Raeburn was the leading portrait painter in Edinburgh in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. He painted in a very spontaneous way, applying paint in bold gestures to a relatively coarse canvas, a method that gave his sitters a marked air of vitality. The style and costume of this portrait suggest that it was painted during the 1790s. Around this time, Raeburn had become interested in the effects of contre-jour, a painterly device of lighting the figure from behind, which brought the sitter’s contours and profile into sharp relief.
Little is known of Glendonwyn. His name, the archaic form of Glendinning, is derived from a property in Westerkirk, Dumfriesshire, although his estate at Parton - possibly represented in the sketchy background - lay above the River Dee. He married in 1781; companion portraits of his wife and child are in a private collection in the United States.
Bought; 1892; holder, william