Patrick Moir (1769-1810)

When I was growing up as a schoolboy in Edinburgh, I used to go regularly to the Scottish National Gallery at the foot of the Mound, and among the painters that I loved was, of course, Henry Raeburn. He was the pre-eminent Scottish portrait painter of the late-18th and early-19th centuries, and indeed, to me, he remains one of the very finest portrait painters of his or any other age. This acquisition, by the Scottish National Gallery, adds to – and enhances and completes – its Raeburn collection. It is one of the finest of Raeburn’s early works, and is the only major painting he completed during his one study trip to Rome in 1785-86.   

The subject is the 16-year-old Patrick Moir, nephew of James Byres, who was the go-to Grand Tour guide in Rome, and who almost certainly commissioned the portrait. Moir himself went on to become the banker to the British Grand Tourists and expatriates in Rome, but his business collapsed – and he had to flee – when the French invaded some 10 years after the painting was done. The Byres and Moir families had historic Jacobite sympathies, which drew them to the exiled Jacobites in Rome, and that of course adds to the interest of the painting.     

The composition of the portrait is particularly interesting, as it is based on a long tradition of ‘fancy pictures’, works that are arranged in a studied (and also frequently fanciful) way, almost genre paintings. Joshua Reynolds, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, John Singleton Copley and even Rembrandt made paintings of this kind, depicting ‘a boy’ reading – rarely a portrait such as this one, of a known individual, but a generic painting done more for the composition than for the likeness. Raeburn here combines the generic with the individual, and produces a wonderful work as a result.    

What a painting it is. I especially love the way the light is conceived, coming from the top left of the painting, illuminating the face and hands and the cravat surrounded by the red-brown jacket with its creases and folds. There is a studied serenity about the figure, concentrated on the book, but still with a glimmer of engagement and contentment in the expression. All the concentration is on the face; the background fades away into nothingness, only a few books barely visible. This is a close-up rendition of a young and studious man. There is nothing extraneous beyond.    

Raeburn’s studio in Edinburgh was on the first floor of a house in York Place on the edge of the Georgian New Town, with great north-facing windows and a complex system of adjustable shutters to control the flow of light. Light was crucial to Raeburn in depicting his sitters. Not light in the dramatic way of, say, a Caravaggio, but rather light carefully arranged and positioned in a soft and understated way. In this early portrait you see a masterful use of this principle.    

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Raeburn’s death, and it is supremely appropriate for this work now to find its way into the Scottish national collection. The gallery has been pursuing it for several decades – having included it in the great 1997 exhibition it held of Raeburn– and it will help to enhance the new rooms that have been created in the Scottish National Gallery, completed just this year, devoted to Scottish art. This new acquisition will take pride of place.  

The work fills an important gap in the gallery’s collection of Raeburns: an early work, painted in Rome, reflecting much of the genre painting of previous (and subsequent) artists, but of a fascinating and important young figure, painted with exquisite grace and tenderness. Art Fund is very proud to have been able to help with this significant acquisition.