Henry Raeburn is arguably the greatest portraitist Scotland has produced. Orphaned young, he began as a jeweller’s apprentice, started painting miniatures, and was taken under the wing of David Martin, then Edinburgh’s pre-eminent portrait painter. After a short spell in Italy, Raeburn returned to Scotland to become its most celebrated artist. In the following recollections gathered by the Victorian essayist John Brown, his habits and technique are described, first by his friend Allan Cunningham, and then by an anonymous sitter, whose knowledge of other artists puts him among the wealthier of the country’s citizens.
The following is Cunningham’s account of him:
Though his painting-rooms were in York Place, his Dwelling-house was at St Bernard’s, near Stockbridge, overlooking the Water of Leith – a romantic place. The steep banks were then finely wooded; the garden grounds varied and beautiful; and all the seclusion of the country could be enjoyed, without the remoteness. The motions of the artist were as regular as those of a clock. He rose at seven during summer, took breakfast about eight with his wife and children, walked up to his great room in 32 York Place … and was ready for a sitter by nine; and of sitters he generally had, for many years, not fewer than three or four a day. To these he gave an hour and a half each. He seldom kept a sitter more than two hours; unless the person happened – and that was often the case – to be gifted with more than common talents. He then felt himself happy, and never failed to detain the party till the arrival of a new sitter intimated that he must be gone.
For a head size he generally required four or five sittings: and he preferred painting the head and hands to any other part of the body: assigning as a reason that they required least consideration. A fold of drapery, or the natural ease which the casting of a mantle over the shoulder demanded, occasioned him more perplexing study than a head full of thought and imagination. Such was the intuition with which he penetrated at once to the mind, that the first sitting rarely came to a close without his having seized strongly on the character and disposition of the individual. He never drew in his heads, or indeed any part of the body, with chalk … but began with the brush at once.
The forehead, chin, nose, and mouth were his first touches. He always painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on; for such was his accuracy of eye, and steadiness of nerve, that he could introduce the most delicate touches, or the utmost mechanical regularity of line, without aid, or other contrivance than fair off-hand dexterity. He remained in his painting-room till a little after five o’clock, when he walked home, and dined at six.
One of his sitters thus describes him:
He spoke a few words to me in his usual brief and kindly way – evidently to put me into an agreeable mood; and then, having placed me in a chair on a platform at the end of his painting-room, in the posture required, set up his easel beside me with the canvas ready to receive the colour. When he saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back step by step, with his face towards me, till he was nigh the other end of his room; he stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to the canvas, and, without looking at me, wrought upon it with colour for some time. Having done this, he retreated in the same manner, studied my looks at that distance for about another minute, then came hastily up to the canvas and painted a few minutes more.
I had sat to other artists; their way was quite different – they made an outline carefully in chalk, measured it with compasses, placed the canvas close to me, and looking me almost without ceasing in the face, proceeded to fill up the outline with colour. They succeeded best in the minute detail – Raeburn best in the general result of the expression; they obtained by means of a multitude of little touches what he found by broader masses; they gave more of the man – he gave most of the mind.