A GREAT SCOTCH ARTIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2647, 7 December 1904, Page 70

A GREAT SCOTCH ARTIST.

Criticising a recently-published biography of Raeburn, the artist, the Montreal Witness remarks: —

Ii is certainly paradoxical to call a Scotchman the greatest of English portrait painters; nevertheless Raeburn is often so designated, his nationality being either unknown or ignored. This inacctxracy cannot bo charged against the present biographer, for in his monograph Mr Pinnington reiterates the -statement that Hie great Scotch artist owed little, if anything, to English painters. Mr Pinnington is an ardenc admir-er of the artist, but he sa3 - s "justice must be done to his country before it can be done to Raeburn.'' He therefore treats him not only as the greatest of British portrait painters, but as a prodtict of his country, as well as a factor in the intellectual life of Edinburgh.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the sketch of the conditions which! retarded the development of the arts in Scotland. He believes there might have arisen a great national school' of painting if the impetus given by Geo. Jamesone in the seyeuteeth century could have been maintained. This man was a contemporary of Velasquez, and studied in Rubens's studio with Vandyke. Mr Pinnington claims hini as the father of English as well as of Scotch art. But he had no successor at the. time. After her long struggle for religious freedom Scotland was temporarily exhausted, the struggle effectually "blighted any general development of the arts; then came her renaissance, marked by the appearance of Scott and Burns, and a long line of illustrious men, including' Raeburn, who painted the portraits of most of his great Scotch contemporaries.

Very little is known of the life of this seemingly self-evolved artist, and nothing of his technical training-, save the fact that he was first a goldsmith, like so many of the- great painters of the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, Mr Pinnington is justified in claiming kinship for his subject with' those giants.

Though some critics do not think t.l»afc he make a shining mark as a painter of women, Mr Pinnington maintains ihat "Raeburn's portraits of women include pome of his best," and he can point to the "Mra Scott-Moncrieff," the "Miss Janet Suttie," and divers other canvases in plausible support of his argument. But while the artist undoubtedly painted some delightful portraits of women, and some equally delightful, of children too, it is unquestionable that his most characteristic work was don« in the painting of men. With them his simple, direct method 1 seems to have been 1 at its happiest, and, moreover, there was something in Raeburn's temperament which! was peculiarly responsive to the appeaf made by a noble type- of British manhood. His art was highbred and forceful ; it had strength, boldness and dignity. The author of the present volume cannot find the* source of Raeburn's style in any "European 1 master, and docs not think that the Scotchman safe at the feet of Volasqucz. C/ollectbrs have thought so much of Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney that, until recently, -they have neglected Raeiburji..,. Sow he is coming into his own. The superb' full-length of Sir John Sinclair, of Ulster, was sold last year for 73,500d01.