10/3: Edinburgh's National Gallery, Witches & Auld Reekie!

Earlier that day Steven and I had spent several hours exploring part of Edinburgh's Royal Mile and New Town areas. While on a walk through the latter part of town, we opted to stop at the Scottish National Gallery which had the country's best collection of paintings.

One of the most famous 19th century British pictures was The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer as it "encapsulated the grandeur of Scotland's Highlands" for many people. His painting depicted a 'royal' or twelve-point stag which referred to the number of tines or points on its antlers. The painting was planned as part of a series for the House of Lords in Britain's Parliament but it was sold to a private collector. The painting became widely known in the 19th century when it was reproduced in prints and achieved international recognition in the 20th century when it was used as a marketing image for various products.

The Honorable Mrs. Graham by Thomas Gainsborough was based on the teenage bride of a wealthy Scottish landowner. I read that the slender lavishly dressed 18th century woman wearing a silvery dress echoed Gainsborough's 17th-century style. Known best for his Blue Boy portrait, we could understand how the artist used his roots as the son of a clothes-making father in both paintings.

The Southern Baroque Gallery had a vast collection of paintings by many of the grand masters.

Holy Family with a Palm Tree by Raphael was painted at the beginning of the 16th century. Their pose symbolized "geometric perfection and the perfect family unit," according to travel writer Rick Steves with Baby Jesus dangling between Joseph and Mary, linking the family together.

The Three Ages of Man by Titian depicted the transient nature of human life and love. A panel by the painting described the idyllic pastoral landscape, with two sleeping babies, innocent of the affairs of the heart, being trampled on by the mischievous winged Cupid, the god of love. The church in the background was a promise of salvation.

Another painting by Titian, Venus Rising from the Sea, showed the goddess Venus according to the legend born fully grown arriving onshore emerging from the scallop shell shown on the left.

Botticelli's 1485 The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child shows Mary looking down at her baby sleeping in a flower-filled garden in what seemed to me as the perfection of maternal love.

Self-Portrait, Aged 51, by Rembrandt showed the once most renowned Dutch painter after he had just declared bankruptcy and therefore faced social stigma and ridicule behind his back in 1695. Sadly, he'd "begun a slow decline into poverty and obscurity," according to Steves. Dressed in dark clothes against a dark background, the only spot of light was on his forehead's worry lines. Rembrandt probably produced more self-portraits than any artist in history, recording the changes in his appearance for more than forty years, from his youth to the year he died. 

The gallery had some lovely mostly smaller-scale works from the Impressionist Period. 

In Gaugin's late 19th century Vision of the Sermon, we could see French peasant women imagining the miraculous event they've just heard preached about in church with Jacob wrestling an angel. The painting has been described as a watershed in art history because Gaugin "threw out the rules of realism that had reigned since the Renaissance." I read that the diagonal tree branch was the only thing that separated the everyday world from the miraculous. 

The Three Tahitians was painted by Gaugin when he moved to Tahiti a few years later. In this painting, Gaugin showed us a similar world where the everyday and magical coexist with symbolic power. I learned this fusion of 'primitive' and Western mythologies was a frequent theme in Gaugin's later Tahitian paintings. The young man in the middle looked like he was being offered a choice between vice and virtue with the woman on the left promising a life of pleasure and indulgence while the woman on the right displaying a wedding ring that represented a more conventional route.

On loan from a London gallery was Young Woman Powdering Herself by Georges Seurat. It was an unusual portrait of his mistress done in the Neo-Impressionism style with the paint applied using small dots of color. An x-ray revealed that Seurat originally painted a face in the frame on the wall that has been said by some to be a self-portrait. He was persuaded by a friend to cover it with a vase of flowers.

Even though Steven and I have been lucky enough to see plenty of paintings by the French artist Edgar Degas all over the world, it was still a pleasure viewing Before the Performance 1890s. I hadn't known before this, though, that Degas preferred painting ballet dancers rehearsing or waiting to go on stage rather than their performing. Degas was a frequent attendee of ballet performances at the Paris Opera but the settings in his paintings were often imaginary or drawn from memory.

