Trongate in the Olden Time
Medium
Lithograph, plate 18 from the book "The Old Closes & Streets of Glasgow" (1900)
Dimensions
Image: 16.1 × 23.9 cm (6 3/8 × 9 7/16 in.); Paper: 27.7 × 37.8 cm (10 15/16 × 14 15/16 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
234022
Art Historical Context
Step into the bustling heart of historic Glasgow with *Trongate in the Olden Time* (1900), a evocative lithograph by James Craig Annan. This plate 18 from the landmark book *The Old Closes & Streets of Glasgow* captures the vibrant Trongate—a key thoroughfare lined with towering tenements, shops, and pedestrians—before the city's aggressive slum clearances transformed it forever. Produced amid Glasgow's rapid industrialization and urban renewal at the turn of the century, the image preserves a vanishing world of narrow wynds, crowded markets, and architectural grit, offering a poignant snapsho...
About the Artist
James Craig Annan
James Craig Annan (1864–1946) was a Scottish photographer widely regarded as one of the leading figures in the Pictorialist movement that sought to establish photography as a legitimate fine art at the turn of the twentieth century. The son of the distinguished Glasgow photographer Thomas Annan, James Craig grew up immersed in the craft and business of photography, inheriting both his father's tec...