The Art Of Sir Henry Raeburn

( Originally Published 1908 )

SIR WALTER ARMSTRONG 'SCOTTISH PAINTERS'

IT is not unlikely that Raeburn would have risen into the first rank of artists had the conditions been more favorable. His portraits show a unity and coherence of conception, combined with a free certainty of handling, that is only to be excelled in the work of two or three very famous men. His color is of the negative kind. It gives neither pain nor much active pleasure. Now and then it shows a tendency to heat, but as a rule it is simply quiescent. His skill as a harmonist is shown, however, when he had something trying to do. The portrait of Nathaniel Spens, in the Archers' Hall in Edinburgh, is an instance of this. To paint tartan at all is difficult; but when the tartan is a criant green and spread smoothly over the whole stature of an athletic archer of six feet or more the task becomes stupendous. And yet Raeburn triumphed. The picture was at Burlington House a few years ago, and excited enthusiasm among English painters. The secret of its success lies in its simplicity—a simplicity won by careful thought, by freedom from discord in color, and by breadth and finality in execution. Perhaps a still finer example of the same sort of skill is the full-length portrait of Colonel Alastair Macdonnell of Glengarry, which at present hangs, as a loan, in the Scottish National Gallery. Breadth and simplicity of lighting and handling could not easily be carried farther, and the warm tints of the tartan gave an opportunity for a richer scheme of color than that in the picture in Archers' Hall. Raeburn's notion of color was that of a modern Frenchman. Quality of tint he did not feel much for; truth of value and harmony he aimed at. In his letters from Madrid, Wilkie continually mentions the handling of Velasquez as reminding him of Raeburn; and those who have lately been admiring the Duke of Wellington's magnificent `Innocent x.' at the Old Masters will understand what he meant. The Velasquez has a force and completeness far beyond that of Raeburn's work at its best. It was painted by a man who had grown up among the great schools; who lived with Titians and Tintorettos, and had about him crowds of painters, who, slight as their talents may seem in comparison with his, sufficed at least to drive him to perfect his powers. Raeburn, on the other hand, when his short visit to Italy had faded in his memory, had no person or thing to "make a pace" for him. His fine taste compelled him to do work that was good, but its stimulus was not enough to make a man without ambition develop his resources to the full. His pictures seldom give an opening for positive criticism. So far as they go, they come near perfection. But the range of his chiaroscuro is too short; his shadows and his high lights are too near each other, which leads to a want of depth and roundness in his modeling, and generally to a want of force. This comes partly, no doubt, from his habit of painting without a rest for his hand. That would lead him to simplify handling as far as possible and to adopt that system of large, square brush-strokes which is more conspicuous with him than with any other painter. With Raeburn these strokes are apt to be too large, so that his breadth occasionally degenerates almost into emptiness, or at least into what would be emptiness but for the consummate knowledge shown in what is given. An instance of this is to be seen in the portrait of Francis Horner, now at Bethnal Green. Splendid work up to a certain point, it wants to be carried farther. I do not say this be-cause I have any hankering after "finish," but because I can see that here the painter's own conception would profit by more force and definition.

EDWARD PINNINGTON 'SIR HENRY RAEBURN'

HE developed along the line springing from the early `Chalmers of Pittencrieff,' passing through the `Newton," Robison,' and `Bannatyne,' and reaching his polished maturity in the `Wauchope' and `Wardrop' and female portraits. In the middle period of his evolution Raeburn built his heads in squares. There is no Rembrandtesque subtlety in his brush-work, almost no mystery in his technique, as there is in that of Velasquez. He did not aim at fineness of complex texture. Every touch of the brush leaves a rectangular impress upon the unprepared canvas, and, looked at closely, the result is akin to inlaying after the manner of Henri Deux ware, cellular enamel (cloisonné), or mosaic. The edges are almost as well defined as those of the cells of metal ribbon in the enamel. Distance was necessary to the fusion of the brush-marks, and when Raeburn looked at his work from the far end of his painting-room the sharpness of the edges disappeared, and the planes or brush-marks seemed to run together into a vigorously modeled face. The subsequent change in his method was towards a more evenly graded roundness. The square touch disappears in the softer curves of reality. He may have been led to his later manner by his practice in the portraiture of women, whose finer features and more delicate color could not be rendered so successfully by square-painting as those of the more pronounced masculine type. That, in any event, is the point at which he arrived, and whether the Earl of Home's 'Scott' was the last work he touched or not, it marks the outermost limit of Raeburn's evolution in respect of technique and style.

