as the famous "Dr Nathaniel Spens" in the possession
of the Royal Company of Archers, by which body it was commissioned in
1791. In it close realisation of detail and restraint in handling are
very happily harmonised with breadth of ensemble and effectiveness of
design. Some five years later this fine achievement was followed by
the even more striking, if rather less dignified, "Sir John Sinclair,"
a splendid piece of virtuosity, which unites brilliant colour and
admirable tone to great dash and bravura of brush-work.

During this period, and indeed throughout his career, Raeburn usually
placed his sitters in a strong direct light, which, being thrown upon
the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light)
illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with
definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. Very
often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and
arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. In many of his pictures one finds the
lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through
the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the
parts he wished subordinated. This device appears in full-lengths as
well as in busts and threequarter-lengths, and while, no doubt, helping
to the desired end, is now and then a disturbing influence from the
fact that it is difficult to account for the result from purely normal
causes. With Rembrandt, the greatest master of concentrated pictorial
effect, the transitions from the fully illumined passages to the
surrounding transparent darks are so gradual and so subtle that one
scarcely notices that the effect has been arranged--the concentration
is an integral part of the imaginative apprehension of the subject. It
is otherwise with Raeburn, in his earlier work at least. Later he
attained much the same results by less arbitrary and apparent means, by
swathing the hands and arms--the high tone of which he evidently found
disconcerting and conflicting with the heads--in drapery, by placing
them where they tell as little as possible, and by modifications in
handling. His management of accessories was also determined by desire
for concentration. Although, as is obvious from his increasing use of
it, preferring a simple background from which the figure has
atmospheric detachment, he frequently used the scenic setting which
Reynolds and Gainsborough had made the vogue. His idea, however, was
t