This is a study for the statue of the physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, commissioned by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and erected in George Street in 2008. Maxwell, with his dog Toby at his feet, holds a spinning colour top. This device enabled him to analyse the phenomenon of colour perception and in 1861 he produced the first colour photographic image using red, green and blue filters. In the side reliefs the figures of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are depicted as classical philosophers. Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism influenced Einstein, who remarked that his predecessor’s theories were “the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton”.