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Our header shows a building at the head of West Bow. The full painting appears below, but smaller, and it's a shame to lose the impact of such a magnificent presence even in its years of gathering decay. So this slice is for those who like it as much as we do!
This page began as coverage for Scotland, but the wealth of images for Edinburgh means that the page now takes the city for its own. A page for Southern Scotland has begun and features Roslin. More subjects will be added as we receive material for them. The link is at the bottom of this page.
We don't have a history of Louise Rayner's visits to Edinburgh, but we do have fragments of evidence. Louise must have been up to the Edinburgh/Roslin area in the Autumn of 1860/Spring of 1861 as she exhibited a painting at the Royal Society of British Artists (Suffolk Street) in 1866 titled Roslin Chapel - The last view painted on the spot previous to its restoration. As this major restoration began in 1861 and was completed with a re-dedication in 1862, it gives us a clear marker. Louise also exhibited The house of John Knox the Reformer, Edinburgh at the Royal Academy in 1862, probably from sketches made during the same Scottish visit. Her brother Richard visited Roslin in 1863, and whilst not certain, it's quite likely she went as well. We also know of at least two paintings dated 1867; and there is a recorded joint visit by Richard, Louise and their sister Margaret to Edinburgh, Roslin, and other locations in 1877. Finally (for the present), Louise submitted a pencil sketch to The Queen magazine and painted a virtually identical painting called Foot of West Bow Edinburgh as rebuilt (see below). As the sketch was published in 1886 - and we would guess it was a new work then - it points to a visit circa 1885/6. We'll add to this note as more information surfaces.
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EDINBURGH - THE ROYAL MILE
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THE MAP
The map shows part of central Edinburgh, shortly before the joint art expedition of Louise, Margaret and Richard Rayner in 1877. The red line is the Royal Mile, which ran from the Castle down the Esplanade into Castle Hill, then The Lawnmarket, High Street, The Canongate, and thus to Holyrood, and it marks the area covered by this section. As the page develops we'll indicate the paintings that we know of.
One thing to note on the map is that Johnston Terrace (left edge) was built as the New Western Approach (to the castle) around 1830 and it chopped into the upper part of the West Bow (shown as a dotted line). Later maps only name the lower half of West Bow, which merged into the new Victoria Street. The upper part became anonymous on maps but had not been demolished, so the Head of West Bow was still at the top of the old road where it met Lawnmarket when Louise came to paint it in 1877.
ORDER OF PRESENTATION
It was our intention to progress down the Royal Mile from the Castle to the Royal Palace, and we may do that in the future. But the images to hand are more commonly looking uphill, so we accepted the majority vote! At present we have no images of the Holyrood end of the route. Blue titles in the text below are the viewer's standpoint.
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We begin with The Canongate Tolbooth looking up the Royal Mile towards the castle from Holyrood Palace and we are about halfway up Canongate itself. Holyrood Palace is about a quarter of a mile behind us. In the middle distance ahead, the long flash of light down the buildings and across the road is where St. Mary's Street arrives from the left to mark the end of Canongate and the beginning of High Street. Far ahead in the distance is Tron Kirk on High Street at its junction with South Bridge.
The impressive building to our right is the four-storey Tolbooth, built in 1591 by Sir Lewis Bellenden of Auchintoul for what was then the independent burgh of Canongate, outside the city walls (the Edinburgh Tolbooth was in Parliament Square). Canongate Tolbooth is possibly the oldest surviving building on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, and wasn't just a roadside tax building. The building to the right of it here in the painting is the Council chamber block, and about the same age. The two buildings provided council administration, a jail, and a hall for council meetings and for court sessions where justice could range from fines to beheading.
The amazing clock suspended outside the building is an 1820 replacement for a 17th century clock, and the front of the building had extensive restoration in 1879. But we don't have a date for the painting so we don't know if this was done before or after Louise painted it. The Tolbooth is now a museum of the history of Edinburgh's people. The painting was sold at the Scottish Sale auction in October 2002 for £15,535.
