Tearoom with a view: Artist’s vibrant vision added a splash of colour to Edinburgh in troubled times
Bright art was a reaction to the monochrome years of wartime
It was the 1920s and the black cloud of the First World War continued to linger over a planet that felt like it was drawn in monochrome.
In Edinburgh, for those who knew where to look, the darkness was lifted by a burst of colour so vividly bright and unexpected, it is still of significance a century later.
Behind the facade of a traditional tearoom in the city centre was the extraordinary canvas of local artist Robert Burns, who was given free rein to design and decorate every part of the business, down to the smallest detail.
Overlooking the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen seated at the starched white tablecloths of Crawford’s Tearooms were paintings of fantastic colour depicting everything from Greek goddesses to the Spanish Armada.
“The colours really hit you – how bright and loud these tearooms must have been. It’s weird to think respectable ladies would be meeting friends for tea and cake and these huge, colourful paintings of nudes and animals would be there,” said Tricia Allerston, of The National Galleries of Scotland.
One of Burns’ paintings, The Hunt, will be the centrepiece of a display celebrating Scotland’s art which opens at the National on Saturday.
Tricia, who is co-director of the project, explained the significance of the oil on canvas painting.
She said: “It’s one of the biggest in our displays – two metres square when framed. It’s very striking, not the type of image people expect to see here. It depicts a jungle, the background is gold and orange, and there are three naked figures – goddesses – again, unusual in Scottish art. It shows nymphs running through the forest, with monkeys, a type of magpie and big, beautiful cats. We think Burns had visited Edinburgh Zoo, which was not long open and had a bird aviary. The painting is like a study in movement but not realistic – it’s a fantasy-type world.
“The painting is part of a display we have showing art from the 1920s and I feel it really shouts of a new era of art after a tough time. I think it’s a reaction to the war.”
Burns was born in the capital city in 1869 and studied in London and Paris and travelled around North Africa. He was a lecturer at Edinburgh School of Art and when his good friend in the Crawford family enlisted him to design adjoining tearooms on Princes Street and Hanover Street, he pulled in some of his former students to help him complete the ambitious work.
“He was given complete control over the environment – designing everything from the cutlery to the sign hanging outside the door,” Tricia continued. “I don’t think it’s necessarily what people would expect from the 1920s or Princes Street. It was almost like complete escapism – and maybe that’s what people did to escape everyday life.” No artist had been given such freedom in the design of a tearoom since Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow decades before.
“I think there must have been an eye on that,” Tricia said. “Whatever Glasgow can do, we can do too, even if it was about 20 years later. In Edwin Muir’s book, Scottish Journey, he visits
Crawford’s Tearooms and describes being completely wowed by the noise of colour. He writes about how strange these places were in comparison to much of Scotland at that time. He travelled all round the country in the ’30s, during the Depression, and was shocked by this surreal, loud and colourful environment.”
Crawford’s Tearooms were part of the Crawford’s bakery company, which opened in Leith in 1813 and expanded to factories in London and Liverpool, selling biscuits across the country.
Crawford wanted the tearooms to be an “oasis of calm on bustling Princes Street” and it had a prime location at No. 70 on the city’s famous thoroughfare, a four-storey building that remains to this day, and somewhat appropriately, is located directly across from the National Gallery.
The business itself is long gone but Tricia has memories of visiting
the tearooms as a child. She said: “In the ’70s, we would come up on the overnight bus from London – my mum was from Edinburgh – and we would go to Crawford’s on Hanover Street for breakfast as it opened early for the workers. By that time, all the artwork was gone. After the Second World War and into the ’50s, the idea of modernism had changed massively from the art deco jazz age.
“That style was unfashionable by the ’50s and ’60s and a lot of the interiors were painted over or covered over. It was much more plain, functional interiors by the time I visited.
“We would love to hear from any readers who can remember what it looked like, as we have very little visual evidence. It would be a dream for us to receive that information. We are always interested to find out as much as possible in order to understand the artwork.”