Sir Henry Raeburn - 1756-1823

( Originally Published 1908 )

ENGLISH SCHOOL

SIR HENRY RAEBURN (pronounced Ray-burn) was of Border descent, his forefathers 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.

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 described by their descendants as rieving pastoral lairds. They probably did as their neighbors 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 family was nearing the confines of history when, early in the eighteenth century, Robert Raeburn decided to give up farming for manufacturing, and left the undulating uplands of the Border for the neighborhood of the capital. We find him beginning some kind of milling or manufacturing at Stockbridge, then an outlying suburb, but now incorporated with Edinburgh.

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 March 4, 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. Feeling in his in-experience 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. 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.

Of his career there only a broad and general outline is given. He had no skill in the classics; perhaps 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 association with sitters of learning and rank and for the social position which he rose to command. 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 remained six or seven years in Heriot's.

Taken from school at the age of fifteen, the momentous question of a profession or calling had first to be settled. It is pointedly recorded that his genius did not decide for him. He had, in other words, no clear preference. Ultimately he fixed upon the industrial art of a goldsmith, and was accordingly apprenticed to Mr. Gilliland, who had reached a certain eminence in the business. That Raeburn acquired a certain amount of manual dexterity and ac-curacy 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 among his friends and associates. In time 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 by his oils that he is almost unknown among miniaturists. Two, of uncertain date, were included in the exhibition 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. The second miniature is one of Dr. Andrew Wood, and is obviously later than the Deuchar.

During the whole course of his apprenticeship, Raeburn's energy and industry were most exemplary. When Gilliland discovered 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, by praising his apprentice to his customers, and subsequently, as he found that Raeburn's skill warranted his recommendation, by securing him commissions.

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. It is not known that he received any instruction in the art of painting, although his acquaintance with painters of the period has been traced. 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. His reputation soon spread through-out 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.

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.

Young, well-mannered, good-looking, and clever, Raeburn had the world be-fore him; but he had one failing— he was poor, without ever feeling the pinch of real poverty. Fortune, however, soon came to his relief, for one of his sitters was the Countess Leslie, whose estate, Deanhaugh, adjoined that of the Rae-burns. After a brief courtship they were married and Raeburn found himself in possession of "an affectionate wife and a handsome fortune."

There is no sketch of Raeburn's early life, either artistic or literary. That he was self-reliant, resourceful, and courageous, a man to mold circumstance, is apparent from the story of his life. He was a Borderer, and seems to have been cast in the hereditary Border mold. 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. Stevenson's pen-portrait of him is probably as near Raeburn as we shall ever get: "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 contemplative faculty, and the instinctive good feeling we see in a dog, ennobled by natural wisdom, fired by sympathy and humor, refined by intellect, sentiment, and the habitual practice of an absorbing and intellectual art. He looks wise, fear-less, 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, ambitious, 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."

He painted, is said to have modeled, 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 enthusiastic angler, a golfer, and a practised archer. His splendid physique needed the oiling of exercise, and his temperament 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 ship-building, and the principles of naval architecture, which led him to make and test three-foot models finished in a style worthy of an ex-goldsmith. He also studied architecture, planned and built his own studio, and laid out and built all the better part of Stock-bridge. 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!

In 1785, accompanied by his wife, Raeburn set out towards the South. 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."

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 impressions, related anything concerning either his own occupations or the mute instruction he got from the old masters, it has nearly all passed into oblivion.

After two years of Rome Raeburn made directly for Edinburgh, halting at neither Paris nor London. His first step was to take a studio more central and more convenient for sitters than Deanhaugh. He found a suitable place in George Street.

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 Deanhaugh, and to move into St. Bernard's House, which had been his father's home, and was the place of his own birth. He never afterwards left it. To the mansion a good deal 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 Stockbridge. He appears both to have let on perpetual lease or feud and built, and it was in connection with these matters that he developed that "abstract love" of law to which reference has been made.

Between painting, building, gardening, angling, and golf Raeburn may be assumed to have spent the years immediately following his return from Rome. 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 him-self 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. With the removal of his studio to York Place, in 1795, Raeburn settled himself for life.

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 children, walked up to his great room in 32 York Place, now [1829–33] occupied by 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 never drew in his heads, or indeed any part of the body, with chalk, but began with the brush at once. The forehead, chin, nose, and mouth were his first touches. He always painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on; for such was his accuracy of eye and steadiness of nerve that he could introduce the most delicate touches, or the 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."

Upon the death of Raeburn Sir Walter Scott said of him: "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, 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, contemplating his picture, which position always brought me in mind of a figure of Jupiter which I have some-where seen."

