Raeburn Part 2

PLATE VIII.--MRS SCOTT MONCRIEFF.

(National Gallery of Scotland.)

None of Raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this.

Although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used, it is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one of the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since 1854, when Mr R. Scott Moncrieff, Welwood of Pitliver, bequeathed it to the Royal Scottish Academy. (See page 79.)

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

As already suggested, Raeburn's style was tending towards greater completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before he removed to York Place in 1795, but, while his normal advance was in that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing them with their {73} predecessors that one notices that the advance was definite and not casual. Occasionally, as in the "Professor Robison,"

there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but, as the "Lord Braxfield" of about 1790 is a premonition of a much later manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. But comparing the splendid group, "Reginald Macdonald of Clanra.n.a.ld and his two younger brothers" (about 1800), or the "Mrs Cruikshank of Langley Park" (about 1805), with typical examples painted between 1787 and 1795, one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more expressive use of colour and chiaroscuro.

Considerable ingenuity has been expended in trying to prove that Raeburn's subsequent development was due in some way or other to the influence of Hoppner and Lawrence. Consideration of his situation and of his work itself, however, scarcely bears this out. His ignorance of what was being done by London artists, and of how his own pictures compared with theirs, is very clearly evident from the following letter written to Wilkie:--

Edinburgh, 12_th September_ 1819.

Mr dear Sir,--I let you to wit that I am still here, and long much to hear from you, both as to how you are and what you are doing. I would not wish to impose any hards.h.i.+p upon you, but it would give me great pleasure if you would take the trouble to write me at least once a year, if not oftener, and give me a little information of what is going on among the artists, for I do a.s.sure you I have as little communication with any of them, and know almost as little about them, as if I were living at the Cape of Good Hope.

I send up generally a picture or two to the Exhibition, which serve merely as an advertis.e.m.e.nt that I am still in the land of the living, but in other respects it does me no good, for I get no notice from any one, nor have I the least conception how they look beside others. I know not in what London papers any critiques of that kind are made, and our Edinburgh ones (at least those that I see) take no notice of these matters. At any rate I would prefer a candid observation or two from an artist like you, conveying not only your own opinion but perhaps that of others, before any of them.

Are the Portrait-Painters as well employed as ever? Sir Thomas Lawrence, they tell me, has refused to commence any more pictures till he gets done with those that are on hand, and that he has raised his prices to some enormous sum. Is that true, and will you do me the favour to tell me what his prices really are, and what Sir W. Beechy, Mr Philips, and Mr Owen have for their pictures? It will be a particular favour if you will take the trouble to ascertain these for me precisely, for I am raising my prices too, and it would be a guide to me--not that I intend to raise mine so high as your famous London artists.

Moreover he is said to have visited London only three times: in 1785, when he spent several weeks while on his way to Italy; in 1810, when he contemplated settling there; and in 1815, after he was elected an Academician. It is of course only with the later visits that we have to do in this connection. By that time Hoppner was dead, and Lawrence's claim to be painter par excellence to the fas.h.i.+onable world was undisputed. No doubt the Scottish painter would be attracted by the technical accomplishment of Lawrence's work; but he was between fifty and sixty years of age and little likely to be influenced by an art, which, for all its brilliance, was meretricious in many respects.

Yet it is possible that the adulation lavished by society upon his contemporary's style may have induced him to consider if something of the elegance for which it was esteemed so highly could not be added with advantage to his own. On the other hand, Scottish society was gradually undergoing evolution, and, while a greater infusion of fas.h.i.+on amongst its members would in itself tend to stimulate the favourite painter of the day in the same direction, increase in wealth would bring a greater number of younger sitters to his studio.

Probably a combination of these represents the influences which affected Raeburn. In any case, his later portraits, especially of women, possess qualities of charm and beauty which, while never merely pretty or meretricious, connect them in some measure with the more modish and less sincere and virile work of Lawrence. But otherwise--and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he never sacrificed character to elegance or subordinated individuality to type--the evolution of his style continued on purely personal lines. The pictures painted between 1810 and his death, while still at the height of his powers, are essentially one with those of the preceding decade.

There is in them a more delicate sense of beauty than before, and his portraits of ladies are marked by a quickened perception of feminine grace and charm; but these are results of the natural development of his nature and of his personal powers of expression rather than of any radical alteration in his standpoint.

As regards the work of the last fifteen years and more, it is less increased grasp of character, for that had always been a leading trait, than growth in the expressive power and completeness of his technique that is the dominating factor. And here the prevailing qualities are but the issue of previous experience. His modelling ceases to be marked by the rough-hewn and over simplified planes which had distinguished his incisive square-touch at its strongest and becomes fused and suave. As Sir Walter Armstrong put it, "He began with the facets and ended with the completest modelling ever reached by any English painter." Now his colour not only loses the inclination to slatiness and monotony, which were evident before 1795, and sometimes even later, but, the half-tones being more delicately graded, the transitions, though still lacking the subtleties of the real colourist, are blended and the general tone enriched and harmonised. And his use of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more delicate both in its play upon the face and in the broad disposition, which now attains finer and more convincing concentration in virtue of more skillful subordination through handling, as well as through more pictorial management of his old arrangement of lighting. Moreover the scenic setting, if retained in many full-lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a simple background lighted from the same source as the sitter, and against which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief.

With these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive brus.h.i.+ng of the preceding period, were also a.s.sociated a fuller and fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his earlier pictures rarely possess.

A sympathetic and human perception of character was the basis of his relations.h.i.+p to his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a rarely convincing way, and to me at least the {79} view of life expressed in his later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which dominates his earlier work. Comparatively this is perhaps especially evident in his rendering of pretty women. "Mrs Scott Moncrieff," "Miss de Vismes," "Miss Janet Suttie," and "Mrs Irvine Boswell," to name no more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. Still his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures of older women and of men, and his masterpieces are to be found amongst his pictures of this kind rather than amongst his "beauty" pieces, seductive though the best of these are. When one thinks of his finest and most personal achievements, one recalls such things as "Lord Newton," "Sir William Forbes," and "James Wardrop of Torbanehill," or "Mrs Cruikshank," and "Mrs James Campbell."

Born a painter of character, Raeburn was at his best where character, intellect, and shrewdness were most marked. Yet axiomatic though it may sound, this implies great gifts. To seize the obvious points of likeness, and make a portrait more living than life itself is comparatively easy; but to grasp the essential elements of likeness and character, and, while vitalising these pictorially and decoratively, to preserve the normal tone of life is difficult indeed. Of this, the highest triumph of the portrait-painter's art as such, Raeburn was a master.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS.

IN THE SAME SERIES

ARTIST. AUTHOR.

VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN.

REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN.

TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND.

ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND.

GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.

BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS.

ROSSETTI. LUCIEN p.i.s.sARRO.

BELLINI. GEORGE HAY.

FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON.

REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS.

LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY.

RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY.

HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE.

t.i.tIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN.

CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY.

LUINI. JAMES MASON.

TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN.

_Others in Preparation._