A View of Tantallon Castle and the Bass Rock

After the 1808 publication of Scott’s epic historical romance Marmion, in which Tantallon is a location for several dramatic episodes, few travellers would bypass the historic cliff-top fortress. Before long, depictions of the fortress ruins, with turbulent sea and skies and narratives of maritime disaster and peril, shot through with the historical resonances of ‘Scottland’, would become a familiar sight in exhibition rooms across Britain. Nasmyth alone exhibited several such views between 1826 and 1829.