Though the museum was undergoing a significant renovation to build a larger gallery for its Scottish Collection, we still wanted to see some of its national artists. St. Bride by John Duncan was described as one of the outstanding creations of the Celtic revival which had begun during the last decade of the 19th century in Scotland. The Irish saint Bride, popularly known as 'the foster mother of Christ,' was shown being carried by angels over the Hebrides seas to Bethlehem to witness the birth or nativity of Christ. In the background was the silhouette of Iona Abbey that we'd just been to a few days previously on a day trip from Oban.

As earlier in the day Steven and I had stopped at Canongate Kirk here in Edinburgh, I liked seeing The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddington Loch as Walker was the minister at Canongate in the later 18th century, and joined the Skating Society in 1780. The lighthearted work was painted by Sir Henry Raeburn.

The strength of Sir David Wilkie's art was small-scale scenes of everyday life as evidenced in The Letter of Introduction which captured the painter's experience of trying to impress skeptical art lovers in London. Look even at the dog sniffing the Scot out!

A Highland Wedding at Blair Atholl by David Allan was an excellent example of the artist's talent with group portraiture and scenes from everyday life as a kind of living history painting.

Steven and I really enjoyed our time at the gallery, as, although there were no iconic masterpieces, it still had a truly world-class collection of works by Old Masters and introduced us to the world of Scottish painters.

Because it had been convenient when coming into Edinburgh that morning by bus, Steven and I had begun our discovery of the city in the middle of The Royal Mile, one of Europe's most interesting historic walks. We had ended our walking tour at the Palace of Holyroodhouse before then walking through the city's Georgian New Town area. After touring the gallery, we started at the Royal Mile's beginning at Edinburgh Castle, a symbol of Scottish independence. The city was born on the easily defended rock that was once occupied by Celtic tribes and possibly also Romans.

On either side of the entryway were statues of the fierce warriors who battled English invaders, Robert the Bruce on the left and William Wallace on the right. Between them was the Scottish motto Nemo me impune laccesit, which is very roughly translated as "No one messes with me and gets away with it." It reminded me of the Texan slogan, Don't Mess with Texas!

As the castle was the home of Scottish kings and queens for centuries, it has seen royal births, medieval pageantry, and bloody sieges, according to Steves. The castle was actually a complex of many buildings, some dating back 1300 years. We talked about touring it but knew it would take several hours to do it justice and we decided we preferred being outside and seeing more of the city. The final factor was the immense crowds which we just didn't want to contend with after coming across so few people in the Highlands!

From the castle, we walked downhill along the cobblestone Esplanade that was also full of kitschy tartan and whisky shops!

The Witches' Well was a drinking fountain that commemorated the people executed here for witchcraft in the 1500s and 1600s.
Probably hundreds of those convicted of witchcraft were strangled and burnt at the stake on the execution ground now covered by the castle's Esplanade. Most of the condemned were women. The fountain was sculpted in 1894 by artist John Duncan.

Towering in front of us was the former Tollbooth Church, built in 1844, but now home to the Hub, the city's festival and information office. Within the space of just a few minutes' walk, the Royal Mile had already changed names twice, to Castlehill and now Lawnmarket! The latter was so named because it was a market for fabrics and especially "lawn," a linen-like cloth. 

During the 1600s, Lawnmarket, along with the next stretch called High Street, was the city's main street. That was when the city was filled with breweries, banks, and printing presses. Tens of thousands of people filled the Old Town and they built tenements or multiple-use residences. The buildings, often ten stories high, were some of the tallest residential buildings in Europe. They were occupied by rich and poor alike with the rich in the middle floors and the poor in the cellars and attics.

A surviving original tenement, Gladstone's Landing, was acquired by a wealthy businessman in 1617. It was typical of tenements with shops and an arcade on the ground level and residences above. According to Steves, windows were expensive so the lower halves of window openings swung outward like shutters so garbage could be tossed out!

Lots of narrow alleyways branched off the Royal Mile with terms that were new to me and might also be new to you! A 'wynd' was a narrow, winding lane. An arched doorway was a 'pend.' The Old Norse language gave us the word 'Gate' for street. Finally, a 'close' was a tiny alley located between two buildings that would have had originally a door that 'closed' at night. Were you aware that a 'close' normally led to a 'court' or courtyard? Not me! A few steps from Gladstone's Land was Lady Stair's Close that did indeed lead into a small courtyard.

