list of colours used by him, which Alexander
Fraser, R.S.A., gave in _The Portfolio_. "His palette was a simple
one; his colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but sometimes yellow ochre
instead), Prussian blue, burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake,
white, of course, and the medium he used was 'gumption,' a composition
of sugar of lead, mastic varnish, and linseed oil. The colours were
ground by a servant in his own house and put into small pots ready for
use." When one adds that his studio had a very high side-light, and
that he painted on half-primed canvas with a definitely marked twill,
all that is known of his practice has been noted.

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PLATE VIII.--MRS SCOTT MONCRIEFF.

(National Gallery of Scotland.)

None of Raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this.
Although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used, it
is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one of
the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since 1854,
when Mr R. Scott Moncrieff, Welwood of Pitliver, bequeathed it to the
Royal Scottish Academy. (See page 79.)

[Illustration: Plate VIII.]

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As already suggested, Raeburn's style was tending towards greater
completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before
he removed to York Place in 1795, but, while his normal advance was in
that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a
number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing
them with their {73} predecessors that one notices that the advance was
definite and not casual. Occasionally, as in the "Professor Robison,"
there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but,
as the "Lord Braxfield" of about 1790 is a premonition of a much later
manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the
character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. But
comparing the splendid group, "Reginald Macdonald of Clanranald and his
two younger brothers" (about 1800), or the "Mrs Cruikshank of Langley
Park" (about 1805), with typical examples painted between 1787 and
1795, one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power
of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of
form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more e