International studio (34.1908)

Raeburn s
art, would favour the growth of his own. However
that may be, there is apparent in the Chalmers
portrait, and in various others of the pre-Roman
period, a manner quite distinct from that of his
Scottish predecessors and contemporaries. In
place of Ramsay’s soft and well-rounded surfaces
and the feebler brushing of Martin, Raeburn
secures his modelling by means of a simplification
of surfaces to which he has the faculty of reducing
the infinite complexities of nature’s appearances.
This power of generalising is common to all great
artists : that which is personal to Raeburn is the
mosaic-like aspect of the ■work. He deals with
surfaces much as what used to be called drawing
“ on the square ” does with contour. The
advantage of that manner is that through all the
subsequent curvatures by which completion is
sought, something of the simplicity and bigness of
the first enclosing lines remains. In his early
works the fundamental squareness of Raeburn’s
modelling has little of the
fusion which corresponds
to the added curves in the
treatment of contour re-
ferred to. The painter is
feeling his way; the new
method is applied timidly
and with inadequate results
in more ways than one.
The pigment is thin and
starved — there was no
Gandy, as in the case of
Reynolds, to tell the Scot-
tish artist that oil painting
should have a richness of
texture which should re-
mind one of cream or cream
cheese — and the conse-
quent lack of body and
salience is observable well
into his career.
Raeburn achieved noth-
ing very remarkable during
the first ten or twelve years
of his practice. It is not
unlikely that by adopting
the manner then in vogue
success would have come
sooner, but the method
described above had this
advantage: it contained the
germ of almost infinite
possibilities. For in place
of being concerned with

Technique
roundings and softenings and the superficial
charms of a borrowed style, he sought the true
character of his sitter through the manner of
seeing congenial to his temperament, and which
his brush summarised wfith increasing success as
the years went on. The process was slow, for the
method did not lend itself readily to the con-
ventions of portraiture with which he had to
comply. It cannot be said that the Roman visit
had any immediate or very marked effect, but in
1791-2 he took a long step forward in the full
length of the archer, Nathaniel Spens. From the
close of the eighties, indeed, progress seems
quickened, and from that date it is continuous.
Comparing the portraits of the nineties with
those of the eighties one notes that the shadows
and markings by which the modelling is rendered
are less narrow, the pigment fuller, and the broad
surfaces of lights and darks which make up the
scheme of the picture less map-like in their