THE EARLIER CAREER OF ALEXANDER RUNCIMAN AND THE INFLUENCES THAT SHAPED HIS STYLE. JOHN DUNCAN MACMILLAN Ph.D UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 1973 i CONTENTS. Summary ii Chap.I; The Edinburgh Painter-decorators. Chap.II; James Norie and the work of the Norie firm. 17 Chap.III; William Delacour. 25 ChapoiV; Richard Cooper,father and son. 39 Chap.V; Runciman'~ circle in Edinburgh. 46 Chap.VI; Runciman in Edinburgh to 1767. 65 Chap.VII; John Runciman. 90 Chap.VIII; The Runcimans in Rome, 1767-'69. 110 Chap.IX: Alexander Runciman's Roman work 1767-'69. 121 Chap.X: John Runciman in Italy. 128 Chap.XI: Gavin Hamilton and James Barry. 140 Chap.XII; Alexander Runciman,History Painter. 159 Chap.XIII; The remaining drawings for the first Penicuik project. 185 Chap.XIV; Other Roman drawings. 195 Chap.XV9 Runciman and Fuseli. 204 Chap.XVI; Runciman's return to Scotland. 215 Chap.XVII; The Hall of Ossian. 227 Chap.XVIII; The Staircases and the Cowgate Chapel. 251 Appendix A; Runciman's letters. 272 Appendix B; Walter Ross's Letter book. 286 Appendix C; Runciman's Account with Walter Ross. 292 Appendix D; Gavin Hamilton's paintings from the Iliad. 295 Manuscript Sources. 337 Bibliography. 343 List of Plates. 352 ii SUMMARY .. Alexander Runciman was in his mid-thirties before he adopted the monumental style of history painting on which his reputation has always been held to rest. What may be called the formative part of his career was therefore unusually extended. This thesis is a study of his development during this time, its background, and the sources from which derived his ideas on painting. This part of his life culminated in the monumental 'paintings that h:e did for Sir James Clerk of Penicuik in 1772 and the related work in the Cowgate Chapel, Edinburgh .. These were the most important of all his works and were unique in eighteenth century painting. In them he combined the grand style that he had learned during the four years that he spent in Rome,with the native Scottish tradition of decorative painting in which he had been trained. The thesis therefore falls into three parts. The first (Chaps.1-7) deals with his life and background in Edinburgh; the second(Chaps.B-15) with his four years in Rome; and the third(Chaps.16-18) with the works that he carried out on his return to Edinburgh. In the first part attention is given in Chapters 1 to 3 to the men of the older generation from whom he may have learnt not only his style, but also his ambitions as a painter. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the circles in which he moved among his own contemporaries, and the last two chapters in this part with his own and his younger brother,. John's work in Edinburgh before they left for Rome in 1767. In the second part the first three chapters(S-10) cover the brothers' stay in Rome up to John's death late in 1768, or early in 1769. Following this event Alexander became determined to succeed, not merely as a landscape and decorative painter, but in monumental history painting. Chapter 11 is a discussion of the work of Gavin and of James Hami~ton Bar!Y, the two painters who influenced him most at this time. This discussion is extended in Appendix D which deals more fully with the work of Gavin Hamilton. Chapters 12-14 are an account of Runciman's iii first works in the new manner, with attention to his particul~r proposals for the decoration of Penicuik House. Chapter 15 deals with his relationship to Fuseli at the end of his Roman stay. H~nry The last three chapters give an account of the circumstances in which he finally carried out his work at Penicuik, and of the pictures themselves. As they were destroyed by fire in 1899 Chapter 18 and part of Chapter 19 are devoted to a reconstructiom of their appear~nce. The thesis concludes with a discussion of his work in the Cowgate Chapel. The part of this which survives is all that is left of his monumental work. CHAPTER ONE The Edinburgh Painter-Decorators Alexander Runciman was by training a tradesman. He served his apprenticeship as a painter and decorator, and worked at his trade until, at the age of thirty, he left his business to travel to Rome. He returned four and a half years later a committed historical painter, and carried out, at Penicuik House and in the Cowgate Chapel, Edinburgh, a series of monumental historical I decorations in a highly individual style, a variation of the new Grand Manner which had been initiated in Rome by Gavin Hamilton. Unlike so many others, he remained thereafter to live and work in Scotland, and thus became the first important modern Scottish painter. He was born in Edinburgh on the 15th August 1736, and was baptised in the Canongate Church. His parents, James Runciman 1 and Mary Smith, had been married in the previous year. On the 4th April 1750 he was apprenticed to Robert Norie, and on that occasion his father was described as "freeman wright in 2 Portsburgh, now resident in the Canongate". The suggestion made by Cunningham that his father was an architect is therefore groundless~ and we have no evidence whereby we can explain his choice of the painter's trade. In 1766 a certain William Smith appears in the Penicuik accounts receiving 5 guineas on behalf 1. Daniel Wilson, Memorials of Edinburgh in Olden Times, Edinburgh, 1891, 2 vols. II, 174, n. i. Wilson's information came from the Runciman family Bible. 2. Register of Edinburgh Apprentices, 1701-1755, Scottish Record Society, Vol.61, Edinburgh, 1929, 75, and David Laing, Transcript of the minutes of the Incorporation of St. Mary's Chapel EUL. 3. Alan Cunningham, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 6 vols. London 1829-33. V, 145. -2- . 4 of Runclman. He could conceivably be a maternal uncle, but there is no evidence that he was in fact a painter, or that he had anything to do with the Norie firm in which Runciman was an apprentice and in which he subsequently worked. What kind of education Runciman received apart from his apprenticeship we do not know. The records of the Royal High School are incomplete or non-existent for this early date. There are no repords at all for any other schools that may have existed. The little note in verse that he wrote in November, 1760, to Bremen, which is the first thing that we have by his hand of any kind, shows that he had quite a ready command of 5 language. His other letters bear this out. Though they are not always orthodox in spelling or grammar, they are freely, fluently, and sometimes quite vividly written. On at least one occasion, if it is his own, he manages an apology, writing to Robert Alexander, that is both elegant and 6 effective. His hand, if it is not beautiful, is usually firm, unaffected and legible. How much Latin or Greek he had, if he had any at all, it is impossible to say. For a painter of the kind that he became the classics were obviously of central importance. He refers to Homer, Virgil, Catullus and Ovid with the ease of familiarity, and he takes subjects from l. both Eurip¢des and Sophocles, but he presumably relied on translation in all of this, like most of his contemporaries. Nevertheless his work after the death of his brother in 1768 or /9 shows a wide and imaginative appreciation of the kind of literature that was only then beginning to become fashionable 4. Penicuik Accounts, 1755-82, Register House, Edinburgh. 5. Appendix A, J. Bremen note to A.R., and A.Ro's reply, Nov. 18th 1760. EUL Laing Collection. 6. Appendix A, A.R. to Robert Alexander, July 1769. EUL, Laing Collection. -3- among the more advanced artists and poets. He was amongst the first of his contemporaries to turn his mind to the imaginative interpretation, not only of Shakespeare and Ossian, but also of Spenser and Milton. In his of the poetic possibilities of un~erstanding painting he was not entirely dependent on the influence of the painters that he met in Rome. Although his experience in Italy had a profound effect on his career, he had already I spent his formative years, and more, in Edinburgh. The milieu to which he belonged there, as an apprentice and tradesman, was not entirely mundane. On the contrary it was remarkably lively both in his own, and in the older generation. Through his apprenticeship he was associated with James Norie, the father of Robert, and a circle of men who had been champions thirty years before of the status of the artist in Scotland. Because of James Norie and his friends the antiquated guild system in which Runciman was trained to his trade did not prove inimical to his artistic aspirations. It encouraged them and fostered them. In both England and Scotland by the mid-eighteenth century a number of artists had made respectable reputations as portrait painters. For example Sir John Medina, a portrait painter, was the last man to be knighted in the independent kingdom of Scotland. In the generation before Runciman, Alan Ramsay had gone forth from a very similar background to his own in Edinburgh. The case of portrait painting was however very different from that of other more elevated kinds of art, as Reynolds was painfully aware. The determination to gain proper recognition in England for art in this wider sense and for the artists who practiced it was one of the very few things that he and Hogarth had in common, and was a major factor in English art of the period. The foundation of the Royal Academy was one of its most significant manifestations. -4- Scotland had neither a Hogarth nor a Reynolds and had to wait till the next century for its Royal Academy. There are signs however that in the early eighteenth· century there were painters who, though very humble, thought in a similar way to their illustrious English contemporaries. An important figure among these was James Norie who founded the firm in which Alexander Runciman was trained. Norie has left us his self-portrait seen as a dignified professional artist and clearly had aspirations beyond the house painting and whitewashing by which he made his living. (Plate 2.) Alexander Runciman was not apprenticed to James Norie but to his son Robert. James Norie was then still active however and apparently continued to be so up till the year before his death in 1757, though Robert's name appears more 7 usually on the receipts in these last years. Robert apparently went on working in the tradition his father had founded and it was this tradition in which Runciman was trained. It seems appropriate therefore by way of introduction to this thesis to say what little we know about James Norie, and the part that he played in the earliest manifestations of artistic self-consciousness in Scotland. James Norie was born at Knockando in Morayshire in 8 1684. He evidently moved to Edinburgh when young, and, though we do not know with whom he served his apprenticeship, 7. General accounts of Penicuik House, 1751-55, Register House; Dean of Guild Accounts, City of Edinburgh, 1752-56. Scots Magazine, June 1757, Vol. XIX, 326; "Died at Edinburgh in the 73rd year of his age, James Norie, painter in that city". 8. (D. Werschmidt), James Norie, Painter, Etlinburgh, 1890' 1 • -5- he became a burgess and guild brother of the Incorporation of 9 st. Mary's Chapel on 22nd December 1708. He had his essay- p~ce prescribed to him on 1st February 1709, a· 'history of susanna and the elders on primed cloth in oil, the other side 10 to be painted in imitation of lapis-lazuli'. This he completed satisfactorily and quickly for he was admitted a 11 freeman on the 19th February of that year. According to t James the painters who Norie thus joined had only been Col~n 12 members of the Incorporated Trades since 1703. On the 30th November 1717 the trades considered a proposal from the painters and agreed that 'whosoever of the painter's craft that shall hereafter be admitted to ane essay shall be allowed the liberty of making a painting thereof in the high hall or convening house, and not in the laigh essay house. And whether they shall think fit to accept of the privilege or not, nevertheless in lieu and place of the twelve pounds formerly payable by such as should get the privilege of the said hall they shall be obliged to give and dedicate to this house the piece to be painted by them for this essay, put within a handsome frame 13 done at their own charges and expenses' . The painters thus secured for themselves a privilege which must have conferred status, and which differentiated them from all the other trades. 9. David Laing, Notes and Transcriptions from the Minutes of the Incorporation of st. Mary's Chapel, EUL, Ms.La. IV.26. 1 0. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. James Colston, The Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1891, 65. 13. Laing, Transcriptions. EUL. -6- The model for this privilege may well have been the practice in the Roman and French Academies by which the painter on becoming a member presented his diploma piece to the academy. The Etlinburgh painters were then perhaps thinking of their essays as diploma pieces, and the Incorporated trades as an academy in potential at least. James Norie1s essay was clearly quite an elaborate picture. The painter Roderick Chalmers, who was afterwards I secretary of the short lived St. Luke's Academy, had, on completion of his essay, the Royal Arms of Great Britain, 'obliged himself to gift the foresaid essay piece to the 14 Incorporation•. This was on the 21st May 1709, and in August the Incorporation decided to have a frame made for 15 it and to hang it in the meeting house. Chalmers, who died in 1746, styled himself Ross Herald. According to Laing "he was known as a herald painter and was employed not only in emblazoning heraldic manuscripts, but in taking 16 charge of funerals, providing banners and escutcheons1• He contributed a chapter on Funeral Escutcheons to the second volume of Nisbet's System of heraldry and is there described as "Herald and Herald painter whose understanding 17 and practice in these matters are well known11 The • names of Chalmers and Norie are associated in several places, notably in the minutes of the Incorporated Trades, in the founding deed of St. Luke's Academy, and also in 1736 working 18 together for the City in St. Giles's. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. David Laing, Notes on Artists. 17. Alexander Nisbet, A System of Heraldry, etc., 2 vols., Edinburgh and London, 1722 and 1742. Second volume edited with additions by R. Fleming. Cooper also contributed two important plates. 18. Dean of Guild's Accounts, City of Edinburgh.