A North West View of the Ruins of the Castle of Tantallon from An Original Collection of Scottish Views

This comic take on tourists exploring the ruins of Tantallon Castle and the volcanic plug of the Bass Rock belongs to a series depicting Scottish antiquities and natural wonders by the Scoto-Dutch soldier and traveller John Gabriel Stedman. Here the artist pokes fun at a common pictorial motif by including two young local women cast as incongruous classical nudes on the sands below the cliff-top fortress. To judge by their careful framing, inscription and journal references, Stedman’s drawings were intended to illustrate a lost (or never realised) tour account.