After his return from Rome to Edinburgh,till his death, his life is described as busy, happy, and victorious. Full of work, eager, hospitable, faithful in his friendships, homely in his habits, he was one of the best-liked men of his time. Almost at a step he rose to the summit of his profession in Scotland.

His portraits of `Professor Andrew Duncan," President Alexander Wood,' and `William Inglis,' along with those of `Lord President Dundas' and `Lord Eldin,' and others unknown, caught the eye of Edinburgh. `Principal Hill of St. Andrew's' 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.

Unfortunately, Raeburn did not date his pictures, and there is no way of determining the chronological sequence of the many portraits which followed. A few of his most remarkable and suggestive portraits belong to the closing years of the eighteenth century, although, taking them in the mass, his latest works are his best. The number of his pictures is also so great—more than seven hundred are catalogued by J. L. Caw—that it is impossible to even enumerate those of notable excellence. He did not paint pictures of or for the bourgeoisie. Edinburgh was aristocratic, and he painted chiefly the aristocracy of either title or intellect. This accounts for much of his good fortune in having so many sitters representative of Scotland. He not only painted the genius of Edinburgh—he perpetuated the Scottish type.

Some of Raeburn's portraits are notable by reason of their subjects; others, as works of art apart from their subjects. Of the former, Scott and Burns furnish the most notable examples. There are six portraits of Scott enumerated as the work of Raeburn. Frequently has the question been raised, and lightly dismissed unanswered, as to whether Raeburn painted an original portrait of Robert Burns. Both circumstantial and written evidence favor a negative answer. He did, however, in 1803, make a copy of Nasmyth's portrait of Burns.

`Dr. Alexander Adam,' Rector of the Royal High School of Edinburgh, painted about 1808, is one of Raeburn's most successful readings of character.

`Francis Horner' furnishes a revelation of a singularly attractive personality. `Lord Jeffrey," Lord Cockburn,' and `Henry Mackenzie' belong to the same group as examples of the painter's power to seize and portray personal and intellectual idiosyncrasies. `The Macnab,' which Sir Thomas Lawrence is reported to have pronounced the best representation of a human being he had ever seen, and the `Sir John Sinclair,' both in Highland costume, are wonderful examples of Raeburn's masterly ease of realistic representation and technical skill. ` James Wardrop of Torbanehill' and ` John Wauchope' stand at or near the summit of the painter's work.

Although the opinion has been widely held that Raeburn was essentially a painter of men and that his portraits of women were inferior, his portraits of `Lady Raeburn,' `Mrs. James Campbell,"Mrs. Campbell of Balliemore,' `Mrs. Scott-Moncrieff,' and others are among his best. The man Raeburn makes himself felt within the painter. His 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 the year 181o, when doing the best work of his artistic prime, Raeburn contemplated either settling in London or having an alternative residence there. He 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. Whatever may have impelled this course he went to London and was introduced by Sir David Wilkie to the members of the Royal Academy,of which Sir Thomas Lawrence was then president. The Academy at that time was corrupted by jealousy, honeycombed with intrigue, and habitually guilty of selfish favoritism. It is probable that the reception accorded Raeburn and his observation of the bitter rivalry among the painters of the capital decided him to return at once to Edinburgh, thus fixing both his whole future life and the measure of his fame.

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.

Had the issue of Raeburn's London excursion been different, his gallery of Scots notables had lacked many of its 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 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' was done in 182o, 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 "fag-end" to the productions of Raeburn's brush, and that his latest portraits include some of his subtlest and most powerful. Taken along with his originality, his independence of convention, and the circumstance that not one of his foremost works was sent for exhibition out of Scotland, the matters noted may explain the late arrival of the honors 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 abroad, but Raeburn himself makes no sign of eagerly desiring their recognition.

Raeburn was, in any event, elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1814, and an Academician in 1815. He waited until 1821 before sending `A Boy and Rabbit' as his diploma work. Thereafter, he was admitted member of the Imperial Academy of Florence; in 1817, an honorary member of the New York Academy of the Fine Arts; and in 1821, a similar honor 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 Scotland. Raeburn was rather surprised to receive intimation that the king intended to knight him, "as a mark of 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 handsome and courtier-like Raeburn made such an impression upon His Majesty that he is said to have wished to make the knighthood a baronetcy, and to have been deterred solely by consideration for the memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who only secured the lesser honor.

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 comply. 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 appearance blessed with a good constitution, and possessing abounding health and vigor.

Sir Henry died on July 8, 1823, and conventional 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 (Scottist 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 northeast corner turret of the building, Rae-burn, by a happy thought of the sculptor, appears to be looking down York