White Horse Close

I quite often walk through White Horse Close off Edinburgh’s Royal Mile as it is a convenient short cut coming down from St Andrews House to the Parliament.

Strangely I don’t think I have ever blipped it before though it is not only one of the most photographed spots in Edinbrugh (it even has a little plaque in the pavement suggesting where to stand , which is my extra photo today) but it has also been the subject of photographs from the earliest days of the art form which has of course some of its first and deepest roots in the city.

There is also a fine sketch of it in the National Gallery by Horatio McCulloch ( https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/6379/white-horse-close-edinburgh-1845) which is interesting for another reason . It was done in 1845 but Thomas Keith’s first celebrated photograph of the close dates from from only 5 years later , so it speaks to us clearly of that fascinating time when technical scientific recording starts to run alongside, and of course eventually supersedes , artistic image making.