DOI Heft:
No. 33 (December, 1895)
DOI Artikel:Armour, Margaret: Edinburgh as a sketching ground: illustrated by W. Brown MacDougall$nElektronische Ressource
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17295#0181
Edinburgh as a Sketching Ground
ference of hill and plain and sea. As for a studio, against it, lest in one's pictures it become a sort
if your bedroom does not suit, you can easily pick of " King Charles' head." There it towers in ele-
up one in the neighbourhood. W.'s is in a steep mental majesty as when first " were formed the
lane off the High Street, in an empty house doomed earth and the world," or, at least, as when first
to destruction. A cabinet-maker works overhead, they were formed in the aspect known by man;
and uses the entrance-hall as an overflow room, so inexorable in its strength, yet touched from mood
that W.'s muscles are kept well strung by vaulting to mood by every whim of the sky. I can imagine,
sideboards and tables, and reckoning with alien though I have not seen, how the silver-shafted
dawn cleaves the shadow of
its precipices ; and how, the
birds in Princes Street Gar-
den awaking, it sings like
Memnon, struck by the sun.
All day it broods over the
trafficking city, and when the
twilight mists wrap it round,
and high up, as from a
castle in the air, the faint
windows twinkle and shine,
and night sleeps, watched
by the stars, it lies in gi-
gantic gloom, silent and
dark to all questioning as
to the purport of its dreams.
Time was when I thought
I knew the Castle Rock
from having included it in
a summer day's sight-seeing.
I recognised it from its
photograph, and felt quite
pleasantly familiar. But real
knowledge brings strange-
ness, and an infinite variety
which custom cannot stale.
To get any of its gran-
deur on canvas you must
sketch it from somewhere
near the base, and brave
the sensation of nothing-
ness with which its vastness
overwhelms you. You can
paint it rugged in broad
"the castle from the grassmarket " by w. brown macdougall day, or looming dark in the
dusk ; or you can withdraw
to a point from which its
disorder before he reaches his own. The studio is sheer height dwindles, and its Castle is silhouetted
well lit and airy—in fact, sixteen different draughts against the sky. Or from some cafe window in
have been counted. When W. complained of this Princes Street you may catch, in a hasty pastel,
one night a waggish student asked why he didn't the evanescent rose and amethyst of the lamp-
open the window and let them out ? lighter's magic hour, when the trees settle into dark
And now as to the game the artist can run down masses, and the wayfarers flit by like phantoms,
in this happy hunting-ground. First and foremost Then if you tire of mere landscape, and aspire
comes the Castle, alluring from near and far. So to historic themes, you have only to wander
powerful is its spell that one has almost to fight through the Castle, with Tales of a Grandfather
166
ference of hill and plain and sea. As for a studio, against it, lest in one's pictures it become a sort
if your bedroom does not suit, you can easily pick of " King Charles' head." There it towers in ele-
up one in the neighbourhood. W.'s is in a steep mental majesty as when first " were formed the
lane off the High Street, in an empty house doomed earth and the world," or, at least, as when first
to destruction. A cabinet-maker works overhead, they were formed in the aspect known by man;
and uses the entrance-hall as an overflow room, so inexorable in its strength, yet touched from mood
that W.'s muscles are kept well strung by vaulting to mood by every whim of the sky. I can imagine,
sideboards and tables, and reckoning with alien though I have not seen, how the silver-shafted
dawn cleaves the shadow of
its precipices ; and how, the
birds in Princes Street Gar-
den awaking, it sings like
Memnon, struck by the sun.
All day it broods over the
trafficking city, and when the
twilight mists wrap it round,
and high up, as from a
castle in the air, the faint
windows twinkle and shine,
and night sleeps, watched
by the stars, it lies in gi-
gantic gloom, silent and
dark to all questioning as
to the purport of its dreams.
Time was when I thought
I knew the Castle Rock
from having included it in
a summer day's sight-seeing.
I recognised it from its
photograph, and felt quite
pleasantly familiar. But real
knowledge brings strange-
ness, and an infinite variety
which custom cannot stale.
To get any of its gran-
deur on canvas you must
sketch it from somewhere
near the base, and brave
the sensation of nothing-
ness with which its vastness
overwhelms you. You can
paint it rugged in broad
"the castle from the grassmarket " by w. brown macdougall day, or looming dark in the
dusk ; or you can withdraw
to a point from which its
disorder before he reaches his own. The studio is sheer height dwindles, and its Castle is silhouetted
well lit and airy—in fact, sixteen different draughts against the sky. Or from some cafe window in
have been counted. When W. complained of this Princes Street you may catch, in a hasty pastel,
one night a waggish student asked why he didn't the evanescent rose and amethyst of the lamp-
open the window and let them out ? lighter's magic hour, when the trees settle into dark
And now as to the game the artist can run down masses, and the wayfarers flit by like phantoms,
in this happy hunting-ground. First and foremost Then if you tire of mere landscape, and aspire
comes the Castle, alluring from near and far. So to historic themes, you have only to wander
powerful is its spell that one has almost to fight through the Castle, with Tales of a Grandfather
166