Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

VIII
SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN
Through the initiative of a prominent citizen,
Edinburgh has been in possession, for some autumn
weeks, of a gallery of paintings of singular merit and
interest. They were exposed in the apartments of
the Scottish Academy ; and filled those who are
accustomed to visit the annual spring exhibition
with astonishment and a sense of incongruity. In-
stead of the too common purple sunsets, and pea-
green fields, and distances executed in putty and
hog's lard, he beheld, looking down upon him from
the walls of room after room, a whole army of wise,
grave, humorous, capable, or beautiful countenances,
painted simply and strongly by a man of genuine
instinct. It was a complete act of the Human
Drawing-Room Comedy. Lords and ladies, soldiers
and doctors, hanging judges and heretical divines,
a whole generation of good society was resuscitated ;
and the Scotsman of to-day walked about among
the Scotsmen of two generations ago. The moment
was well chosen, neither too late nor too early.
II— K 145