struck by the
talent displayed, inquired if he had had any instruction. No, he had
not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and
Deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted
eagerly. The story is pleasant and circumstantial enough to be
credible; and the existence of an early Raeburn miniature of Deuchar is
evidence of the existence of friendship between the two. But, as a
free drawing-school had been founded in 1760 by the Honourable the
Board of Manufactures for the precise object of encouraging and
improving design for manufactures, the impossibility of Raeburn
receiving instructions of some kind was less than seems to be implied.

It is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly
elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in 1798 of
John Graham[1] (1754-1817) as preceptor that the Trustees' Academy was
developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound
influence on Scottish painting. From 1771, the year in which Raeburn
left Heriot's, until his death, Alexander Runciman (1736-85), the "Sir
Brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great
ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history
painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that Raeburn took
the tone of his colour from that painter's work. But no record exists
of Raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to
have received any more training than was involved in the relationships
with his master and his master's friend which have been described.
Even subsequent introduction to David Martin (1737-98), who settled in
Edinburgh in 1775, when Raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. By
that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an
arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and
received as compensation a share in the prices received for the
miniatures to which Raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which
Gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. These miniatures, of
which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no
very marked artistic qualities. Drawn with care and not without
considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but
not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character.
The frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and
placing of the heads are almost the only elements