North Bridge and Calton Hill
Drawn by William Bell Scott, and engraved and printed by Robert Scott, for W. B. Scott's Scenery of Edinburgh & Midlothian, 1838.

Robert Scott (1777-1841) was one of the best Edinburgh engravers of his time. He had made his reputation with a series of topographical views of Edinburgh published in the 1790s and he regularly engraved plates for the Scots Magazine and other periodicals and books. Among his more ambitious projects was the first large geographical globe to be produced in Scotland, launched in 1804 in association with his father, also Robert Scott (d. 1806), who was a teacher of mathematics and astronomy in Musselburgh, and with the cartographer Robert Kirkwood.

Scott's extensive workshops were in Parliament Square and then Princes Street, and from 1807 he lived with his large family in the house known as 'Hermits and Termits' in St Leonards. From the upper windows of this house, his young son William Bell Scott (1811-1890) recalled seeing the sky lit up by the disastrous fire which destroyed much of Parliament Square in 1824, and with it the premises of both his father and the Kirkwoods.

After training as an artist at the Trustees' Academy, William assisted his father before departing for the south in 1837. This unusual view of the North Bridge from Market Street is one of a series of accomplished scenes of Edinburgh and its surroundings which Robert engraved and printed for his son, who was then struggling to make a living in London. William subsequently became the master of the government school of design in Newcastle. He became a close friend of D. G. Rossetti and was known for his poetry and writings, and for his historical and allegorical painting, notably at Wallington Hall, Northumberland, and at Penkill Castle, Perthshire.

A.D.C.S.

Private collection