As this small, unwitnessed scene was unfolding on the south side of the city, in his studio a short walk from Scotland Street, Angus Lordie, husband of Domenica Macdonald, owner of the dog known as Cyril, and author of the now out-of-print monograph, Seated: Scottish Portraiture of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, sat before his easel and thought about light. Angus was by nature a cerebral artist – not for him the impulsive emotional gesture, nor the banality of so much conceptual art; he deliberated on his paintings for days, sometimes for weeks, before the first delicately executed charcoal lines or daubs of paint were committed to canvas. This technique he applied to all his paintings, even to the portraits from which he had made his living ever since graduating from the Edinburgh College of Art and taking a lease on a cramped and inexpensive studio on St Stephen Street. Later, when success enabled him to move to less bohemian quarters, Angus would still work slowly, spendi...