Raeburn's method stands in no need of further explanation. His intention was to be absolutely true to nature, and to reach that aim he was compelled to treat details as they actually came into his vision relatively to his sitter. His vision, that is, was concentrated on his model; of anything else he had only an indistinct impression. He never, therefore, obtruded accessories to the division of attention with his principal subject.

Even beyond the play of light and its transformations of color and surface Raeburn sought vitality, the inner life which includes character and temperament, or sentient individuality. In that also he followed nature, followed her into the inmost recesses of humanity. Only by adhering to nature did he se-cure variety. He did not pass all his sitters through one mechanical Process, or turn them out of a common mold. He differentiated them not less in mental characteristics than in physical form.

In flesh-painting his leaning is towards a grateful warmth. His faces are aglow with health, pulsing blood, and the vigor of life, and that is undoubtedly the quality which seated him firmly in popular favor, and has contributed greatly to his retention of a position in the front rank of portrait-painters. Living nature was his theme, and in none of his portraits is there seen a lifeless counterfeit of humanity. Raeburn undoubtedly possessed ideality, but he did not idealize in the sense of exaltation to imagined perfection. This is exemplified in the almost intangible, curiously subtle blending in `The Macnab' of the "character" with the Chief of the Highland clan. The `Lady Raeburn' is worth a volume upon the placid repose of matrimonial peace and confidence. There is meaning eloquence even in the folded arms. The sunshine of a life is throbbing in the paint. In many other portraits —the `Admiral Duncan,' `Lord Eldin," Dr. Spens'—is an idea subsidiary to the artistic motif. Its expression gives measurable perfectness to the portrait. It enriches the color with thought and purpose; impregnates the pigments with suggestions of the actual but unseen adjuncts of life. In its most obvious forms the judge sits on the judgment-seat, the archer stands at the butts, the Highland chief is seen amidst the mists and bens of the North, the connoisseur dilutes law with art, the naval commander is afloat, the romancist sits brooding amongst medieval ruins weaving the web of story.

In these ways Raeburn idealized, and it is with a feeling akin to regret that the distinction must be drawn between subject-interest and technique. It is, nevertheless, true that for supreme artistic excellence it is with his simplest portraits —`Scott,"Wardrop,"Wauchope'—that the high-water mark of his command of his craft is drawn. The `Sinclair' is dexterous, but the ` War-drop' is masterly. In the triad named there is ideality, but refined into a quality to be felt rather than analyzed. In the earlier group is seen the working of that form of imagination which does not create out of nothing, but vivifies the actual. In such manner vitality and ideality in his art run together. They fuse like the colors in a face, and can hardly be traced in separate operation in a nature singularly impressionable and fruitful.

In speaking of Raeburn as "The Scottish Master," it is not intended to identify him, as artist, with one country more than another, or to impute a local accent to his artistry. That his subjects are types is due to the decision of the Scottish character which they represent, and in nowise to his art. His were the penetration, sharpened by sympathy, to read the character, and the skill to portray it in color.

Raeburn made no appeal to patriotism by entering the field of history; but he preserved for us the effigies of many who made history, especially that of literature. He painted a whole generation of those amongst whom he lived, and in them supplied a key to their life and time. To many of them a lasting personal interest attaches, but it is less in them than in his art that Raeburn lives. He was the technical forerunner of the later portrait-painters of France, who led to Sargent and the dashing breadth of Robert Brough. A good portrait by him is a revelation of the joyousness of life. He could not only read human nature, with all its complexities and shades of distinction, but he had the faculty of phrasing his perceptions in color. His sitters might be racial types, but he merged the typical aspect in the individual; and, in the power of individualizing his models, while never losing sight of pictorial effect, it is doubtful if, at least among modern painters, he has a superior.