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The Royal Mile Edinburgh from the bottom of High Street, showing Tron Kirk in the High Street and St Giles's beyond it in Lawnmarket. Kirk is the Scottish equivalent of church, in effect using a hard 'ch'. Both come from Old Norse "kirkja" or Old English "cirice".
Tron Kirk had a short squat steeple until a fire in 1824. This more elegant spire replaced it in the rebuild. The view looks westwards up the road towards the castle, though it isn't visible yet.
This painting sold for £26,450 in the Scottish Sale of 1999. |
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Our next view is almost adjacent to the one above in High Street - as if we had moved on a few yards, then turned around to look back. Although it's a little hard to match some aspects of the architecture between the two paintings, this is what you would have seen circa 1877. The small stone building seen in the road in both paintings is the neighbourhood water supply.
However, the main subject here is John Knox's house - Royal Mile.
John Knox (1510-1572) was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest but became influenced by the movement for reform. Through a series of events, this led to him being exiled to England where he worked in the Protestant church for a time. When Mary Tudor reached the throne and strenuously tried to convert England back to Catholicism, he felt compelled to leave England and eventually he returned home to lead the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, fighting for the four binding covenants that they all believed in: the King with God; the King with the people; the people towards the King; and the people with God. He thus became and remains an important figure in Scottish history and his house is preserved in his memory.
One of the pioneering photographers in Edinburgh, James Montgomery, took a calotype photograph of this building, probably not later than about 1855 as the process was superceded and dying out by then. It shows the ground |
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floor shop a little more clearly - and with whitewashed walls. It also shows the upper of the two windows directly above the water supply in Louise's painting as completely hidden by cement or wood cladding. The photo is on page 83 of his album in the National Library of Scotland here.
John Knox's house, Edinburgh shows a little more of the street, including the jutting house and steps at right. It also shows two windows blanked, which may be for adverts or just a regular defence against evening sun. It's hard to tell if the shop is whitewashed, but quite apparent are the roofline and other changes made by Louise herself. Neither painting is entirely accurate, but the smaller one is closer. |
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We are viewing Lawnmarket in the foreground of this photograph that Louise had taken of one of her paintings, An Edinburgh Wynd, and market may explain its somewhat chaotic look. Lawnmarket was once called the land market and sold land produce here on market days. Later it was associated with linen sales. Note how the footpaths on either side are well stepped up from the thoroughfare/market area. In the friendly rivalry that exists between Scotland's two major cities, Glaswegians have sometimes been known to refer to Edinburgh people as "dainty folk", but we don't think the stepping is for daintiness. In bad weather - if that street was as steep as it looks - it might well have seen torrents of rain running down it. However, Louise is rather exaggerating the street's condition for effect. Photos show that a fair road and proper pavements were in place by this date.
It's quite likely that the rooms in these buildings were rented individually - possibly to more than one family, and that left only one place to put the washing where it might not get stolen: out of the window. Hence the forest of poles at every level along the buildings.
If we look up the left side of Lawnmarket, the final building in the row has the 3 peaks of Head of West Bow, which we'll be coming to in a moment. Beyond that point we are into Castle Hill (now Castlehill). The impressive collection of spires and other things conical there belongs to Tolbooth Kirk - or more formally Tolbooth Highland St John's Church. It's no longer a church in the 21st century but is now known as The Hub, the home of the Edinburgh International Festival society. |
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At left we have Old Houses - Head of The West Bow. Where we are standing the foot of Castlehill comes from behind us to meet the top of Lawnmarket on the left side of our subject (whose three small gables we noted on the painting above). The narrow road curving down at right is the upper segment of West Bow, but this is now a branch off the very top of the relatively new and wider Johnston Terrace, which  passes in front of the entrance to St John's Free Church and exits Louise's canvas to drop away round the southern flank of the castle.
It's interesting how Louise's painting bustles with life around a building full of character, whereas photos of this and other buildings from the area and period look duller, with things like washing absent. In fairness, though, that might be caused by taking photos early on a Sunday morning with long exposures wanting the minimum of moving people, horses, dogs, carts, etc., to ghost their passage across the image. And the washing would be gone out of respect for the Sabbath.
