Sir Henry Raeburn
- Comments
-
Glasgow Museums has a collection of over 20 portraits by the prominent Scottish Enlightenment painter Henry Raeburn (1756–1823). Raeburn lived and worked almost all of his life in Edinburgh, where he produced over a thousand portraits depicting many members of the Scottish elite. Born in Edinburgh in 1756, Raeburn began as an apprentice to a goldsmith, for whom he also painted miniatures, before turning to portrait painting. After marrying one of his sitters, a rather wealthy widow, Raeburn left Scotland for Italy in 1784 to learn from the masterpieces of the Antiquity and the Renaissance. On his way he stopped in London where it is believed that he met the major artist and President of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, who influenced in some ways his early manner. However, it was with almost no training that Raeburn established his practice in Edinburgh and became the most well known portrait painter in the city. At the end of his life, he was knighted by George IV and appointed the King’s Painter and Limner in Scotland. Working directly on the canvas, without any preparatory drawings, Raeburn would start by painting the head and gradually build up his picture with broader and broader brushstrokes to depict the clothes and background. Raeburn’s method was swift and spontaneous; he managed to vividly render not only the likeness of his sitters but also their character and inner qualities without idealisation, in contrast to many London artists working in the ‘Grand Manner’. Raeburn’s concern to directly depict what he perceived can be compared with the theories of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Reid who developed a theory of perception and reacted against idealisation. Most of the portraits in the collection depict noteworthy Glasgow figures such as merchants and their wives or Lords Provosts. Five paintings depict members of the Campbell family and were originally part of a bigger gift of 21 portraits bequeathed by a descendant of the family, Isabella Campbell. Four other paintings were purchased by the famous Glasgow collector, Sir William Burrell, who donated his collection to the city in 1944.
- Broader term
- Staff Contact