It is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in 1798 of John Graham[1] (1754-1817) as preceptor that the Trustees' Academy was developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound influence on Scottish painting. From 1771, the year in which Raeburn left Heriot's, until his death, Alexander Runciman (1736-85), the "Sir Brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that Raeburn took the tone of his colour from that painter's work. But no record exists of Raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to have received any more training than was involved in the relationships with his master and his master's friend which have been described. Even subsequent introduction to David Martin (1737-98), who settled in Edinburgh in 1775, when Raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. By that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and received as compensation a share in the prices received for the miniatures to which Raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which Gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. These miniatures, of which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no very marked artistic qualities. Drawn with care and not without considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character. The frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and placing of the heads are almost the only elements which hint their authorship. They are simple and straight-forward likenesses rather than works of art and bear no obvious relationship to the elegant bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little of the contemporary English school of miniaturists. But obviously they were some preparation for the development which followed, when, soon afterwards and almost at once, he passed from water-colour miniature to life-size portraiture in oil paint. ===================================================================== PLATE IV.--MRS CAMPBELL OF BALLIEMORE. (National Gallery of Scotland.) This is one of the finest of the many fine portraits by Raeburn in the Edinburgh Gallery. Its place in the artist's work is discussed on page 63. [Illustration: Plate IV.] =====================================================================