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Thomas Neilson started a second-hand bookshop here in 1798 and soon began publishing his own cheap editions and reprints of mainly religious texts. He changed his name to Thomas Nelson in 1818, and made West Bow part of their book imprint, as seen here. The business left West Bow in 1839 and Thomas Nelson & Sons went on to grow into Scotland's biggest publisher, though the firm later became American and Canadian. At one time the building was numbered 7 West Bow; at another it carried a large 340 above the shop level where the three boards are. It carried other ownerships after Nelson, one being lettered "Provisions William Low Groceries" in capitals, while the painting here says "A SWORD WOOLLEN & RAG STORE" or something close to that. An identical copy of this painting except for darker colouring is titled The High Street from the West Bow, Edinburgh.
An engraving of 1829 in Modern Athens (a flattering nickname for Edinburgh, along with the less flattering "Auld Reekie") shows a small stone well-head in the road which would have been just ahead of the man leading the white horse in the painting here. This was clearly another neighbourhood water supply, but of a different design from the one in front of John Knox's house. A second engraving in the Mary Evans Library (dated c.1840 but at least 1846 when St. John's Free Church* was just being completed) shows it rebuilt larger near the rightmost pillar of our main subject and projecting about 16 feet into the road. It was probably moved there during the building of Johnston Terrace. How long it lasted, we don't know, but we haven't seen it photographed**, and we think it was gone well before Louise's earlier visit of around 1862.
(*This church has had several names. **Edinburgh had an active society of photographers from the very moment the Daguerre and Fox Talbot technologies became available in 1838.)
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This superb painting, Head of West Bow, Edinburgh (seen from the top of Johnston Terrace) has character in every brush-touch. Displaying the number '2' and lettered "Barron's Woollen Rag Store", it's the same building as above but a different interpretation of it. In both paintings this face has been slightly narrowed but otherwise the smaller image above is fairly accurate. Here, the same windows, etc., are there, but Louise has moved them around, and the colour scheme, ownership and general disorder are different, suggesting that the painting was done at a different time. Adding support to this is that the fading of the distant buildings on the left side is a relatively uncommon style for Louise, and not matched by any other painting here except the one of John Knox's House above.
Another difference is that this is not a general scene: the building is very definitely the star of this painting. Even the figures in the foreground of the scene are only sufficiently developed to serve their purpose and the ones behind quickly fade to shadows. And the building's features (even the ventilators below the nicely twisted roof ridge) are reset in a far more face-like arrangement with a touch of whimsy. Each row of windows forms a pair of eyes surveying you and the things around you - quite unlike the pattern in the painting before it. Margaret Rayner is the sister usually associated with humour in her paintings. This could be Louise showing that she could do it too.
Old and New Edinburgh, a 6-vol history by James Grant, issued in periodical parts during the 1880s, records that the Head of West Bow was demolished in Spring 1878.
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Although we understand that Louise painted a view of the castle from its close approaches, we don't have a copy of that image. A bend in the road means that the Royal Mile offers no long views of it, so you then have to stand well away from the Royal Mile to get Edinburgh Castle onto canvas.
So here we have one of Louise's views from the short but steep Candlemaker Row to show how the castle dominates the city. The painting is called View of the half moon battery of Edinburgh Castle from Candlemaker Row and the name refers, of course, to the curved gun emplacement at this end of the castle. The road out to the Royal Mile is just to the right of the battery but at a lower level, putting it out of our sight from here. Louise has compressed the scene, bringing the castle forward to heighten its majesty and presence.
A common foreground feature in Louise's paintings is a horse and cart heading towards the viewer, but on this steep hill we see one of her alternatives: two very short, stout women in close company, with baskets on their backs. You will see them again - or women very like them!
We have another painting of this view just below, but the present one gives a clearer view of the bottom of the hill, where the building catching the light appears to be the bottom of West Bow, with the wide Grassmarket sloping downwards away to our left from West Bow - but invisibly from here. The present painting was auctioned by Christie's in November 2006 for £13,200.
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EDINBURGH - SOUTH OF THE ROYAL MILE |
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We're moving away from the Royal Mile to other parts of the city but the map has been
repeated above for quicker reference. We have very few images north of the Royal Mile at present.