JOHN BROWN 'SPARE HOURS'

SIR HENRY RAEBURN is the greatest of Scottish portrait-painters. Others may have painted one or more as excellent portraits, but none of these has given to the world such a profusion of masterpieces. Indeed, Sir Henry's name may stand with those of the world's greatest men in this department of art. There is a breadth and manliness, a strength and felicity of likeness and of character, and a simplicity and honesty of treatment which are found only in men of primary genius.

Raeburn stands nearly alone among the great portrait-painters in having never painted anything else. This does not prove that he was without the ideal faculty. No man can excel as a portrait-painter—no man can make the soul look out from a face—who wants it. The best likeness of a man should be the ideal of him realized. 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.

I end with the following excellent estimate of Raeburn's merits as an artist: "His style was free and bold, his coloring rich, deep, and harmonious. He had a peculiar power of rendering the head of his figure bold, prominent, and imposing. The strict fidelity of his representations may in a great degree be attributed to his invariable custom of painting, whether the principal figure or the minutest accessory, from the person or the thing itself, never giving a single touch from memory or conjecture. It has been judiciously said that all who are conversant with the practice of the art must have observed how often the spirit which gave life and vigor to a first sketch has gradually evaporated as the picture advanced to its more finished state. To preserve the spirit, combined with the evanescent delicacies and blendings which nature on minute inspection exhibits, constitutes a perfection of art to which few have attained. If the works of Sir Henry Raeburn fail to exhibit this rare combination in that degree, to this distinction they will always have a just claim—that they possess a freedom, a vigor, and a spirit of effect, and carry an impression of grace, life, and reality, which may be looked for in vain amidst thousands of pictures, both ancient and modern, of more elaborate execution and minute finish."

JOHN C. VAN DYKE 'OLD ENGLISH MASTERS'

THE best painter, in a technical sense, among all our so-called English masters was not an Englishman, but a Scotchman—Sir Henry Raeburn. Handling—the power to use the brush with certainty and ease—was his in a large degree. He could hardly be called an imaginative artist, nor was he a draftsman or a colorist beyond the ordinary; but in the Manet sense he was quite a perfect painter. There are artists in history who seem to have been born to the brush rather than to the crayon—artists who take to paint as instinctively as swans to water. The names of Frans Hals and Velasquez come to mind at once as the chiefs of the class; and yet, in a smaller way, Tiepolo, Teniers, Goya, and Raeburn were just as truly to the manner born. Wilkie, when studying Velasquez in Spain, was continually reminded of the "square touch" of Raeburn. The resemblance in method—in a way of seeing and doing things—could not fail of notice. The men were of the same brother-hood, if not of the same rank, and in eye and hand they were both preëminently painters.

There was nothing remarkable in Raeburn's art, aside from his simple point of view, his grasp of the portrait presence, and his mastery of the brush. He had little subtlety, shrewdness, or depth; little decorative sense in either line or color. His coloring was sober, often somber; or if brilliant, it was shrill, or perhaps false in its lighting. Tone was a feature he never quite mastered, and atmosphere bothered him whenever he tried to give a naturalistic background. He lacked knowledge of the aerial envelop, just as he failed in the perception of the relation of objects one to another. The isolated figure he did very well, but the grouped or related figure baffled him.

TIMOTHY COLE 'OLD ENGLISH MASTERS'

IT is to Edinburgh one must go to see Raeburn, where, at the National Gallery of Scotland, it is impossible not to be instantly impressed with his force and superiority as a portrait-painter. It is in the vigor of his light and shade, and the noble conception and large presentment of his subject—"the simple and powerful treatment," as Wilkie expresses it—rather than in any minor resemblance of peculiarity of touch, that Raeburn may be said to possess something in common with Velasquez. Should, however, the experiment be made of placing these masters side by side, it would be seen that the simplicity of the Scotchman lacked the subtlety of the Spaniard, and that his "powerful mode of treatment" would have much that was coarse and bold and harsh about it.

