RAEBURNSir Henry (1756-1823), portrait-painter, was born at Stockbridge, a suburb of Edinburgh, on the 4th of March 1756, the son of a manufacturer of the city. He was early left an orphan. Being placed in Heriot’s Hospital, he received there the elements of a sound education, and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to a goldsmith in Edinburgh. Here he had some little opportunity for the practice of the humbler kinds of art, and various pieces of jewellery, mourning rings and the like, adorned with minute drawings on ivory by his hand, are still extant. Soon he took to the production of carefully finished miniatures; and, meeting with success and patronage, he extended his practice to oil-painting, being all the while quite self-taught. The worthy goldsmith his master watched the progress of his pupil with interest, gave him every encouragement, and introduced him to David Martin, who had been the favourite assistant of Allan Ramsay junior, and was now the leading portrait-painter in Edinburgh. Raeburn received considerable assistance from Martin, and was especially aided by the loan of portraits to copy. Soon the young painter had gained sufficient skill to render it advisable that he should devote himself exclusively to art. When in his twenty-second year he was asked to paint the portrait of a young lady whom he had previously observed and admired when he was sketching from nature in the fields. She was the daughter of Peter Edgar of Bridgelands and widow of Count Leslie. The lady was speedily fascinated by the handsome and intellectual young artist, and in a month she became his wife, bringing him an ample fortune. After the approved fashion of artists of the time, it was resolved that Raeburn should visit Italy, and he accordingly started with his wife. In ...London he was kindly received by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who gave him excellent advice as to his study in Rome, especially recommending to his attention the works of Michelangelo. He also offered him more substantial pecuniary aid, which was declined as unneeded; but Raeburn carried with him to Italy many valuable introductions from the president of the Academy. In Rome he made the acquaintance of Gavin Hamilton, of Batoni, and of Byers. For the advice of the last-named he used to acknowledge himself greatly indebted, and particularly for the recommendation that “he should never copy an object from memory, but, from the principal figure to the minutest accessory, have it placed before him.” After two years of study in Italy he returned to Edinburgh in 1787, where he began a most successful career as a portrait-painter. In that year he executed an admirable seated portrait of the second Lord President Dundas.
Of his earlier portraiture we have interesting examples in the bust-likeness of Mrs Johnstone of Baldovie and in the three-quarter-length of Dr James Hutton, works which, if they are somewhat timid and tentative in handling and wanting in the trenchant brush-work and assured mastery of subsequent productions, are full of delicacy and character. The portraits of John Clerk, Lord Eldin, and of Principal Hill of St Andrews belong to a somewhat later period. Raeburn was fortunate in the time in which he practised portraiture. Sir Walter Scott, Blair, Mackenzie,
Woodhouselee, Robertson, Home, Ferguson, and Dugald Stewart were resident in Edinburgh, and they were all, along with a host of others less celebrated, immortalized on the painter’s canvas. Of his fully matured manner we could have no finer examples than his own portrait and that of the Rev. Sir Henry Moncreiff Wellwood, the bust of Dr Wardrop of Torbane Hill, the two full-lengths of Adam Rolland of Gask and that of William Macdonald of St Martin’s. It was commonly believed that Raeburn was less successful in his female than in his male portraits, but the exquisite full-length of his wife, the smaller likeness of Mrs R. Scott Moncrieff in the Scottish National Gallery, and that of Mrs Robert Bell are sufficient to prove that he could on occasion portray all the grace and beauty of the gentler sex.
Raeburn spent his life in Edinburgh, rarely visiting the metropolis, and then only for brief periods, thus preserving his own sturdy individuality, if he missed the opportunity of engrafting on it some of the fuller refinement and delicacy of the London portraitists. His leisure was employed in athletic sports, in his garden, and in architectural and mechanical pursuits, and so varied were the interests that filled his life that his sitters used to say of him, “You would never take him for a painter till he seizes the brush and palette.” Professional honours fell thick upon him. In 1812 he was elected president of the Society of Artists in Edinburgh, in 1814 associate, and in the following year full member of the Royal Academy. In 1822 he was knighted by George IV. and appointed His Majesty’s limner for Scotland. He died at Edinburgh on the 8th of July 1823.
In his own day the portraits of Raeburn were excellently and voluminously engraved, especially by the last members of the great school of English mezzotint. In 1876 a collection of over 300 of his works was brought together in the Royal Scottish Academy galleries; in the following year a series of twelve of his iinest portraits was included in the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy, London; and a volume of photographs from his paintings has been edited by Dr John Brown.
Raeburn possessed all the necessary requirements of a popular and successful portrait-painter. He had the power of producing a telling and forcible likeness; his productions are distinguished by breadth of effect, by admirable force of handling, by execution of the swiftest and most resolute sort. Wilkie has recorded that, while travelling in Spain and studying the works of Velazquez, the brash-work of that master reminded him constantly of the “square touch” of Raeburn. But the portraits of Velazquez are unsurpassable examples of tone as well as of handling, and it is in the former quality that Raeburn is distinctly wanting. The colour of his portraits is sometimes crude and out of relation, inclining to the use of positive and definite local pigments, and too little perceptive of the changeful subtilties and modifications of atmospheric effect. His draperies frequently consist of little more than two colours—the local hue of the fabric and the black which, more or less graduated, expresses its shadows and modelling. In his flesh, too, he wants—in all but his very best productions— the delicate refinements of colouring which distinguish the works of the great English portrait-painters. His faces, with all their excellent truth of form and splendid vigour of handling, are often hard and bricky in hue.
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