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Above: Edinburgh - The Grassmarket, with Half Moon Battery in the distance. A second identical (or very close) painting is titled "Edinburgh The Grassmarket". The view is actually down Candlemaker Row (lower left on our map), which presents a little confusion as The Grassmarket is not in view. It is, however, just out of sight at the very bottom of the hill and off to the left as noted on our darker painting above the map. Before we get that far, we can see a turn off to the right and this is Cowgate which, in short distance out of our sight will pass under George IV Bridge, a street named for the bridge that carried it across Edinburgh's central gorge and up to the Royal Mile. This was the new route that replaced West Bow's difficult southern-side approach to the castle in 1832. George IV Bridge could be directly reached from the top of Candlemaker Row.
At left we see just a segment of The castle from Candlemaker Row. Although the colour may be somewhat different, this is otherwise another painting identical to the one we see above. However, there is more of the street on the left of the canvas, so we've copied that portion of it here for historical interest.
Louise certainly turned out paintings that were very nearly identical, but indistiguishable versions (apart from softer light) suggests that one (probably the bigger one above) was a fading print of part of the other, or that two canvases were painted together, possibly for clients who knew each other and wanted them that way. So far we've only seen this in Edinburgh paintings, so perhaps this is what happened.
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Candlemaker Row got its name from a decree in 1645 when Edinburgh candlemakers were forbidden to have their workshops in the burgh owing to the noxious process and risk of fire. The unpleasantness was caused by the glycerine in the tallow used, which was objectionable enough for other towns to be similarly restrictive, and is why beeswax candles were preferred if you could afford them.
In Edinburgh, candlemakers were granted the use of waste ground near the Society Port in the Flodden Wall (one of the six gateways through Edinburgh's defensive wall built in the 1500s), to the east of Greyfriars churchyard. The left side of the street as we view it thus forms the eastern boundary of the churchyard. The rise of pleasanter lighting alternatives - oil, gas, electricity - eventually devastated the candle trade, but it seems that many of the buildings still survive, and the Candlemakers' Hall was the first renovation project of the Cockburn Conservation Trust, circa 1978.
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Our next image is an unfinished view of the Greyfriars Churches Burying Ground, still awaiting figures to be added. It lies just to the left (west) of Candlemaker Row seen above. One of the interests in the Burying Grounds would be the grave of John Gray, a night watchman in the Edinburgh police force. He was accompanied everywhere he went by his Skye Terrier until John Gray died and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard in 1858. His dog - who came to be known as Greyfriars Bobby - refused to be parted from him and instead kept a vigil by his grave, broken only by the need for food, for 14 years until his own death. People would gather as the time for the 1.00 o'clock lunchtime gun drew near - the one time in the day when he would leave the grave for a meal provided by a local coffee house and bar in Candlemaker Row. Immediately after Bobby's death in 1872, a statue was created in his honour. Bobby could not be buried on consecrated ground next to his master, but was found a space inside the burial walls. The story was still fresh at the time of Louise's visit and probably stirred her interest.
(Margaret was also at work in the Burying Ground, and her "Tombs of the Covenanters" can be seen as a clipping from The Studio on her page. The Covenanters were the reformers referred to in the painting of John Knox's house, further up this page.)
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Above: As noted already, the bottom of Candlemaker Row faces the bottom of West Bow, which was the old way up to the castle. The picture at left, Foot of the West Bow before alteration, shows the old jettied houses near the foot of the West Bow before some of it was demolished and redeveloped to give an easier approach to the castle in 1822. This means that it was gone 10 years before Louise was born, and the painting is therefore a mix of other people's art and engravings and her own speculation.
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The skyline dramatically changes between 1821 and Louise's personal visits, one casualty being the Wey-house. This building is possibly the huge one with the tall chimneys which stood on the Royal Mile at the foot of Castle Hill. It existed at the time of Cromwell's attack on the castle in 1650, and because it so assisted his attack he gave orders for it to be demolished so it could not in turn be used against him. In due time the English left Edinburgh and the Scots decided to rebuild the Wey-House, but it was apparently a much poorer building than the original and was hurriedly demolished when the 1822 widening work got under way.