However this may be, it in no way disturbs or mitigates our appreciation and enjoyment of such splendid work as the portrait of Lord Newton or the more charming and delectable `Mrs. Scott-Moncrieff.' What a contrast these two busts present to each other—the virile quality of the man and the loveliness of the woman! How grandly the former fills the canvas! The sweeping line which the shoulders make from one end of the picture to the other is not to be surpassed in its suggestion of dignity by anything in the British school. The portrait of Mrs. Scott-Moncrieff ranks among the greatest examples of English portraiture. The supreme charm of the head, to my thinking, is the unconscious grace of mind that enwraps it, the perfect ease and unaffected simplicity of good sense which it embodies. The whole treatment of this beautiful canvas is different from the majority of Raeburn's works. It conveys no sense of direct handling. It is more subtle, flatter, and more smoothly painted; the evidences of its workmanship are not apparent.

RICHARD MUTHER 'THE HISTORY OF MODERN PAINTING'

HE was a born painter. Wilkie says in one of his letters from Madrid that the pictures of Velasquez put him in mind of Raeburn; and certain works of the Scot, such as the portrait of Lord Newton,the famous bon vivant and doughty drinker, are indeed performances of such powerful build that comparison with this mighty name is no profanation here. At a time when there was a danger that portraiture would sink in the hands of Lawrence into an insipid painting of prettiness Raeburn stood alone by the simplicity and naturalistic impressiveness of his likenesses. The three hundred and twenty-five portraits by him which were exhibited in the Royal Scottish Academy in 1876 gave as exhaustive a picture of the life of Edinburgh at the close of the century as those of Sir Joshua gave of the life of London. All the celebrated Scotchmen of his time—Robertson, Hume, Ferguson, and Scott—were painted by him; altogether he took over six hundred likenesses, and if this number seems small compared with the two thousand of Reynolds, Raeburn's artistic qualities are almost the greater. The secret of his success lies in his vigorous healthiness, in the indescribable furia of his brush, in the harmony and truth of his color-values. His figures are informed by a startling intensity of life. His old pensioners and his sailors, in particular, have something kingly in the grand air of their calm and noble countenances. Armstrong has given him a place between Frans Hals and Velasquez, and occasionally his conception of color even recalls the modern Frenchmen, as it were Manet in his Hals period. He paints his models as they come into contact with him in life, in the frank light of day and without any attempt at the dusk of the old masters; of raiment he gives only as much as the comprehension of the picture demands, and depicts character with large and simple traits.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ' VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE'

HE looked people shrewdly between the eyes, surprised their manners in their faces,and had possessed himself of what was essential in their characters before they had been many minutes in his studio. What he was so swift to perceive he conveyed to the canvas almost in the moment of conception. He had never any difficulty, he said, about either hands or faces. About draperies or light or composition he might see room for hesitation or afterthought; but a face or a hand was something plain and legible. There were no two ways about it, any more than about a person's name. And so each of his portraits is not only (in Dr. Johnson's phrase, aptly quoted on the catalogue) "a piece of history," but a piece of biography into the bargain. It is devoutly to be wished that all biography were equally amusing, and carried its own credentials equally upon its face. These portraits are racier than many anecdotes, and more complete than many a volume of sententious memoirs. You can see whether you get a stronger and clearer idea of Robertson the historian from Raeburn's palette or Dugald Stewart's woolly and evasive periods. And then the portraits are both signed and countersigned. For you have, first, the authority of the artist, whom you recognize as no mean critic of the looks and manners of men; the next you have the tacit acquiescence of the subject, who sits looking out upon you with inimitable innocence, and apparently under the impression that he is in a room by himself. For Raeburn could plunge at once through all the constraint and embarrassment of the sitter, and present the face clear, open, and intelligent as at the most disengaged moments.