International studio (34.1908)

Raeburn s
traits of those years the more luscious brushing tends
to grossness. But every now and again, when the
subject interests him, Raeburn recovers himself, or
even, in modern parlance, breaks his record. And
there is evidence in some of those masterpieces that
they have cost more than the usual half-dozen sit-
tings. His own portrait (1815), and still more that
of Wardrop of Torbanehill, show traces of repeated
workings, the painting in both having much of the
quality of the masters of the less direct methods.
In these and many others which could be named,
both of male and female sitters, there are passages
rich and creamy as Gandy himself could have
desired, combined with a surety of modelling
which he has never surpassed. Sometimes, as in
Mrs. James Ca?npbell., the character seems achieved
in a white heat, but oftener the Hals-like brushing
is reserved for the costume, as if the painter, after
the strain of grappling with the main interest,
had let himself go on some bit of frilled cambric
or buff vest. Has the Dutchman himself ever
excelled that frill of the Hon. Mrs. Grant’s ?
The latest phase of his brushwork, “ the smear
with the blurred edge,” which during this period
gradually replaces the firmer modelling associated
with his prime, is not always successfully used.
In the blurring of contours and the fusion of
the more pulpy flesh, something of his personal
manner is lost, and when the oversoftness is
accompanied, as in John Waucliope, with an in-
sufficient observation of the cooler transition tones,
a certain commonness results. This portrait, which
has been spoken of as the Philip IV. of Raeburn’s
practice, has neither the vividly accented lights
and shadows, with the complementary tones they
induce, of Lord Newton and Mrs. James Campbell,
nor the glamour and mystery of the less directly
painted Wardrop. It is a something between the
two which is less satisfactory than either. All is
too rounded, too obvious. But if the phase has
its partial failures, in such works as the last named
where it is associated with all his finest qualities, in
Mrs. Irvme Boswell, 1820, his Diploma picture,
1821, Mrs. Stewart of Physgill, and others of bis last
year, it shows the master of the direct method
invading, with no small success, the sphere of the
process painter. Indeed, there was no falling away
in the Scottish painter’s work, and, if his portraits
could be accurately tabulated, his last seven years—
those by which he exceeded the three-score—would
be found not the least prolific in notable achievement.
From causes already indicated Raeburn had not
the influence on Scottish painting one might have
expected from so strong a personality. Even the
16

Technique
portraitists bear only partially the impress of his
technique. To him they owe the masculine
breadth of treatment which distinguishes the
stronger amongst them, and which saves even the
less virile from triviality. But of his technique in
its more restricted sense of handling, there is little
trace, and to none of them would Stevenson’s
description of the methods followed in Carolus-
Duran’s studio be at all applicable. In this respect
Raeburn’s affinities are with a more recent school;
for though he only touches, so to speak, that pro-
blem of true lighting—so triumphantly dealt with
in the later works of Velasquez—on which the new
technique is based, both in his manner of seeing
and rendering the Scottish painter also is in advance
of his time. Carolus-Duran’s most gifted pupil
has shown us what a brush stroke can accomplish
when the searching analysis of the brain is backed
by a hand responsive to its every perception and
impulse. Something of the same spontaneity, with
an analysis less subtle—as became his time—but
with more of reticence, of quiet dignity, and what
one may call geniality of outlook, characterises
Raeburn’s best work. It is mainly on this executant
side that his technique associates him with the
forerunners of direct painting and with its ablest
modern exponents. On the other hand, with that
counterfeit of true handling, with paint-slinging and
its endless eccentricities of clotting and loading,
so captivating to the half-educated, there is no
affinity whatever. A certain sobriety and restraint
characterise it throughout, for the hand so famed
for its “fair, off-hand dexterity ”* never outran the
perceptions of eye and brain, or violated the dictates
of truth and good taste.
Raeburn cannot be ranked amongst the great
colourists; indeed, it would almost seem as if
direct painting were incapable of attaining, in its
fullest measure, that most fascinating quality of the
painter’s art—for even Velasquez can only in a
restricted sense be called a colourist. Its merits
lie in a different direction. The triumphs of the
respective methods are appraised differently by the
different temperaments, and this will probably con-
tinue to be the case. In the meantime, the exponents
of the agile hand, the science of values, and true
lighting are in the ascendant; but there are those
who perceive in the works of the great dreamer of
the Y, of Rubens and Reynolds and Gainsborough,
and in the impassioned realism of the painter of
Sir Isumbras and Autumn Leaves, charms not to
be captured so. W. D. McK.
* “ Lives of British Artists.” Allan Cunningham. London,
1848, vol. v. p. 219.