Holt, Edward P.

About the artist

Name

Holt, Edward P.

Biography

Edward Holt's birth date is unknown, but he died on 21st September 1892 in the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh after being knocked down in Joppa, by a cab on his return from Musselburgh races.

There is some uncertainty over Holt's name. Sometimes he is referred to as Edward and at other times as Edmund, and he was also more commonly known as Ned. He had a varied career, starting as an apprentice baker, then an actor, followed by a curator of a booth exhibiting curios in the Grassmarket and finally as a salesman in a gentlemen's outfitters in the Netherbow.

His paintings are not renowned for their artistic skill or subtlety. It has often been claimed that he produced the majority of his many sketches in payment for the price of a drink. This explains why at one time, so many of his portraits were to be found hanging on the walls of various Old Town hostelries. The value of the paintings lies in the visual record they provide of the characters' lives, now faded by time and memory, but which once brightened up the dark closes and wynds of Edinburgh's Old Town.

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