RAEBURN’S CENTENARY.

Shannon News, 7 September 1923, Page 4

RAEBURN’S CENTENARY.

This year is the centenary of Sir Henry Raeburn, the great Scottish portrait painter, who died in Edinburgh on July 8, 1823. Apprenticed at the age of 15 to a goldsmith, young Raeburn was introduced ;to David Martin, then the fashionable portrait painter in Scotland. Raeburn soon assimilated all that Martin could teach him, and applied himself with industry to painting. In 1785 he went to Rome, where he perfected his technique, becoming a competent draftsman, acquiring a greater assurance and a bolder colour sense. He returned to Edinburgh in 1787,' and at once took a foremost ploce in Scottish arts. Ho painted everybody of' importance, enjoyed the most distinguished society .in Scotland, and a supreme position as a painter. Nor was the recognition of his gifts confined to the north, for in 1812 he was elected A.R.A., and made a full academician in 1815. He was made a member of the Academy of Florence, and two American academies conferred honorary membership upon him. In 1822 he was knighted, and two months before his death received the news of his appointment to the office of His Majesty’s Limner for Scotland. An American critic, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, says: "The bravura and brilliance of brunliwork in the best Raeburns is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that the- enormous technical power displayed was practically picked up without any training in the academicsense. He is on* of the few instances of painter.*! achieving eminence without the guiding hand of a master. He was of that time when in English portraiture a fine decorative