A5 (14.8 x 21 cm) single postcard featuring Edinburgh from Calton Hill by Joseph Mallord William Turner, part of the National Galleries of Scotland Collection.
Turner produced three views of Edinburgh for Sir Walter Scott’s Provincial Antiquities. Here he focuses on the construction of Regent Bridge and Waterloo Place, at the foot of Calton Hill.
This ambitious project to bridge the deep ravine at Low Calton resulted from a need to create a route to the large new city jail, shown in the left foreground. The silhouettes of the Castle, St Giles’s Cathedral and the Tron Church are shown on the horizon, with the Pentland Hills in the distance beyond.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851), known as J. M. W. Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker, and watercolourist, known for his brilliant, expressive colourisation, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings.
