RSA Scottish Art
Surgeons’ Hall, Nicolson Street, Edinburgh
 | Artist: William Henry Playfair |
| Title: Surgeons’ Hall, Nicolson Street, Edinburgh | |
| Year: c. 1829-32 | |
| Medium: pencil & wash on paper | |
| Dimensions: | |
| Suggested topic: | |
| Source: RSA Diploma Collection | |
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| Open print version of this work | |
| Description: William Henry Playfair was responsible for designing many of Edinburgh's important buildings, such as the Royal Scottish Academy and the National Gallery of Scotland (1854, in a classical style) and Donaldson's School for the Deaf (1851, in Jacobean style).Surgeons Hall, Edinburgh demonstrates Playfair's fine understanding of classical architecture with its columns, Ionic capitals (the curly parts above the column) and pediment (the triangular frieze under the roof). This impression of the building's facade adequately demonstrates its imposing nature. The entrance, the part which people will use and pay most attention to, is virtually hidden behind a column and is tiny in proportion to the massive superstructure of the facade. This view of the form of the buildings is not intended to make it look inviting, but to emphasise its authoritative power.The clean lines of the drawing demonstrate his attention to fine detail. Playfair believed that “nothing good in Architecture can be effected without a monstrous expenditure of patience and India Rubber”. This kind of drawing would nowadays be produced on a computer using a 3D modelling programme, and indeed this drawing actually resembles a digital wireframe model showing the 3D structure of a building. The gentle watercolour wash indicates the soft colour and subtle variations of the blond sandstone, as well as indicating some pale shadow to define the form.This composition has been technically drawn using single point perspective, where the vanishing point appears to be directly behind the object shown.The vanishing point is the place where all the lines of a drawing converge (imagine a long straight road running into the distance; the vanishing point is the point where the road's edges converge on the horizon). Playfair has not shown this building exactly face on; instead, he has moved the viewpoint just a few feet to the left to show a more interesting angle of the building and to reveal the outline of its sides. | |
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