I
If, during the last century, Scotland has shown exceptional activity in the arts, especially in painting, and has produced a succession of artists whose work is marked by able craftsmanship and emotional and subjective qualities, which give it a distinctive place in modern painting, the more than two hundred years which lay between the Reformation and the advent of Raeburn seemed to hold little promise of artistic development. During the Middle Ages and the renaissance the internal condition of the country was too unsettled and its resources were too meagre to make art widely possible. Strong castles and beautiful churches were built here and there, but intermittent war on the borders and fear of invasion kept even the more settled central districts in a state of unrest. Moreover, the fierce barons were at constant feud amongst themselves, and not infrequently the more powerful amongst them were banded against the King. Of the first five Jameses only the last died, and that miserably, in his bed. The innate taste of the Stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in the Court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial relations with the Low Countries and political associations with France. Poetry and scholarship were encouraged, if poorly rewarded—one remembers Dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a benefice—and relics and old records show that even in those stirring times life was not without its refinements and tasteful accessories. Yet only in the Church or for her service was there the quietude necessary for art work of the higher kinds. Then came the Reformation (during which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and decoration perished) severing the connection of art with religion and sowing distrust of art in any form.
Had the Union of the Crowns not taken place in 1603, it is possible that the art of painting might have developed much earlier than it did. No doubt that event brought healing to the long open sore caused and inflamed by kingly ambitions and national animosities, but it removed the Court to London, and with that some of the greatest nobles, while the change in the religion of the ruling house from Presbyterianism to Episcopacy, which followed, led to the Covenants and the religious persecution, and drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those classes from whom artists mostly spring. Yet the logical rigidity of the Calvinistic spirit, while taking much of the joy out of life and opposing its manifestation in art, had certain compensating advantages. Disciplining the mind, quickening the reasoning powers, and cultivating that grasp of essentials which makes for success in almost any pursuit, and not least in art, it helped very largely to make the Scot what he is.
During the peaceful years which immediately followed the Union, there was considerable activity in the building of country residences. Now that the country was more settled these were less castles than mansions, and the larger and better lighted apartments possible led to a good deal of elaborate decoration. Of this Pinkie House (1613) with its painted gallery is perhaps the most celebrated example. It is difficult, however, to determine how much of this kind of work was done by foreign, how much by native craftsmen, and as it seems to have exerted little influence upon the one or two picture-painters who emerged during the seventeenth century, one need not discuss the probabilities. So far as has been discovered, the only link between this phase of art and the other consists of the fact that George Jamesone (1598?-1644), the first clearly recognisable Scottish artist, was apprenticed in 1612 to one John Andersone "paynter" in Edinburgh, whose decoration in Gordon Castle is mentioned by an old chronicler. As might be expected in the circumstances the "Scottish Van Dyck," as he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. He was followed by a few others, such as the Scougall family, Aikman Marshall, Wait, and the two Alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of portraitists between him and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) in whose work art in Scotland took a great step forward.[[1]] A few of Ramsay's predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre instruction—if any thing that existed could be dignified by that name—to be obtained in Scotland by a visit to the Low Countries or Italy, but Ramsay was the first to obtain a sound technical training. The author of "The Gentle Shepherd," to whom Edinburgh was indebted for its first circulating library and its first play-house, encouraged his son's bent for art, and after some preliminary study in London, Allan fils was sent to "The seat of the Beast" beyond the Alps, where he became a pupil of Solimena and Imperiale and of the French Academy. Formed under these influences, his style possesses no clearly marked national trait, except it be the feeling for character which informs his finer work and makes it, in a way, a link between that of Jamesone and that of Raeburn. To this he added a delicate sense of tone and a tenderness of colour and lighting, a gracefulness of drawing and a refined accomplishment which were new in Scottish painting. His turn for charm of pose and grace of motive was pronounced, and his portraitures mirror very happily the mannered yet elegant social airs of the mid-eighteenth century. More than that of any English painter of his day, his art possesses "French elegance."
PLATE III.—MRS LAUZUN. (National Gallery.)
Only one of the three Raeburns in the National Gallery is an adequate example. This is the picture reproduced. It was painted in 1795, and, while very typical technically, possesses greater charm than most of the portraits of women executed by him at that comparatively early date.
