Scotland's Best

The day after the late Sir John Dewar bought Raeburn's sturdy Highland portrait The M'Nab for -L-25.410, his canny Scot mind was beset by doubts concerning his investment. To bolster its value he decided to use reproductions of the famed picture on advertisements of his famed whiskey. The M'Nab now hangs in the Dewar London Office, is occasionally shown to the public.

Last week. Lord Dewar's nephew, John Arthur Dewar, who inherited his wealth, proved himself also his uncle's heir in the matter of Raeburns. At a Christie's auction in London he bid -L-11,025 ($56,337.75) for a Raeburn portrait of two young brothers named Allen. Another, lesser Raeburn was sold in 30 seconds also to Mr. Dewar, for -L-4,620 ($23,608.20). A Romney went for $25.217.85. The Raeburn portrait of the Allen brothers brought the top price in London's biggest art sale since Depression.

Same day. in Manhattan's American Art Association-Anderson Galleries Raeburn's John Lamont of Lamont, once the property of the late Judge Elbert H. Gary, was auctioned for $29,000 to an anonymous Pennsylvania collector.

Besides wilting its value. Depression brings many a famed picture out of hiding. Veering public taste does the same thing. Both these influences have lately been at work on the 18th Century English portraitists, examples of whose work have for a century been considered de rigueur in any No. 1 private collection. Significance of last week's auctions in which Raeburn was by far the most prized master was that, in spite of Depression or cooling taste, the 18th Century English school has slipped relatively little. Further significance was that Raeburn, who, along with Romney, was long considered a third to Reynolds and Gainsborough, is apparently drawing even with his more esteemed rivals.

There was nothing in Henry Raeburn's face and little in his life to suggest the best painter Scotland ever produced. His thin lips, wide-apart eyes and thick eyebrows might have been those of a shipowner or an engineer. His life was so ordered that almost any year of it might be interchanged with another with no loss of continuity. His miller father and his mother died shortly after his birth in 1756 in Stockbridge, Edinburgh, leaving him to the care of an elder brother. After an undistinguished education at Heriot's Hospital, he was apprenticed at 15 to an Edinburgh goldsmith named Gilliland. Edinburgh was expanding from town to city; there was much building but little art. To while away time when he was not designing little gold frames or trinkets, Henry Raeburn began to paint miniatures. To his gratification, and to Goldsmith Gilliland's who shared the profits, they sold. His brother thereupon sent him to one David Martin, Edinburgh's leading painter, to copy canvases. When he was 21. Henry Raeburn painted his first portrait, of George Chalmers of Pittencrieff. seated against a conventional curtain with ruins out the window. The chair was badly out of line. When he was 22 he painted Anns Edgar, widow of Count Leslie, and twelve years his senior. They were married within a month.

His marriage brought him money, property, stepchildren and children. He moved to Deanhaugh House, his wife's property in Edinburgh, took a studio in George Street where he posed people against the south window with its view of the crags of Fife Hills.

Raeburn's early art had what is called a "square touch." He often oversimplified the planes of the head. Later when he softened his touch he became one of the best modelers among British painters. His color was rarely rich. But because he painted his compositions directly on canvas like Hals and Velasquez, his work has lasted well. He rarely kept a sitter more than an hour and a half, seldom required more than four sittings for a head or bust. He never signed or dated a portrait. One of his greatest worries was the rivalry between face and hands. Generally, to draw attention to the face, he would shade or merely sketch the hands. The method was not always successful. His greatest critic, Sir Walter Armstrong, has pointed to an example in his self-portrait which suffers because the left hand is insufficiently defined. London, in Raeburn's day, was an important art capital.' There were Reynolds, rich Sir Joshua who in 1757 had 677 cli ents, and Gainsborough with his eight portraits of George III and the English scenery in his backgrounds. Romney was painting Lady Hamilton as Magdalene, Cassandra, Joan of Arc, Circe, and some times as herself. But greater than London was Rome. Henry Raeburn decided to see both. With his family and a letter to Reynolds he went to England. Sir Joshua advised him to copy Michelangelo, offered him money which Raeburn did not need for the Rome trip. He stayed two years in Rome, met James Byres, an antiquarian who once owned the Portland Vase and advised him to do what he was already trying to do --paint from nature. He returned to Edinburgh in 1787 without stopping in England. His practice in Edinburgh soon "admitted of no enlargement.'' Every important Scot except Robert Burns sat for him.

In York Place, Edinburgh, he built a huge studio which is still standing. He fished, built toy boats to sail, worked hard and played golf until a week before his death. The city was still growing and Raeburn. by then a large property owner, designed streets and squares on his land, rented to tenants who built according to his plans. In the contented isolation of Edinburgh he did his best portraits: The M'Nab, Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Cruikshank, Dr. Nathaniel Spens. To this period too belongs the Two Boys bought last week by John Arthur Dewar.

To his intense gratification Raeburn was elected a Royal Academician in 1815. Seven years later, profligate George IV, who had heard hisses in the streets of London and was glad to hear cheers in Scotland, knighted him. One year later, in 1823, great Sir Henry, a typical, workaday Scot, suddenly died before he could finish his last portrait of Sir Walter Scott.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.