Eighteenth Century British Portraiture

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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The greatest portrait painter that Scotland has ever produced, Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A., belonged to a younger generation than any of the artists whose lives we have so far recounted. Raeburn was born at Stockbridge, a suburb of Edinburgh, on March 4, 1756, and so was thirty three years younger than Reynolds, twenty nine years younger than Gainsborough, and twenty two years younger than Romney. His father, a well-to-do manufacturer, died when young Henry was six, and his elder brother then looked after him, had him educated at Heriot’s School—where he showed his leaning by making caricatures of his masters and school fellows—and apprenticed him at the age of fifteen to an Edinburgh goldsmith. There he also began to paint miniatures, and these gradually attracted attention till Raeburn broadened out into oil portraits and landscapes.

Like Gainsborough, he loved to ramble about the countryside sketching, and in one of his open-air sketches he introduced the figure of a charming young lady whom he had seen crossing the meadow. Some time later this young lady presented herself at Raeburn’s studio to have her portrait painted. She was the widow of a wealthy Frenchman, Count Leslie, but herself a Scottish girl, her maiden name having been Ann Edgar. During their sittings the artist and his model fell deeply in love with each other; there was no one to hinder their union, so they were quickly married, and at the age of twenty two young Raeburn found himself the possessor of a charming wife, a fine house at Edinburgh, and a comfortable income which made ‘potboiling’ unnecessary.

Under these happy circumstances he rapidly came to the front as a portrait painter. About 1785 he visited London and called on Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, himself now almost an Old Master, showed the young artist every possible kindness and gave him much good advice. Reynolds urged him to visit Rome and ‘saturate’ himself in Michael Angelo, generously offering to lend him money for the journey. This, however, Raeburn did not need, but he followed the advice of the veteran, and went to Rome, where he remained for nearly two years and greatly strengthened his art. In 1787 he returned to Edinburgh and soon after, inheriting some property from his brother, he built himself the splendid studio and picture gallery in York Place, which still stands and is known as ‘Raeburn House.’

From this time on till the day of his death in 1823, the career of Raeburn was an unbroken sequence of happiness and success. Acting, it is said, on the advice of Lawrence, he wisely preferred to be the best painter in Edinburgh rather than one of several good painters in London. But though he never resided in England, he exhibited regularly at the Academy from 1792 to the year of his death; he was elected an Associate in 1812 and made a full Academician three years later. He was knighted when George IV visited Edinburgh in 1822 and soon afterwards appointed His Majesty’s Limner for Scotland.

Raeburn was probably wise to remain in Scotland, for it is by no means certain that the rugged truthfulness which was the chief characteristic of his portraiture would have pleased London society. He was the most vigorous of all the eighteenth-century British portrait-painters, and none of them succeeded so well as he did in setting on canvas the splendid figure of a man. Though he has left us many noble and dignified paintings of women, Raeburn is held to have excelled himself in male portraitures, and his masterpiece, ‘Sir John Sinclair’, can hold its own for vitality, solidity, and dignity with any painted man in existence.

Raeburn was one of the most methodical and industrious of all the world’s great portrait-painters. He rose at seven, breakfasted at eight, entered his studio at nine, and worked there till five in the afternoon. It is said that he spent more time looking at his sitters than in painting them, for he would search the countenance before him till he had penetrated to the character of the person, and the beginning with forehead, chin, nose, and mouth, he would paint away rapidly, never making any preliminary drawing, and never using a mahl-stick to support his brush. His method was free and vigorous, and the results he obtained by it preserved the freedom and vigor of his process.

Though money is not everything in art, it is a rough-and-ready index to the estimation in which a painter is held, and therefore it may be mentioned here that the saleroom record for a British portrait was made in 1911 by a Raeburn, which fetched 22300 guineas at Christie’s.

Eighteenth Century British Portraiture (continued)