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Rosemount Buildings

Artist: Michie, David Alan Redpath, Professor, OBE RSA RGI FRSA(Scot) · 1928-2015

Rosemount Buildings

There is a preparatory sketch in blue biro in Michie Sketchbook [temporary number] 117 (2021.0075) in RSA Collections. The RSA Collections also holds…

There is a preparatory sketch in blue biro in Michie Sketchbook [temporary number] 117 (2021.0075) in RSA Collections. The RSA Collections also holds a 35 mm col slide of the work from Michie’s Bequest which is dated 1963 and titled by the artist Tenement Buildings, Edinburgh and another two undated but titled Old Houses at Gardener’s Crescent. The work appears in a handwritten list by the artist of his artworks in chronological order (no.43) as Old Houses, Gardener’s Crescent, and is believed to be the work Old Buildings, Edinburgh, exhibited by him a the 1964 RSA Annual and Festival Exhibitions.

The building depicted is a polychrome-brick three-storeyed block of industrial housing at 1-21 Gardener’s Crescent, Rosemount, Edinburgh completed in 1860 to the design of William Lambie Moffat (1807-82), built around a quadrangle with corner towers. (vide: https://canmore.org.uk/site/150957/edinburgh-gardners-crescent-1-21-rosemount-buildings?display=image). The block is briefly mentioned in Pevsner’s The Buildings of Scotland; Edinburgh [Gifford, John; McWilliam, Colin and Walker, David], Penguin Books, 1984, pp.265-266; “Rosemount Buildings, 1859, is a three-storey quadrangle of red and yellow brick containing ninety-six flats. Fire-proof stair-towers at the corners. Habilitation by Roland Wedgewood Associates, 1980, the herringbone metal balconies a puzzling new feature.”

© Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture