(National Gallery of Scotland.)
None of Raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this.
Although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used, it
is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one of
the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since 1854,
when Mr R. Scott Moncrieff, Welwood of Pitliver, bequeathed it to the
Royal Scottish Academy. (See page 79.)
[Illustration: Plate VIII.]
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As already suggested, Raeburn's style was tending towards greater
completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before
he removed to York Place in 1795, but, while his normal advance was in
that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a
number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing
them with their {73} predecessors that one notices that the advance was
definite and not casual. Occasionally, as in the "Professor Robison,"
there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but,
as the "Lord Braxfield" of about 1790 is a premonition of a much later
manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the
character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. But
comparing the splendid group, "Reginald Macdonald of Clanranald and his
two younger brothers" (about 1800), or the "Mrs Cruikshank of Langley
Park" (about 1805), with typical examples painted between 1787 and
1795, one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power
of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of
form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more expressive use
of colour and chiaroscuro.
Considerable ingenuity has been expended in trying to prove that
Raeburn's subsequent development was due in some way or other to the
influence of Hoppner and Lawrence. Consideration of his situation and
of his work itself, however, scarcely bears this out. His ignorance of
what was being done by London artists, and of how his own pictures
compared with theirs, is very clearly evident from the following letter
written to Wilkie:--
Edinburgh,
12_th September_ 1819.
Mr dear Sir,--I let you to wit that I am still here, and long much to
hear from you, both as to how you are and what you are doing. I would
not wish to impose any hardship upon you, but it would give me great
pleasure if you would take the trouble to write me at least once a
year, if not oftener, and give me a little information of what is going
on among the artists, for I do assure you I have as little
communication with any of them, and know almost as little about them,
as if I were living at the Cape of Good Hope.
I send up generally a picture or two to the Exhibition, which serve
merely as an advertisement that I am still in the land of the living,
but in other respects it does me no good, for I get no notice from any
one, nor have I the least conception how they look beside others. I
know not in what London papers any critiques of that kind are made, and
our Edinburgh ones (at least those that I see) take no notice of these
matters. At any rate I would prefer a candid observation or two from
an artist like you, conveying not only your own opinion but perhaps
that of others, before any of them.
Are the Portrait-Painters as well employed as ever? Sir Thomas
Lawrence, they tell me, has refused to commence any more pictures till
he gets done with those that are on hand, and that he has raised his
prices to some enormous sum. Is that true, and will you do me the
favour to tell me what his prices really are, and what Sir W. Beechy,
Mr Philips, and Mr Owen have for their pictures? It will be a
particular favour if you will take the trouble to ascertain these for
me precisely, for I am raising my prices too, and it would be a guide
to me--not that I intend to raise mine so high as your famous London
artists.
Moreover he is said to have visited London only three times: in 1785,
when he spent several weeks while on his way to Italy; in 1810, when he
contemplated settling there; and in 1815, after he was elected an
Academician. It is of course only with the later visits that we have
to do in this connection. By that time Hoppner was dead, and
Lawrence's claim to be painter par excellence to the fashionable world
was undisputed. No doubt the Scottish painter would be attracted by
the technical accomplishment of Lawrence's work; but he was between
fifty and sixty years of age and little likely to be influenced by an
art, which, for all its brilliance, was meretricious in many respects.
Yet it is possible that the adulation lavished by society upon his
contemporary's style may have induced him to consider if something of
the elegance for which it was esteemed so highly could not be added
with advantage to his own. On the other hand, Scottish society was
gradually undergoing evolution, and, while a greater infusion of
fashion amongst its members would in itself tend to stimulate the
favourite painter of the day in the same direction, increase in wealth
would bring a greater number of younger sitters to his studio.
Probably a combination of these represents the influences which
affected Raeburn. In any case, his later portraits, especially of
women, possess qualities of charm and beauty which, while never merely
pretty or meretricious, connect them in some measure with the more
modish and less sincere and virile work of Lawrence. But
otherwise--and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he never sacrificed
character to elegance or subordinated individuality to type--the
evolution of his style continued on purely personal lines. The
pictures painted between 1810 and his death, while still at the height
of his powers, are essentially one with those of the preceding decade.
There is in them a more delicate sense of beauty than before, and his
portraits of ladies are marked by a quickened perception of feminine
grace and charm; but these are results of the natural development of
his nature and of his personal powers of expression rather than of any
radical alteration in his standpoint.
As regards the work of the last fifteen years and more, it is less
increased grasp of character, for that had always been a leading trait,
than growth in the expressive power and completeness of his technique
that is the dominating factor. And here the prevailing qualities are
but the issue of previous experience. His modelling ceases to be
marked by the rough-hewn and over simplified planes which had
distinguished his incisive square-touch at its strongest and becomes
fused and suave. As Sir Walter Armstrong put it, "He began with the
facets and ended with the completest modelling ever reached by any
English painter." Now his colour not only loses the inclination to
slatiness and monotony, which were evident before 1795, and sometimes
even later, but, the half-tones being more delicately graded, the
transitions, though still lacking the subtleties of the real colourist,
are blended and the general tone enriched and harmonised. And his use
of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more delicate both in its play upon
the face and in the broad disposition, which now attains finer and more
convincing concentration in virtue of more skillful subordination
through handling, as well as through more pictorial management of his
old arrangement of lighting. Moreover the scenic setting, if retained
in many full-lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a simple
background lighted from the same source as the sitter, and against
which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief.
With these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his
later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive
brushing of the preceding period, were also associated a fuller and
fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of
effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his earlier pictures rarely
possess.
A sympathetic and human perception of character was the basis of his
relationship to his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a rarely
convincing way, and to me at least the {79} view of life expressed in
his later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which
dominates his earlier work. Comparatively this is perhaps especially
evident in his rendering of pretty women. "Mrs Scott Moncrieff," "Miss
de Vismes," "Miss Janet Suttie," and "Mrs Irvine Boswell," to name no
more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked
by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. Still
his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures of
older women and of men, and his masterpieces are to be found amongst
his pictures of this kind rather than amongst his "beauty" pieces,
seductive though the best of these are. When one thinks of his finest
and most personal achievements, one recalls such things as "Lord
Newton," "Sir William Forbes," and "James Wardrop of Torbanehill," or
"Mrs Cruikshank," and "Mrs James Campbell."
Born a painter of character, Raeburn was at his best where character,
intellect, and shrewdness were most marked. Yet axiomatic though it
may sound, this implies great gifts. To seize the obvious points of
likeness, and make a portrait more living than life itself is
comparatively easy; but to grasp the essential elements of likeness and
character, and, while vitalising these pictorially and decoratively, to
preserve the normal tone of life is difficult indeed. Of this, the
highest triumph of the portrait-painter's art as such, Raeburn was a
master.
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