While Raeburn's attitude to reality was determined and his style was formed to a great extent before he went abroad, his ideas of pictorial effect were broadened and his technical resources enriched by his sojourn in Italy. Some of the work executed immediately after his return, such as the portraits of Lord President Dundas, Neil Gow, the famous fiddler, and the earlier of two portraits of his friend John Clerk of Eldin, shows, with much unity, a greater care and precision in the handling of detail, a more searched kind of modelling and a fuller sense of tone, and thicker impasto and fuller colour than that done previously. Moreover the design of the first-named picture is reminiscent in certain ways of Velasquez's "Pope Innocent X.," which he may have seen and studied in the Doria Palace in Rome, though too much stress need not be laid on the resemblance. About this time also, he painted a few pictures in which difficult problems of lighting are subtly and skilfully solved. In things like the charming bust "William Ferguson of Kilrie" (before 1790) and the group of Sir John and Lady Clerk of Penicuik (1790) the faces are in luminous shadow, touched by soft reflected light to give expression and animation. But for obvious reasons such effects are not favoured by the clients of portrait-painters, and that Raeburn should have adopted them at all is evidence of the widening of the artistic horizon induced by his stay abroad.
PLATE VII.—MISS EMILY DE VISMES—LADY MURRAY. (Earl of Mansfield.)
An admirable example of the artist's mature style, and one of his most charming portraits of women. (See p. [79].)
In pictures painted but little later than these, one finds a marked tendency to revert to the more abbreviated modelling and broader execution which have been noted as characteristic of his pre-Roman style. The execution, however, is now much more confident and masterly, the draughtsmanship better, the design, while exceedingly simple, less stiff and more closely knit. Using pigment of very fluid consistency and never loading the lights, though following the traditional method of thick in the lights and thin in the shadows, his handling is exceedingly direct and spontaneous, his touch fearless and broad yet thoroughly under control, his drawing summary yet selective and so expressive that, even in faces where the lighting is so broad that there is little shadow to mark the features and little modelling to explain the planes, the large structure of the head and the essentials of likeness are rendered in a very satisfying and convincing way. His colour, however, if losing the inclination to the rather dull grey-greenness which had prevailed before 1785, remained somewhat cold and wanting in quality, and the more forcible tints introduced in the draperies were frequently lacking in modulation and were not quite in harmony with the prevailing tone. Something of this deficiency in fusion is also noticeable in his flesh tints, the carnations of the complexions being somewhat detached owing to defective gradation where the pinks join the whites. As experience came, Raeburn advanced from the somewhat starved quality of pigment, which in his earlier pictures was accentuated by his broad manner of handling, until in many of the pictures painted during the later nineties he attained extraordinary power of expression by vigorous and incisive use of square brush-work and full yet fluid and unloaded impasto. This method with its sharply struck touches and simplified planes reaches its climax perhaps in the striking portrait (1798 circa) of Professor Robison in white night-cap and red-striped dressing-gown, though the more fused manner of "Mrs Campbell of Balliemore" (1795) and the extraordinary trenchant handling of the "John Tait of Harvieston and his grandson" (1798-9) show modifications which are as fine and perhaps less mannered. Even earlier he sometimes attained a solidity and forcefulness of effect, a fullness of colour, and a resonance of tone which gave foretaste of the accomplishment of his full maturity. Curiously this is most marked in two or three full-lengths. The earliest of these was the famous "Dr Nathaniel Spens" in the possession of the Royal Company of Archers, by which body it was commissioned in 1791. In it close realisation of detail and restraint in handling are very happily harmonised with breadth of ensemble and effectiveness of design. Some five years later this fine achievement was followed by the even more striking, if rather less dignified, "Sir John Sinclair," a splendid piece of virtuosity, which unites brilliant colour and admirable tone to great dash and bravura of brush-work.
During this period, and indeed throughout his career, Raeburn usually placed his sitters in a strong direct light, which, being thrown upon the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light) illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. Very often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. In many of his pictures one finds the lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the parts he wished subordinated. This device appears in full-lengths as well as in busts and threequarter-lengths, and while, no doubt, helping to the desired end, is now and then a disturbing influence from the fact that it is difficult to account for the result from purely normal causes. With Rembrandt, the greatest master of concentrated pictorial effect, the transitions from the fully illumined passages to the surrounding transparent darks are so gradual and so subtle that one scarcely notices that the effect has been arranged—the concentration is an integral part of the imaginative apprehension of the subject. It is otherwise with Raeburn, in his earlier work at least. Later he attained much the same results by less arbitrary and apparent means, by swathing the hands and arms—the high tone of which he evidently found disconcerting and conflicting with the heads—in drapery, by placing them where they tell as little as possible, and by modifications in handling. His management of accessories was also determined by desire for concentration. Although, as is obvious from his increasing use of it, preferring a simple background from which the figure has atmospheric detachment, he frequently used the scenic setting which Reynolds and Gainsborough had made the vogue. His idea, however, was that a landscape background should be exceedingly unassertive—"nothing more than the shadow of a landscape; effect is all that is wanted"—and, always executing them himself, his are invariably subordinate to the figure. But the essential quality of his vision went best with plain backgrounds. That he did not wholly abandon the decorative convention which he heired, and often employed to excellent purpose, was due in large measure to caution. "He came," says W. E. Henley, "at the break between new and old—when the old was not yet discredited, and the new was still inoffensive; and with that exquisite good sense which marks the artist, he identified himself with that which was known, and not with that which, though big with many kinds of possibilities, was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively alive." Yet, had he had the full courage of his convictions, his work would have been an even more outstanding landmark in the history of painting than it is. Still to ask from Raeburn what one does not get from Velasquez, many of whose portraits have a conventional setting, is to be more exacting than critical, and, as has been indicated, simplicity of design and aerial relief became increasingly evident in Raeburn's work, and that in spite of the protests of some of his admirers.
While Raeburn had been working towards a fuller and more subtle statement of likeness, modelling, and arrangement, it is possible that removal to his new studio accelerated development in that direction. The painting-room had been designed by himself for his own special purposes, and no doubt suggested new possibilities. In any case, the portraits painted after 1795 reveal a definite increase in the qualities mentioned. But before considering the characteristics of his later style, it might be well to tell what is known of his habits of work and technical procedure. Cunningham's summary of these applies partly to the George Street and partly to the York Place period, but for practical purposes they may be regarded as one, for, while Raeburn's art may be divided into periods, each was but a stage in a gradual and consistent evolution. "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 into George Street, 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 less 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—a system pursued successfully by Lawrence—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 almost 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.... From one who knew him in his youthful days, and sat to him when he rose in fame, I have this description of his way of going to work. "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 the 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 for a few minutes more." These details may be supplemented by the list of colours used by him, which Alexander Fraser, R.S.A., gave in The Portfolio. "His palette was a simple one; his colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but sometimes yellow ochre instead), Prussian blue, burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake, white, of course, and the medium he used was 'gumption,' a composition of sugar of lead, mastic varnish, and linseed oil. The colours were ground by a servant in his own house and put into small pots ready for use." When one adds that his studio had a very high side-light, and that he painted on half-primed canvas with a definitely marked twill, all that is known of his practice has been noted.