Sir Henry, the Reynolds of Scotland, was the son of a manufacturer, and was born at Stockbridge, Edinburgh, on the 4th of March 1756. The circumstances of his early life were far from being propitious. He was only six years old when he was left an orphan. The elder brother, who undertook the charge of him, could not afford to keep him long at school. He was accordingly apprenticed, at the age of fifteen, to a goldsmith in a dingy alley of the old town of Edinburgh. Yet in spite of these disadvantages, the genius of the boy began, by its own innate strength, to assert itself. In the workshop of his master he took insensibly to sketching. Whenever the tools were laid down, the pencil was in his hand drawing caricatures of his companions. The growing habit soon ensured success, and success incited him to higher efforts. In course of time he was painting miniatures, which attracted the interest of some of his fellow-townsmen. David Martin, a popular portrait-painter, gave him encouragement, and lent him pictures to copy. People began to sit to him for their likenesses in miniature. His own master, recognising a great artist in what he formerly thought a mere idle shopboy, absolved him from his apprenticeship, and allowed him to devote himself entirely to painting. Encouraged by these favours, the young enthusiast continued assiduously to study the principles of his art. He had mastered the difficulties of colouring; he had abandoned miniatures for portraits in oil; and he was earning a comfortable livelihood with his brush, when an incident occurred which was the means of accelerating his rise towards excellence and fame.

One day when Raeburn was out in the fields quietly sketching, a young lady sauntered into the landscape which he was drawing. Her appearance pleased him, and he put her down upon the paper as an enlivening accessory to the scene. Not long afterwards, much to his delight and surprise, the same young lady appeared at his studio to sit for her portrait. A mutual impression was the consequence; and before many months had elapsed she gave him her hand and a handsome dowry along with it. Thus furnished, by a happy incident, with competent means, Raeburn now resolved to devote himself to a more thorough study of his art. Accordingly, he set out along with his wife to make himself acquainted with the paintings of other countries. The object of his journey was successfully pursued. On arriving at London he had the good fortune to gain the approbation and friendship of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The kind-hearted president sent him to Rome with letters of introduction to the most eminent artists in that city, and with the advice to study Michael Angelo in the Sistine chapel. Full advantage was taken of both the counsel and the introductions; and at the end of two years he returned to his native city greatly improved, and set up his easel in George Street.

Raeburn now entered upon a career of portrait-painting surpassing everything of the kind that had hitherto been known in the Scottish capital. The great principle of his art was to endeavour, if possible, to represent the intelligence as well as the mere flesh of the human countenance. To achieve this object, he found it necessary to bring into play all the resources of his generous and highly-gifted nature. These, therefore, be employed in a very able and successful manner. No sooner were sitters admitted than, with his gentlemanly demeanour and frank address, he put them completely at their ease. They sat down on his platform too much fascinated with his conversation to be capable of looking affected and unnatural. The talk continued as he commenced to paint. He led them on from one subject to another until he had brought them to their favourite topic, and detected the highest expression of which their features were capable. Then he put that expression down upon the canvas, and finished the rest of the picture accordingly. The portraits painted in this manner went forth among the public to establish the fame of the artist. Their boldness of posture, vivacity of mien, and breadth of effect, put to shame the works of all his competitors. In no long time he was the acknowledged prince of Scottish portrait-painters, and had the finest heads and faces of the land for the subjects of his brush. The rank and intellect of the nation became his sitters. He had the honour of painting the severe sternness of the grandees of the south, and the martial air of the plaided chieftains of the north. He had the still higher honour of delineating the noble foreheads and thoughtful eyes of the chiefs of literature and science. In fact, there was scarcely an eminent Scotsman of the age of Blair and Hume whose portrait did not go forth to the world on his canvas, immortalizing the names of both the subject and the artist. Nor, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when that generation had passed away, did Raeburn cease to be the painter of genius. In his new studio in York Place he depicted another race of great men, not inferior to their illustrious predecessors. There he executed those portraits of Henry Mackenzie, Sir Walter Scott, Francis Horner, Lord Jeffrey, and Lord Cockburn, in which their originals still seem to think and speak.

The life of Raeburn drew to a close amid circumstances of great prosperity. The fame of his genius had spread to foreign countries. His name was in the list of the Royal Academicians. His supremacy among Scottish artists was acknowledged by a knighthood from George IV. in 1822. At the same time, the vigour and healthy enthusiasm of his fine nature remained unimpaired. There was not an hour of the day which was not devoted to one or other of his favourite pursuits. He made experiments in mechanics and ship-architecture. He worked in the garden of his villa of St Bernard's. He superintended the building of that suburb at Stockbridge which was afterwards called Raeburn Place. He likewise laboured at his easel with all the ardour of his first love, painting portraits which surpassed the masterpieces of his prime. Thus was his green old age spent, until a short and painless sickness brought it gently to a close on the 8th July 1823. (See Chambers' Biog. Diet., and Cunningham's Lives of British Painters, &c.)