In the courtyard was the Writers' Museum which was the perfect place for fans of Scotland's best scribes, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Sir Robert Louis Stevenson. When Burns moved to Edinburgh in 1786, he lived in this neighborhood.

Another close led to Riddle's Court which, at the end of the 19th century, housed 250 people in this small area. It was amazing to learn that no city in Europe was as densely populated or as dirty! Without modern hygiene, the city was described as a living hell of smoke, noise, and stench with the ever-present threat of fire, collapse, and disease. Imagine bedpans being emptied out onto the streets below - doesn't it just give you the shivers?

It's so hard to fathom forty thousand people were crammed into just a few blocks from this close to a pub we'd reach in just minutes. 

Deacon Brodie's Tavern on the High Street portion of the Royal Mile was infamous as the home of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because Brodie was a community stalwart during the day and a burglar by night! It epitomized Edinburgh's split personality in the 1700s: a city that was home to great philosophers and scientists who contributed to the Enlightenment on the one hand, yet also a city that was so filthy it became known as Auld Reekie.

As we looked left from the tavern, we saw the Bank of Scotland which had practiced modern capitalist financing since 1695. After the financial crisis of 2008, the Lloyds Banking Group swallowed up the Bank. 

Back across from the tavern was a statue of hometown boy David Hume (1711-1776), one of the most influential thinkers in all of Western philosophy and a towering figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. 

On the opposite corner was a brass 'H' in the pavement which marked the site of the last public execution n the city in 1864. Deacon Brodie was himself hung here in 1788, ironically on a gallows whose design he'd helped to improve!

All along the Royal Mile, we'd seen wellheads like this one from 1835 which provided water for the citizens before buildings had plumbing.

The Heart of Midlothian indicated the location of Edinburgh's 15th century city building and jail. I read that locals like to still spit on the heart as this area was where criminals were hung, traitors decapitated and witches burned.

The flagship church of the Church of Scotland or the Mother Church of Presbyterianism was St. Giles Cathedral. A church had occupied this location since 854 but the cathedral was mostly built from the 15th to the 19th centuries. When John Knox, the reformer, preached here in the mid-16th century, his sermons helped change once Catholic Edinburgh into a mainstay of Protestantism. We would have loved to have seen the cathedral then as it was full of monuments, plaques, statues, and windows dedicated to the country's greatest people but it had closed unexpectedly early that day.

The grand building across from the cathedral was the Old Parliament House where kings had ruled a rubber-stamped parliament of nobles and bishops since the 13th century. After the Protestant Reformation promoted democracy, the parliament achieved real power and became the home of elected officials until 1707. In the Act of Union that year, Scotland joined what is now known as the United Kingdom and gave up its right of self-rule. 

Knox was buried under what has since become parking space #23 across from the cathedral!

Every Scottish burgh or town licensed by the king to trade would have had three features: a 'tollbooth' or Town Hall with a courthouse, jail, and meeting room; a 'tron' or official weighing scale; and a 'mercat' or market cross. Just behind the cathedral was this mercat cross with its slender column decorated with a unicorn holding the Scottish flag. Since the 14th century, royal proclamations had been read here. A town crier in 1952 heralded the news that three days earlier Britain had a new queen. The delay was due because traditionally that would have been the length of time for a horse to reach Edinburgh from London.

This was our last view of the Royal Mile as we were back to where we'd started our walk that morning before detouring to New Town and the Scottish National Gallery!

Next post: A visit to St. Giles Cathedral after all the next day and the Scottish Portrait Gallery.

This March, Steven and I embarked on what we had hoped would be a four-month-long adventure through much of Asia and the Middle East. Of course, we got sidelined after just two weeks after visiting Sri Lanka and a small part of southern India because of the coronavirus. Here's a link to my most recent post, a trip to the dazzling UNESCO Buddhist cave temples in Dambulla, Sri Lanka:
https://bergersadventures8.blogspot.com/2020/05/39-dambullas-dazzling-unesco-cave.html

Posted on May 29th, 2020, from our home in Denver. Steven and I hope and pray that you are safe and healthy in these troubled times.