Raeburn spent his life in Edinburgh, rarely visiting the metropolis, and then only for brief periods, thus preserving his own sturdy individuality, if he missed the opportunity of engrafting on it some of the fuller refinement and delicacy of the London portraitists. But though he, personally, may have lost some of the advantages which might presumably have resulted from closer association with the leaders of English art, and from contact with a wider public, Scottish art certainly gained much from his disinclination to leave his native land. He became the acknowledged chief of the school which was growing up in Scotland during the earlier years of the 19th century, and to his example and influence at a critical period is undoubtedly due much of the striking virility by which the work of his followers and immediate successors is distinguished. Evidences of this influence can be perceived even in the present day. His leisure was employed in athletic sports, in his garden, and in architectural and mechanical pursuits, and so varied were the interests that filled his life that his sitters used to say of him, “You would never take him for a painter till he seizes the brush and palette.” Professional honours fell thick upon him. In 1812 he was elected president of the Society of Artists in Edinburgh, in 1814 associate, and in the following year full member of the Royal Academy. In 1822 he was knighted by George IV. and appointed His Majesty’s limner for Scotland. He died at Edinburgh on the 8th of July 1823.
In his own day the portraits of Raeburn were excellently and voluminously engraved, especially by the last members of the great school of English mezzotint. In 1876 a collection of over 300 of his works was brought together in the Royal Scottish Academy galleries; in the following year a series of twelve of his finest portraits was included in the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy, London; and a volume, of photographs from his paintings was edited by Dr John Brown.
Raeburn possessed all the necessary requirements of a popular and successful portrait-painter. He had the power of producing a telling and forcible likeness; his productions are distinguished by breadth of effect, by admirable force of handling, by execution of the swiftest and most resolute sort. Wilkie has recorded that, while travelling in Spain and studying the works of Velazquez, the brush-work of that master reminded him constantly of the “square touch” of Raeburn. But the portraits of Velazquez are unsurpassable examples of tone as well as of handling, and it is in the former quality that Raeburn is often wanting, possibly because his inclinations led him to study effects of diffused light in preference to those which were strong in contrasts of light and shade. The colour of his portraits is sometimes crude and out of relation, inclining to the use of positive and definite local pigments, and too little perceptive of the changeful subtleties and modifications of atmospheric effect. His draperies frequently consist of little more than two colours—the local hue of the fabric and the black which, more or less graduated, expresses its shadows and modelling. In his flesh, too, he wants—in all but his very best productions—the delicate refinements of colouring which distinguish the works of the great English portrait-painters. His faces, with all their excellent truth of form and splendid vigour of handling, are often hard and bricky in hue. Yet, after all allowances have been made for what deficiencies there may be in his work, his right to a place among, the greater British masters cannot be contested. The masculine power, the vitality and the strength of characterization which are so apparent in-his paintings entitle him to the serious attention of all lovers of fine achievement; and there is much to be learned from study of his methods. His sincerity and freedom from artificial graces of style can be specially recognized, and his frank directness is always attractive.
See Life of Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A., by his great-grandson William Raeburn Andrew, M.A. Oxon. (2nd ed., 1894), which contains some of the latest information, together with a complete catalogue of the exhibition of 1876. There may also be consulted Works of Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A., with tributes by Dr John Brown and others, published by Andrew Elliot, Edinburgh; Tribute to the Memory of Raeburn by Dr Andrew Duncan, the Catalogues of the loan exhibitions in Edinburgh of 1884 and 1901; and the Essay by W. E. Henley—Sir Henry Raeburn by William Ernest Henley (1890) with a finely produced series of plates, printed by T. & A. Constable for the now defunct Royal Association for Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland. But the leading work on the subject, and the most splendidly illustrated, is Sir Henry Raeburn by Sir Walter Armstrong, with an introduction by R. A. M. Stevenson and a biographical and descriptive catalogue by J. L. Caw (1901).
RÆDWALD (d. c. 620), king of the East Angles, was the son of King Tytili. He became a Christian during a stay in Kent, but on his return to East Anglia he sanctioned the worship both of the Christian and the heathen religions. Very little is known about his reign, which probably began soon after 600. For a time he recognized the overlordship of Æthelberht, king of Kent, but he seems to have shaken off the Kentish yoke. He gained some superiority over the land south of the Humber with the exception of Kent and is counted among the Bretwaldas. Rædwald protected the fugitive Edwin, afterwards king of Northumbria, and in his interests he fought a sanguinary battle with the reigning Northumbrian king, Æthelfrith, near Retford in Nottinghamshire, where Æthelfrith was defeated and killed in April 617. He was followed as king of the East Angles by his son Eorpwald.
See Bede, Historiae ecclesiasticae, edited by C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896); and J. R. Green, The Making of England (1897—1899).
RAETIA (so always in inscriptions; in classical MSS. usually Rhaetia), in ancient geography, a province of the Roman Empire, bounded on the W. by the country of the Helvetii, on the E. by Noricum, on the N. by Vindelicia and on the S. by Cisalpine Gaul. It thus comprised the districts occupied in modern times by the Grisons, the greater part of Tirol, and part of Lombardy. The land was very mountainous, and the inhabitants, when not engaged in predatory expeditions, chiefly supported themselves by cattle-breeding and cutting timber, little attention being paid to agriculture. Some of the valleys, however, were rich and fertile, and produced corn and wine, the latter considered equal to any in Italy. Augustus preferred Raetian wine to any other. Considerable trade was also carried on in pitch, honey, wax and cheese. Little is known of the origin or history of the Raetians, who are described as one of the most powerful and warlike of the Alpine tribes. It is distinctly stated by Livy (v. 33) that they were of Etruscan origin (a view favoured by Niebuhr and Mommsen). A tradition reported by Justin (xx. 5) and Pliny (Nat. Hist. iii. 24, 133) affirmed that they were a portion of that people who had settled in the plains of the Po and were driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls, when they assumed the name of Raetians from their leader Raetus; a more probable derivation, however, is from Celtic rait, “mountain land.” Even if their Etruscan origin be accepted, at the time when the land became known to the Romans, Celtic tribes were already in possession of it and had amalgamated so completely with the original inhabitants that, generally speaking, the Raetians of later times may be regarded as a Celtic people, although non-Celtic tribes (Lepontii, Euganei) were settled among them. The Raetians are first mentioned (but only incidentally) by Polybius (xxxiv. 10, 18), and little is heard of them till after the end of the Republic. There is little doubt, however, that they retained their independence until their subjugation in 15 B.C. by Tiberius and Drusus (cf. Horace, Odes, iv. 4 and 14). At first Raetia formed a distinct province, but towards the end of the 1st century A.D. Vindelicia was added to it; hence Tacitus (Germania, 41) could speak of Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) as “a colony of the province of Raetia.” The whole province (including Vindelicia) was at first under a military prefect, then under a procurator; it had no standing army quartered in it, but relied on its own native troops and militia for protection. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius it was governed by the commander of the Legio iii Italica. Under Diocletian it formed part of the diocese of the vicarius Italiae, and was subdivided into Raetia prima and secunda (each under a praeses), the former corresponding to the old Raetia, the latter to Vindelicia, The boundary between them is not clearly defined, but may be
