Dryburgh Abbey – Tomb of Sir Walter Scott

George Washington Wilson, like many early photographers, was trained as a painter and transferred his visual skills to the new medium. He became one of most innovative and prolific artists producing stereographs in the United Kingdom in the 1860s. He photographed buildings both in ruin or actively used, such as Westminster Cathedral with its grand nave and intricate detailing. Wilson was a master at communicating complex architectural spaces and often utilized contrasts of light and shade and prominent visual elements to make the illusion of depth more successful. "Dryburgh Abbey—Tomb of Sir Walter Scott," for example, uses a dark arch and diagonal path in the foreground to guide the viewer’s eye and bridge the divide between three-dimensional and two-dimensional architectural space.