International studio (34.1908)

Raeburn s
placing. This simple manner of seeing, and the
advice given him by his countryman Byres, when
in Rome, “ Always to paint with the object before
him,” is teaching him that relief is attained by true
relation of tones, and how nature works by har-
monies rather than by contrasts in her arrangements.
For Raeburn, like other young painters, sees, at
first, more the contrasts which divide than the
harmony which unifies. A comparison of Lady
Raeburn, 1795, or Mrs. Gregory, 1796, with Mrs.
Ferguson and her Children, 1781 ; or of the boy
Henry Raeburn on a Grey Pony, 1796, with the
six or seven years earlier Sir John and Lady
Clerk will illustrate the points dwelt on.
But if maturity in technique was long delayed,
his manner brought immediate success in another
direction. For, in Scotland at least, Raeburn’s
may be called the beginning of true portraiture.
One looks in vain in the
works of Jamesone and
Scougal for characteristic
Scottish types. Those
gentlemen with flowing
wigs, in steel cuirass or
voluminous draperies, and
their wives of the sloping
shoulder and well-arched
brows, are as like their
English or Continental
contemporaries as may be.
Aikman’s gentry of the
Queen Anne period, and
Ramsay’s Whig lords and
Jacobite lairds, are cosmo-
politan rather than national
in their cast. One might
suppose that a new type
had arisen amongst us about
the last quarter of the eigh-
teenth century, so much do
Raeburn’s presentments of
the men and women of
that period differ from those
of his predecessors. That
his personal method brought
this more intimate render-
ing, and that from the com-
mencement, is evident from
many works of his earlier
practice, where, notwith-
standing the thinner mate-
rial and more precise
modelling, the character is
strongly rendered.

Technique
In the chapter entitled “ His Influence on
Modern Art” of R. A. M. Stevenson’s “Velasquez,'’
the author has described the method of painting a
head taught in the studio of Carolus-Duran—“a
great painter whose only recognised master was
Velasquez.” The object is to show the influence
of the Spanish painter; but Raeburn’s method, as
seen in any characteristic example of his earlier
decades, and his manner of setting to work, as
recorded by Allan Cunningham, could hardly be
better described than in the sentences used.
Indeed, the mosaic-like placing side by side of the
few simple planes, in accordance with “ the relative
value of light that their various inclinations pro-
duce,” the “ sharp edged unsoftened facets,” and the
dispensing with preliminary contour, better describe
the methods of the northern than of the southern
master. Here we have Raeburn related both to


“JOHN CAMPBELL OF SADDELL, WHEN A CHILD” BY SIR H. RAEBURN, R. A.
( By permission of Messrs. Thos. Agnew Sf Sons)

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