The influences which affected Raeburn and the models upon which he
formed either his style or his method are difficult to trace. Allan
Ramsay, having painted many portraits in Edinburgh before he went to
London in the same year as Raeburn was born, would be, one would think,
the most likely source of inspiration. Except Runciman, who
occasionally varied historical subjects by portraits painted in a broad
but somewhat empty manner, and Seaton, an artist of whom little is
known but whose rare and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of
handling and a simplicity of design which give the best of them a
certain distinction--can they have been an influence with Raeburn?--the
Scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth century were much
influenced by Ramsay, and Martin had been his favourite pupil.
Raeburn's connection with the latter was very slight, however. Beyond
giving the youth the entree to his studio and lending him a few
pictures to copy, Martin does not seem to have been of much direct
assistance, and even these little courtesies come to an end when the
painter to the Prince of Wales for Scotland unjustly accused the
jeweller's apprentice of having sold one of the copies he had been
allowed to make. Rumour, often astray but now and then hitting the
mark, said that the real reason was jealousy of the younger man's
growing powers. Raeburn's debt to Ramsay and Martin was therefore
inconsiderable and indirect. It is not traceable in the technique or
arrangement of his earliest known pictures, such as the full-length
"George Chalmers" in Dunfermline Town Hall, which was painted in 1776,
when the artist was twenty. Probably sight of Martin's pictures in
progress was an incentive to work rather than a formative influence on
his development as a painter. He had, says Allan Cunningham, writing
within a few years of Raeburn's death, "to make experiments, and drudge
to acquire what belongs to the mechanical labour, and not to the genius
of his art. His first difficulty was the preparation of his colours;
putting them on the palette, and applying them according to the rules
of art taught in the academies. All this he had to seek out for
himself." And, if probably exaggerated, the statement gives some idea
of the difficulties with which he had to contend. There were at that
time no exhibitions and no public collections of pictures where a youth
of genuine instinct could have gleaned hints as to technical procedure,
but there were at least portraits in a number of houses in the city and
district, and from these and from prints after the Masters, of which
Deuchar, an etcher himself, evidently possessed examples, Raeburn no
doubt derived much instruction as to design, the use of chiaroscuro and
the like. It has also been suggested with considerable likelihood that
mezzotints after portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds had a considerable
effect upon him.
=====================================================================