e went to
Italy," for if the majority were unaware of his high artistic gifts,
none could be unconscious of the vital and convincing quality of his
portraitures. His earlier sitters included some of the most
distinguished people in Scotland. Lord President Dundas must have been
amongst the very first for he died before the end of the year. Ere
long his position was unassailable, and during the five-and-thirty
years that followed he painted practically everybody who was anybody.
Burns is probably the only great Scotsman of that epoch who was not
immortalised by his brush, for the missing likeness, which has been
discovered so often, was not painted from life but from Nasmyth's
portrait.

From the time he returned home until 1809, when he purchased the
adjoining property off St Bernard's, Raeburn lived at Deanhaugh.[1]
The junction of these small estates enabled him to feu the outlying
parts on plans prepared by himself, architecture being one of his
hobbies, and his family's connection with them is still marked by such
names as Raeburn Place, Ann Street (after his wife), Leslie Place, St
Bernard's Crescent, and Deanhaugh Street. Some years earlier
continuous increase in the number of his clients had rendered a change
of studio desirable, and in 1795 he moved from George Street to 16 (now
32) York Place where he had built a specially designed and spacious
studio, with a suite of rooms for the display of recently completed
work or of portraits he had painted for himself. At a later date, when
exhibitions were inaugurated in Edinburgh (first series 1808-13), he
lent the show-rooms to the Society of Artists which organised them.
This action was typical of Raeburn's cordial relations with his
fellow-artists, most of whom were poor and socially unimportant; and
only a year before his death he championed the professional artists
when, partly in opposition to the Royal Institution, they proposed to
form an Academy. Incidentally also, the letter written on that
occasion, which I have transcribed in full in _Scottish Painting; Past
and Present_, gives an indication of the extent of his practice, of how
fully he was engaged.

Until 1808 Raeburn's career had been one unbroken success, but in that
year, following upon the failure of his son, financial disaster
overtook him. The firm of "Henry Raeburn and Company, merchants,
Shore, Leith," consisted of Henry Raeburn, Junior, and James Philip
Inglis, who had married Anne Lesl