RAIBURN'S PORTRAIT OF MACDOWELL

Lieutenant-Colonel Hay MacDowell

RAEBURN’S PORTRAIT OF MACDOWELL

by Betsy Brayer

Henry Raeburn, painter of MAG’s Portrait of General Hay MacDowell (68.102) was born in 1756 in Stockbridge, an unfashionable suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was a yarn-boiler, his mother a weaver. Orphaned at seven and placed in Heriot’s Hospital for fatherless boys, Henry was indentured to an Edinburgh goldsmith.  A self-taught artist, he learned by copying, using the camera obscura, and painting miniatures for the goldsmith.  Despite its size, the way MacDowell is posed--arm leading out to the hilt of the sword that angles back toward the right boot--suggests the oval  composition of a miniature.

At age 20, Raeburn painted his first full-length figure on canvas, a poor but audacious portrait commissioned by the Dumferline Town Council, to which it still belongs. One commentator wrote, “This (painting) clearly betrays (Raeburn’s) lack of professional training; equally, it is an astonishing performance under the circumstances.”

In 1778 Raeburn married the widowed Countess Leslie, whose considerable dowry didn’t spoil his workaholic habits. One sitter noted: “He was pursued by the passion for industry and spent every day from 9 to 6 in his large studio He spoke a few words to me in his usual brief and kindly way--evidently to put me in an agreeable mood; and having placed me in a chair on a platform at the end of his painting-room, set up his easel beside.  When he saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back step by step, with his face t6owards me, till he was nigh the other end of the room.  He stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to the canvas, and without looking at me, wrought upon it with colour (sic) for some time...I had sat to other artists; ...they made an outline carefully in chalk, measured it with compasses and proceeded to fill up the outline with the colour.  They succeeded best in the minute detail--Raeburn best in the general result of the expression; they obtained by means of a multitude of little touches what he found by broader masses...No one could have imagined him a painter till he took up the brush and palette; he conversed with me upon mechanics and shipbuilding...He painted at my portrait till within a quarter of an hour of (dinner), threw down his palette and brushes, went into a little closet, and in five minutes sallied out in a trim worthy of the first company.”

In 1785 Raeburn studied in London with Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy and archetype of the British portrait painter.  Raeburn gave his sitters a Reynoldsesque air of consequence, earning the sobriquet,  “the Scottish Reynolds.” Reynolds urged Raeburn to go to Italy for 18 months. Paintings after 1787 show a mature style and heightened sense of color, suggesting the influence of Raphael and Titian.  But Rae burn’s strong and original personality overruled foreign influences including Reynolds, and he returned to Edinburgh for his remaining 36 years.  His portraits are a roster of prominent men, women, lawyers and scholars of the “Athens of the North” during its golden age. He was knighted on George IV’s state visit in 1822 and is still considered Scotland’s greatest painter.

Raeburn’s virtuoso handling of paint and decorative use of color make the flesh tones appear to glow.  His hallmark, perfected about 1800, was the square touch of his brush--a decisive, choppy stroke reducing a face to essential planes without blending one brushstroke into the next. He used brushes a yard long to keep his work from tightening.  His limited palette of primary colors used half the tints as his contemporary Sir Thomas Lawrence did.  Raeburn produced several sculptures, including one of his sons Peter, who died of consumption. The pronounced features of MacDowell lend themselves to sculptural treatment, and the artist’s own method of building up planes of color.  He touches the canvas first at the forehead, then the chin and mouth with broad, crisp brushstrokes.

Because of his haphazard training in drawing, Raeburn developed skill in portraying figures accurately, using the camera obscure.  With this device, the image passes thru a lens and is projected, sometimes with the aid of mirrors, onto paper or canvas.  The Artist can then use a paint-by-numbers approach. There are no known drawings by Raeburn. yet he was an innovator in his treatment of chiaroscuro. His backgrounds are loosely treated, atmospheric landscapes.

The elegant Lieutenant General Hay MacDowell was one of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s generals in India when the latter subdued the dominant natives in 1803.  Wellesley became Duke of Wellington, achieving lasting fame by defeating Napoleon at Waterloo.  In 1805, when MacDowell was painted in red riding coat and white britches to celebrate his appointment as commander-in-chief of the British Army in Madras, MacDowell appeared to have an equally bright future.  But a mutinous army confronted him.  Accused of insubordination, MacDowell resigned, departed for home in 1809, and was lost at sea. This premature end to a promising career consigned MacDowell to being a footnote to history.  Because the renown of historical portraits often depends upon the renown of the sitter, books listing museums with Raeburn paintings often do not list Rochester.

A second, smaller version of the MacDowell painting and a companion portrait of his wife, whereabouts now unknown, existed.  The copy--for David Erskine of Cardrossa (MacDowell was godfather to Erskine’s son) is at the National Gallery of South Africa. Provenance records are confusing--perhaps because of this second version. The Treasures from Rochester catalog, 1975, shows the painting going from the Erskine family to M. Knoedler to George Eastman in 1930.  In The Geolrge Eastman Collection, 1979, it goes from the Mac Dowell family to Garthland to George Eastman, via a Christie’s sale on 12 December 1919. Eastmana’s own correspondence shows that Lewis and Simmons, dealers, hung it at Eastman House on approval in April 1922. (A second reason for confusion is that Eastman supposedly bought the painting, sent it back for being too bright, but eventually reinstalled it in the side hall of Eastman House.)

Source: Curatorial files

*Docent Betsy Brayer is the authort of  MAGnum Opus and George Eastman