“Porta a Edimburgo”

The subject

A Georgian Door in Edinburgh

Edinburgh’s New Town is a city of doors — tall, panelled, crowned with a fanlight and an old iron lamp — and this drawing is a portrait of one of them, dignified and a little severe in grey.

When the medieval Old Town grew impossibly crowded, the eighteenth century laid out a New Town below it: broad Georgian terraces of dressed stone, each house announced by a grand doorway. The semicircular ’fanlight’ over the door let daylight into the hall; many still carry their original lamp-holders.

I drew one straight on — the door recessed in its stone surround, the fanlight above, the steps below — the way you meet it simply walking the street.

The restraint of the architecture asked for the restraint of a single grey.

Ink for the panels, the fanlight and the stonework; a cool grey wash for the shadow in the doorway and the weather on the stone.

It is a small subject on purpose — the quiet, formal face a northern city turns to the street.

See also · Payne’s Grey Hallstatt sul lago · Ciminiera vittoriana · Faro di Beachy Head