The second picture above is one of a pair sometimes referred to as Street scenes in Edinburgh(2), but more properly known as Houses in the West Bow. It appears to be just around the corner from the first view, and shows how narrow and twisty the road used to be at that point, so this is also from that pre-widening period. However it's hard to match the left-side architecture, so unless Louise was editing the scene to pull interesting things together, it's possible that the view is actually further along the road.
Here at left we have a view of Foot of the West Bow before alteration (2). Whilst it is similar to the one already seen (above left), it does have points of interest. It is closer in to the same area as before; we thus get a closer look at the building frontages and we can see that Louise has indeed swapped the roofs around somewhat for her paintings. We also get a rather better view of the building at the top of the hill with its multiple floors - the one we think is the Wey-house.
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In Foot of the West Bow Edinburgh as rebuilt (right) we now see the road after widening, showing a dramatic change along the left side in the foreground and behind; the right side also shows changes but we don't know the extent to which it was affected. The spire is almost certainly Tolbooth Highland St John's Church, built on the Royal Mile at the bottom of Castle Hill, 1842-4, and probably on the site of the Wey-house.
At right we see a public water supply which the widening may have facilitated. The pumphouses seem to be to individual designs, rather than built to a standard pattern.
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The painting sold for £11,750 in the Scottish Sale of November 2001. A practically identical copy of this painting exists, called The Grass Market, Edinburgh. The principal difference is that the buildings are painted darker, but there are details that differ as well, such as the absence (as in the pencil sketch) of the boy and stick, right foreground, and in the arrangement of the figures by the pump - all enough for each client to have the same painting and yet a unique version. But all we actually see of the Grassmarket (a wide market road coming up from our left) is the shop facing us and the road in the foreground.
The pencil sketch above appeared in The Queen magazine on 25 September 1886. We cannot say whether it is a late product from the 1877 visit or new study from a subsequent visit, but the magazine would usually report new work. As the painting is identical in all but minor details, it was probably produced about the same time as the sketch. The write-up below (retyped for legibility) declares how well-regarded Louise's work was, despite her being a woman in what was still very much a man's world - as the last sentence gently reminds us.
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The painting at left, often seen paired with one of the narrow images above and referred to as Streetscenes in Edinburgh(1) is actually called Libberton's Wynd and John Dowie's Tavern to right. Again, it's one of Louise's retrospective paintings: she could never have seen this view (to paint) because the street was demolished in 1834 (2 years after she was born) in the course of building the George IV Bridge.
Below we have Musicians at the gate from St John's Street to Canongate which shows St John's Street at the Gateway (through the building) on to Canongate from the south side. The buildings are all tenements which were very common in Scotland and equate to the modern block of apartments (with all the variety that that implies). If the main subject shows the ones on the east side of St John's Street, then they were begun in 1767 as a development by the Earl of Hopetoun, and for many years were high status buildings with lords and earls in residence before other developments caused such people to move out and be replaced by more ordinary folk. However, it's possible they were on the west side, and we don't have information on those.
Louise calls this a courtyard, but the inhabitants could well have called it a close (pronounced as in "that came close to me"). In Scotland, a wynd (rhymes with kind) is a road that goes somewhere, and a close is usually a passage of some sort but can also be a walled yard or a dead-end that might be locked at night. The yard might also contain communal washhouses, shared on a rota by the various tenants. The focus of the picture here is the two street musicians to the left, gathering a small crowd of appreciative listeners in the hope of collecting a few pence. In the middle a small girl stands by a remarkably shiny pail. To the right we see more of the omnipresent ladies with their baskets. It's possible that some such women are laundry women, providing service for people (e.g. single men) who had no time to do their own; but many - especially those with the torpedo-shaped baskets - will probably be fishwives selling fish from Port of Leith and its immediate neighbour, Newhaven.
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EDINBURGH - NORTH OF THE ROYAL MILE
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Round towers with conical roofs were once very typical Scottish architecture, often used for stairways as in the gate from St. John's Street to Canongate above, and not necessarily confined to high streets. In Edinburgh they could be found in minor streets and closes, so Louise sought out these and other Scottish characteristics in places such as the slopes off the side of the Royal Mile. One of her locations was Warriston's Close, which still exists but can be hard to find on a map. Its main feature today is a long, wide stone stairway that starts opposite St. Giles in the High Street (i.e. from the north side of the street) beginning there as Writers Close, before dropping to reach the foot of Cockburn Street. It makes for good moody night photos after rainfall even now. But the area is more complex than just the steps, and we haven't seen Louise's painting, so we don't know its precise subject.
The area is now a tourist attraction following the discovery of old 17th and 18th century streets below the current ones.
The similarly named Warrender's Close, right, may have disappeared now (the names of these closes seem to have been bestowed by the owners of the land they stood on - so when ownership changed, the close name might do so as well). It used to feed on to High Street from the same side as Warriston's Close, but just a little bit further up the street near today's 373 High Street. It is possibly a former name for Advocates Close or Byer's Close, but it may have gone entirely. Advocates Close is less likely as the name was long-lived, and Louise also did a painting of that - but it must be said that there is a strong resemblance between this image and a view up the steps of Advocates Close towards the High Street (see Advocates Close, Edinphoto.org.uk). Our image is a monochrome from a Sotheby's catalogue for 1993 when the pre-sale estimate was £3000 to £4000, but the highest offer may have been only £1700.
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Two views from the northern edge of Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth. At right we have Newhaven, Edinburgh, from one of the photos Louise had taken of her paintings. No sign of the port itself here, but a workaday view showing two women passing through the houses on their way to the city to sell recently caught fish.
Below, we have a view of Port of Leith, Edinburgh, taken from a Christies catalogue of 1991. In that year it was hoped to attract bids of around £2000 to £4000, but we don't know the outcome. We don't know Port of Leith, so we would only guess that the drum-shaped building was the port offices. The tide is clearly out, and so many people out in the mud has to suggest they were seeking stranded fish and any other edible or valuable items left behind by the receding waters. |
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A few miles south of Edinburgh is the village of Roslin, famous for its chapel.
Use this link to go there: Louise in Southern Scotland
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EDINBURGH PAINTINGS THAT WE KNOW OF BUT MAY NOT HAVE SEEN:
In some cases these will be slight variants of similar scenes.
Advocates Close, Edinburgh
Ancient close, Canongate, Edinburgh [Royal Academy 1867]
The Canongate Tollbooth looking up the Royal Mile towards the Castle [variant]
Children playing in Graveyard, Edinburgh Castle behind [Greyfriars?]
Edinburgh
Edinburgh city of dreams [thought to be a variant of a picture above]
Edinburgh Street Scene with numerous figures in a Courtyard [possibly as below]
Figures in an Edinburgh Courtyard [possibly a copy of Musicians at the gate, above]
Foot of the West Bow, Edinburgh
Heriot's hospital from Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh
The High Street from the West Bow, Edinburgh
The house of John Knox, the Reformer, Edinburgh [RA 1862]
John Knox's house, High Street, Edinburgh
Old Houses - Head of West Bow
The Old Town/Near the Grassmarket Edinburgh [pair?]
Reid's Close, Canongate, Edinburgh
The Royal Mile, Edinburgh [variant?]
Warriston's Close, Edinburgh
West Bow, Edinburgh
White Horse Close, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1867
Roslin
Roslin Chapel [interior] (oil) [before 1877]
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Harry Drummond, March 2012.
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Please take note: we claim no art expertise, and in no way do we offer provenance for any paintings. What
you see here was compiled out of interest in Louise Rayner's paintings and those by her family, but is based on sometimes
very fragmentary evidence. As such, it is inevitable that there will be errors, though we naturally hope to reduce these
over time.
We would gratefully receive any information or corrections that will help us to fill the gaps and resolve
unproved links - for example confirmation of dates of birth, death, etc., and details of other addresses the family lived
at (and roughly when). Images of any of the family's paintings would also be very welcome. Thank you!
Copyright © 2012 DudleyMall.
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