View of painted boards found in the Cunningham Room, 1985-1986. Digital image of A 33043 CN.

Description View of painted boards found in the Cunningham Room, 1985-1986. Digital image of A 33043 CN.

Date 1986

Catalogue Number SC 774413

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of A 33043 CN

Scope and Content Painted panel from the Cunyngham Room, Prestonfield House, No 71 Priestfield Road, Edinburgh This shows a painted wooden panel, probably of 18th-century date, which was once part of the wall of a dressing room. The design features a stylised tree painted in dark green with a black outline and red flowers. The rest of the wall was covered in similar Chinoiserie (oriental-style decoration adapted to appeal to the European market) motifs of flowers, pagodas and birds. The paintings were covered up when the room was converted into bathrooms for the hotel. The scattered designs on this panel and the wall it once fitted into suggest the repeated motifs of a hand-painted wallpaper or textile, which would have been extremely expensive at the time. The designs were probably painted by a local craftsman emulating these exotic imported wall-coverings in simple paint on board. Prestonfield House was rebuilt for Sir James Dick in 1687 by the architect Sir William Bruce (c.1630-1710) after being burnt down during a student riot in 1681. A single-storeyed extension was added in c.1830, and in 1890 architects MacGibbon & Ross added a bathroom extension. Within the grounds is an unusual round stable block built in 1816 to designs by James Gillespie Graham (1777-1855). The house has been run as a hotel since 1959. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Medium Colour negative

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/774413

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap