A Tree in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh

Coburn made this photograph as part of a project illustrating Robert Louis Stevenson’s Edinburgh Picturesque Notes. He wrote of this image: “This vision of a mouldering churchyard full of tombs is not in the least gloomy or depressing. It has a kind of charm, a serene beauty of its own which lifts it out of the commonplace, and gives it a stability and character which some ancient localities seem to acquire with time and association, as difficult to explain as the mysteries of love and death and the great human emotions, but there to be discovered by the visionaries of future generations who follow in the footsteps of discerning Stevenson.”