scotland within a few years to a conspicuous intellectual place in Europe. A product of the reaction which followed the narrow and intense theological ideals which had dominated Scotland, it was closely a.s.sociated with the reign of the Moderates, who, with their breadth of view, tolerance, and intellectual gifts had become the most influential party in the National Church. Offering an outlet for the human instincts and secular activities, it possessed special attraction for independent minds and induced boldness of speculation and original investigation of the phenomena of history and society.

Intimate with the leaders in this movement, Ramsay, before he left Edinburgh for London, was active in the formation (1754) of the "Select Society," which in addition to its main object--the improvement of its members in reasoning and eloquence--sought to encourage the arts and sciences and to improve the material and social condition of the people. It was in this more genial atmosphere that Henry Raeburn was reared.

Born in 1756, Raeburn was not too late to paint many of the most gifted of the older generation. David Hume, who sat to Ramsay more than once, was dead before the new light rose above the horizon, and the appearance of Adam Smith does not seem to be recorded except in a Ta.s.sie medallion; but Black, the father of modern chemistry, and Hutton, the originator of modern geology, were amongst his early sitters; and fine works in a more mature manner have Princ.i.p.al Robertson, James Watt, the engineer, Adam Ferguson, the historian, Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, and others scarcely less interesting for subject. And of his own immediate contemporaries--the cycle of Walter Scott--he has left an almost complete gallery. Nor were his sitters less fortunate. If they brought fine heads to be painted, he painted them with wonderful insight grasp of character, and great pictorial power.

[1] J. Michael Wright (1625?-1700?), at his best probably the finest native painter of the seventeenth century, went to England.

II.

Descended from a race of "bonnet-lairds," who took their name from a hill farm in the Border district, Robert Raeburn, the artist's father, seems to have come to Edinburgh as a young man in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. At that time the city had expanded but little beyond the limits marked by the Flodden wall. The high grey lands along the windy ridge between the Castle and Holyrood were still tenanted by the upper cla.s.ses, and such extension as had been was towards the Meadows. The new town had not been projected even, and on the slopes, now occupied by its s.p.a.cious streets and squares, copse-woods and gra.s.s and heather grew. In the hollow at the foot of these green braes, and by the side of the Water of Leith, a chain of little hamlets--Dean, Stockbridge, and Canon-mills--nestled, and in the mid-most of these Robert Raeburn established himself as a yarn-boiler.

Although in the country, his home was less than a mile from St Giles's Kirk. His business appears to have prospered, and during the early forties he married Miss Ann Elder. There was a difference of twelve years in the ages of their two sons, William and Henry, and the younger was no more than six when both father and mother died. Left to the care of his brother, who carried on the business, Henry Raeburn was nominated for maintenance and education at Heriot's Hospital by Mrs Sarah Sandilands or Durham in 1764, and remained seven years in the school, which owed its origin to the bequest of George Heriot, jeweller to James VI. and I. in Edinburgh and later in London. Many boys had been educated on "Jingling Geordie's" foundation, but Raeburn was to be its most distinguished product. He does not seem to have distinguished himself specially as a scholar, however, the two prizes awarded to him having been for writing, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was apprenticed to a jeweller and goldsmith in Parliament Close. This choice of a calling was probably suggested by the lad's own inclinations, but it was a stroke of good fortune that gave him James Gilliland as a master. No craft then practised in the Scottish capital was so likely to have been congenial to him. In the eighteenth century a silversmith made as well as sold plate and ornaments, and in his master's shop Raeburn must have learned to use his hands and may have acquired some idea of design. In addition Gilliland seems to have been a man of some taste--one of his most intimate friends, David Deuchar, the seal-engraver, devoted his leisure to etching, and executed many plates after Holbein and the Dutch masters. It was to the latter that Raeburn owed his first lessons in art. Surprising his friend's apprentice at work on a drawing of himself, Deuchar, struck by the talent displayed, inquired if he had had any instruction. No, he had not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and Deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted eagerly. The story is pleasant and circ.u.mstantial enough to be credible; and the existence of an early Raeburn miniature of Deuchar is evidence of the existence of friends.h.i.+p between the two. But, as a free drawing-school had been founded in 1760 by the Honourable the Board of Manufactures for the precise object of encouraging and improving design for manufactures, the impossibility of Raeburn receiving instructions of some kind was less than seems to be implied.

