As already suggested, Raeburn's style was tending towards greater completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before he removed to York Place in 1795, but, while his normal advance was in that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing them with their {73} predecessors that one notices that the advance was definite and not casual. Occasionally, as in the "Professor Robison," there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but, as the "Lord Braxfield" of about 1790 is a premonition of a much later manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. But comparing the splendid group, "Reginald Macdonald of Clanranald and his two younger brothers" (about 1800), or the "Mrs Cruikshank of Langley Park" (about 1805), with typical examples painted between 1787 and 1795, one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more expressive use of colour and chiaroscuro. Considerable ingenuity has been expended in trying to prove that Raeburn's subsequent development was due in some way or other to the influence of Hoppner and Lawrence. Consideration of his situation and of his work itself, however, scarcely bears this out. His ignorance of what was being done by London artists, and of how his own pictures compared with theirs, is very clearly evident from the following letter written to Wilkie:-- Edinburgh, 12_th September_ 1819. Mr dear Sir,--I let you to wit that I am still here, and long much to hear from you, both as to how you are and what you are doing. I would not wish to impose any hardship upon you, but it would give me great pleasure if you would take the trouble to write me at least once a year, if not oftener, and give me a little information of what is going on among the artists, for I do assure you I have as little communication with any of them, and know almost as little about them, as if I were living at the Cape of Good Hope. I send up generally a picture or two to the Exhibition, which serve merely as an advertisement that I am still in the land of the living, but in other respects it does me no good, for I get no notice from any one, nor have I the least conception how they look beside others. I know not in what London papers any critiques of that kind are made, and our Edinburgh ones (at least those that I see) take no notice of these matters. At any rate I would prefer a candid observation or two from an artist like you, conveying not only your own opinion but perhaps that of others, before any of them.