Henry Raeburn's Edinburgh and a long gaze into the city that made an artist

Born into a milling family in Stockbridge when the area still sat in the countryside, he rose to become one of Scotland’s most revered artists, with his reputation growing as the capital expanded around him.

Now the life of painter Henry Raeburn is to be celebrated in the heart of the city that fuelled his ultimate success.

Raeburn’s Edinburgh has opened at the Georgian House at 7 Charlotte Square – an exhibition that marks 200 years since the artist’s death and brings together 18 portraits and engravings from across the National Trust for Scotland collection for the first time.

The New Town had yet to be designed when Raeburn was born in 1756, but it was the emergence of this elegant, moneyed and clean part of the city that played a key part in his story as the demands of the area’s first residents for portraits to hang in their new homes drove a prosperous trade for the painter, who was orphaned as a young boy.