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John Blair's Edinburgh Views

John Blair's Edinburgh Views
John Blair's Edinburgh Views
From the title cover sleeve:
"Edina! Scotia's darling seat!
All hail thy palaces and towers,
Where once beneath a monarch's feet,
Sat legislations sov'reign powers!"

by Robert Burns

Atmospheric scenes of late 19th century Edinburgh landmarks and landscapes from watercolour paintings by artist John Blair.

The images are taken from a volume of loose lithographic prints dated 1892 which were printed in Paris and published by Aitken Dott of Castle Street. Many of the pictures contain moonlight or fading light and evocative weather conditions. The views are scenes of Edinburgh's famous streets populated with typical residents of the time or picture postcard vistas looking from different geographic points towards the city's famous skyline.

There is one picture however, which seems to sit apart from the rest. It is a view of the Scott Monument looking east along Princes Street. The street characters seem in this view more defined and there are three men walking in a line towards the viewer each wearing sandwich board advertisements. On further inspection, the boards display signs promoting a Castle Street exhibition of watercolours by John Blair, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the artist himself and his publishers.

The Castle Street exhibition was reported in The Berwickshire News on 24 May 1892:

"A BORDERER’S SUCCESS IN EDINBURGH
At present a very pleasing exhibition of pictures is open in Messrs Aitken Dott and Sons’ Gallery in Castle street, Edinburgh. It consists of a large number of water colour paintings of the most interesting bits of Edinburgh and Midlothian. These are entirely the work of Mr John Blair, Edinburgh, one of our rising artists, who is a native of this district, and much of his work by “Tweed’s silver stream” has helped to make him famous.

Few in the profession are so versatile, for Mr Blair seems equally at home in landscape or portraiture in oil or water colour work, while it will be remembered how much his beautiful pen-and-ink drawings enhanced the value of Mr Muirhead’s work on “The Birds of Berwickshire.” Thirteen of the best of the pictures which are being exhibited as above are to be reproduced by the Goupil process in Paris, and are to be published in a volume which will no doubt prove an interesting and valuable contribution to the literature of Edinburgh.

The following very well describes the pictures: - “The exhibition is well worth a visit, for Mr Blair’s work is really most successful; a labour of love, its results are as valuable from the purely artistic as from the historical point of view; and the care which he has taken to select typical and striking points of view renders the value of the collection to the future historian of Edinburgh very great. Apart from this, Mr Blair has a free and poetic touch; the fresh breezy effect that he has succeeded in giving to his drawing must be seen to be appreciated. Specially worthy of note is the admirable picture of the landscape seen under a brooding thunderstorm from the Braid Hills, where the treatment of the clouds shows at once insight and execution of a high order. In a different way the moonlit sketch of the gaslit Old Town from Princes street, and the Christmas Eve view of St Giles, with its characteristic figures are equally excellent. Mr Blair is greatly in sympathy with atmospheric conditions; the sunlight glowing through his Roslin Glen and the glistening wet of his rainy day in George street are very successful. And he has fully caught the spirit of Edinburgh; while it lasts, his show will be one of the sights of the town."

Berwickshire News article found via the British Newspaper Archive.