It is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in 1798 of John Graham[1] (1754-1817) as preceptor that the Trustees' Academy was developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound influence on Scottish painting. From 1771, the year in which Raeburn left Heriot's, until his death, Alexander Runciman (1736-85), the "Sir Brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that Raeburn took the tone of his colour from that painter's work. But no record exists of Raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to have received any more training than was involved in the relations.h.i.+ps with his master and his master's friend which have been described.

Even subsequent introduction to David Martin (1737-98), who settled in Edinburgh in 1775, when Raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. By that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and received as compensation a share in the prices received for the miniatures to which Raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which Gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. These miniatures, of which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no very marked artistic qualities. Drawn with care and not without considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character.

The frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and placing of the heads are almost the only elements which hint their authors.h.i.+p. They are simple and straight-forward likenesses rather than works of art and bear no obvious relations.h.i.+p to the elegant bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little of the contemporary English school of miniaturists. But obviously they were some preparation for the development which followed, when, soon afterwards and almost at once, he pa.s.sed from water-colour miniature to life-size portraiture in oil paint.

PLATE IV.--MRS CAMPBELL OF BALLIEMORE.

(National Gallery of Scotland.)

This is one of the finest of the many fine portraits by Raeburn in the Edinburgh Gallery. Its place in the artist's work is discussed on page 63.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate IV.]

The rapid expansion of Edinburgh provided new opportunities and helped to Raeburn's early success. When he was eight years old the building of the North Bridge, which was to connect the old city with the projected new town on the other side of the valley, was begun, and by the time he attained his majority many of the well-to-do had migrated.

The new district meant bigger houses and larger rooms, and, with the increase in wealth which followed the commercial and agricultural development of the country of which the city was the capital, led to alterations in the habits and expansion of the ideals of its inhabitants. It was probably the opening for an artist offered by these altered circ.u.mstances which had brought Martin to Edinburgh, and certainly Raeburn was fortunate in that his emergence coincided with them. An attractive and clever lad devoting himself to art in a community increasing in wealth and expanding in ideas, and with a sympathetic master coming in contact with the upper cla.s.ses, Raeburn could not fail to make acquaintances able and willing to help him.

Amongst these was John Clerk, younger of Eldin, later a famous advocate, through whom the young artist got into touch with the Penicuik family which for several generations had been notable for its interest in the arts. And this would lead to other introductions.

[1] Sir David Wilkie, Sir William Allan, and others were pupils of Graham.

III.

The influences which affected Raeburn and the models upon which he formed either his style or his method are difficult to trace. Allan Ramsay, having painted many portraits in Edinburgh before he went to London in the same year as Raeburn was born, would be, one would think, the most likely source of inspiration. Except Runciman, who occasionally varied historical subjects by portraits painted in a broad but somewhat empty manner, and Seaton, an artist of whom little is known but whose rare and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of handling and a simplicity of design which give the best of them a certain distinction--can they have been an influence with Raeburn?--the Scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth century were much influenced by Ramsay, and Martin had been his favourite pupil.

Raeburn's connection with the latter was very slight, however. Beyond giving the youth the entree to his studio and lending him a few pictures to copy, Martin does not seem to have been of much direct a.s.sistance, and even these little courtesies come to an end when the painter to the Prince of Wales for Scotland unjustly accused the jeweller's apprentice of having sold one of the copies he had been allowed to make. Rumour, often astray but now and then hitting the mark, said that the real reason was jealousy of the younger man's growing powers. Raeburn's debt to Ramsay and Martin was therefore inconsiderable and indirect. It is not traceable in the technique or arrangement of his earliest known pictures, such as the full-length "George Chalmers" in Dunfermline Town Hall, which was painted in 1776, when the artist was twenty. Probably sight of Martin's pictures in progress was an incentive to work rather than a formative influence on his development as a painter. He had, says Allan Cunningham, writing within a few years of Raeburn's death, "to make experiments, and drudge to acquire what belongs to the mechanical labour, and not to the genius of his art. His first difficulty was the preparation of his colours; putting them on the palette, and applying them according to the rules of art taught in the academies. All this he had to seek out for himself." And, if probably exaggerated, the statement gives some idea of the difficulties with which he had to contend. There were at that time no exhibitions and no public collections of pictures where a youth of genuine instinct could have gleaned hints as to technical procedure, but there were at least portraits in a number of houses in the city and district, and from these and from prints after the Masters, of which Deuchar, an etcher himself, evidently possessed examples, Raeburn no doubt derived much instruction as to design, the use of chiaroscuro and the like. It has also been suggested with considerable likelihood that mezzotints after portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds had a considerable effect upon him.

PLATE V.--PROFESSOR ROBISON.

(University of Edinburgh.)