A Member of the Edinburgh Old Town Guard

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

43636

Title

A Member of the Edinburgh Old Town Guard

Description

Oil on canvas painting showing the Town Guard of Edinburgh. The unit on duty stands to attention with their muskets and bayonets. A sergeant stands in front of them with his sergeant's halberd talking to a short drummer with his drum. To the right of the painting is the Captain of the Guard, with captain's staff. The scene is outside the Tolbooth of Edinburgh (demolished 1817) looking up the Royal Mile.

Artist / maker

Lizars, William Home

Date

1800

Size

38.7 x 55.9cm

Type

Oil painting

Location

City Art Centre

Accession number

CAC1978/208

Lizars was working after the Town Guard had been disbanded in 1817. The Town Guard had never been popular with the people of Edinburgh, sadly known for bad behaviour, violence, drunkeness and corruption. Poets and authors such as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Fergusson had done much to further destroy their reputation, casting them as the "black banditti" and the feared but incompetent arm of the law.

By the time Lizars was recreating this scene, the Town Guard had become part of the legends of Edinburgh's Old Town. Younger members had moved on, leaving the guard to join the new, better funded and better organised police force which had been founded in 1805. In this painting we see Lizars reflecting the image of the Town Guard of the time as a bumbling and absurd. The portly captain to the right is probably a reference to Captain James Burnet, the last Captain of the Town Guard, who was known for his great size. Behind the Guard looms the formidable Tolbooth, Edinburgh's grim prison until it was torn down in 1817, the same year the Town Guard was dissolved.

While the painting is full of humour and caricature, at its heart are a number of powerful symbols of authority and law which kept the streets of Edinburgh relatively safe for over a century.

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Related subjects

Crime and punishment > Crime and punishment facilities > Prisons

Government > Local > Police stations

Government > Local > Tolbooths

Places > Edinburgh Landmarks > High Street

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