Descended from a race of "bonnet-lairds," who took their name from a
hill farm in the Border district, Robert Raeburn, the artist's father,
seems to have come to Edinburgh as a young man in the earlier part of
the eighteenth century. At that time the city had expanded but little
beyond the limits marked by the Flodden wall. The high grey lands
along the windy ridge between the Castle and Holyrood were still
tenanted by the upper classes, and such extension as had been was
towards the Meadows. The new town had not been projected even, and on
the slopes, now occupied by its spacious streets and squares,
copse-woods and grass and heather grew. In the hollow at the foot of
these green braes, and by the side of the Water of Leith, a chain of
little hamlets--Dean, Stockbridge, and Canon-mills--nestled, and in the
mid-most of these Robert Raeburn established himself as a yarn-boiler.
Although in the country, his home was less than a mile from St Giles's
Kirk. His business appears to have prospered, and during the early
forties he married Miss Ann Elder. There was a difference of twelve
years in the ages of their two sons, William and Henry, and the younger
was no more than six when both father and mother died. Left to the
care of his brother, who carried on the business, Henry Raeburn was
nominated for maintenance and education at Heriot's Hospital by Mrs
Sarah Sandilands or Durham in 1764, and remained seven years in the
school, which owed its origin to the bequest of George Heriot, jeweller
to James VI. and I. in Edinburgh and later in London. Many boys had
been educated on "Jingling Geordie's" foundation, but Raeburn was to be
its most distinguished product. He does not seem to have distinguished
himself specially as a scholar, however, the two prizes awarded to him
having been for writing, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was
apprenticed to a jeweller and goldsmith in Parliament Close. This
choice of a calling was probably suggested by the lad's own
inclinations, but it was a stroke of good fortune that gave him James
Gilliland as a master. No craft then practised in the Scottish capital
was so likely to have been congenial to him. In the eighteenth century
a silversmith made as well as sold plate and ornaments, and in his
master's shop Raeburn must have learned to use his hands and may have
acquired some idea of design. In addition Gilliland seems to have been
a man of some taste--one of his most intimate friends, David Deuchar,
the seal-engraver, devoted his leisure to etching, and executed many
plates after Holbein and the Dutch masters. It was to the latter that
Raeburn owed his first lessons in art. Surprising his friend's
apprentice at work on a drawing of himself, Deuchar, struck by the
talent displayed, inquired if he had had any instruction. No, he had
not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and
Deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted
eagerly. The story is pleasant and circumstantial enough to be
credible; and the existence of an early Raeburn miniature of Deuchar is
evidence of the existence of friendship between the two. But, as a
free drawing-school had been founded in 1760 by the Honourable the
Board of Manufactures for the precise object of encouraging and
improving design for manufactures, the impossibility of Raeburn
receiving instructions of some kind was less than seems to be implied.
It is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly
elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in 1798 of
John Graham[1] (1754-1817) as preceptor that the Trustees' Academy was
developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound
influence on Scottish painting. From 1771, the year in which Raeburn
left Heriot's, until his death, Alexander Runciman (1736-85), the "Sir
Brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great
ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history
painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that Raeburn took
the tone of his colour from that painter's work. But no record exists
of Raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to
have received any more training than was involved in the relationships
with his master and his master's friend which have been described.
Even subsequent introduction to David Martin (1737-98), who settled in
Edinburgh in 1775, when Raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. By
that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an
arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and
received as compensation a share in the prices received for the
miniatures to which Raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which
Gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. These miniatures, of
which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no
very marked artistic qualities. Drawn with care and not without
considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but
not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character.
The frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and
placing of the heads are almost the only elements which hint their
authorship. They are simple and straight-forward likenesses rather
than works of art and bear no obvious relationship to the elegant
bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little of the contemporary
English school of miniaturists. But obviously they were some
preparation for the development which followed, when, soon afterwards
and almost at once, he passed from water-colour miniature to life-size
portraiture in oil paint.
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