The Scottish artists who put real life in the frame
WHA’S LIKE US? An irreverent, wry look at Scottish Icons This week: The Glasgow Boys
THIS series has been deficient (readers’ chorus: “We know!”) in featuring Scottish artists among its icons. That’s because I don’t know much about art and I don’t know what I like.
Typically, I do myself a disservice. Of my own volition, I have visited art galleries from time to time. And, on the walls of my house, there hangs a framed poster for an exhibition of works by the Glasgow Boys that took place in Kirkcudbright Town Hall in 2011.
I’ve also visited the town’s Broughton House, sometime home of EA Hornel, who was closely associated with the Boys. And I’m sure I’ve a publication somewhere about these chaps (you’d be amazed how often I’ve had books on a subject of these icons, but haven’t been able to find them).
That said, though writing this introduction before beginning meticulous research, I confidently predict I’ll be using terms I do not understand. Forby that, my authoritative findings follow.
The Glasgow Boys, arguably so called because they were male and coalesced around the controversial city, first came together in the 1880s, with a shared rejection of the dominant sentimentalism of the day, and a predilection for painting outdoors – depicting what they saw rather than, say, idealised Highland scenes and vaguely mawkish muck much loved by the appalling public and the Edinburgh arts establishment, which they viewed as oppressive and reactionary.
Instead of sending their work to the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, they presented it to the more forward-looking Royal Glasgow Institute.
Boys zone
THE Boys are said to represent the beginnings of “modernism” in Scottish painting but, despite that, you can pretty much make out what they were depicting, and most of it wasn’t too blurry.
You say: “Yes, but who were they, ya big-nosed galoot?”
That is a good question, well put
We’re talking about folk like – in order of knighthoods – Sir James Guthrie, Sir John Lavery, George Henry, Edward Arthur
Walton, Arthur
Melville, and the aforementioned Hornel. Being artists, they had no leader, nor toed a party line, but a central figure was Guthrie, an energetic enthusiast who united them through shared ideas. Born in Greenock, the son of an evangelical minister, Guthrie was largely self-taught, but had great natural talent. His best known works include A Funeral Service in the Highlands, painted in 1882 when he was 23; To Pastures New; and A Hind’s Daughter, the latter pair both from 1883. While A
Funeral Service unflinchingly depicts grim, black-clad men standing on snowy ground under dark skies to mourn the death of a child, it seems to my untrained eye still to have something of a Victorian Highland scene painting.
To Pastures New and A Hind’s Daughter are more what we come to expect of the Glasgow Boys, depicting raw but gentler rural scenes among, respectively, geese and cabbages.
Artistic struggle
SO, despite the city name, much of the work was bucolic. Hate to say it, but a nagging feeling I had while researching the Boys concerned how they managed to swan about painting – including trips abroad – during all the poverty and deprivation of the late-19th and early20th centuries in the city. I realise how absurd this is, as if I were standing outside their studio shouting “Get a job!’, but there it is: first-hand, exclusive news from my brain.
The explanation is that, while little filtered down to the proletariat, Glasgow – second city of the Empire – was beginning to coin it in and, thus enriched, the money had to be spent on something.
So, wealthy industrialists supported the new group of artists, as did the prospering middle classes looking for stuff to bung on their walls. More than that, though, and to divert this discussion from its current tawdry direction, enthusiasm and dedication were what catapulted them to success, aided nobly by such folk as the art dealer Alexander Reid.
Their passions were realism and naturalism, much inspired by the Dutch Hague School and the American artist James McNeill Whistler, but especially by Jules Bastien-Lepage, who depicted rural life unglossed.
You may not recall the name, on account of it being French an’ all, but you’ll probably recognise his Pas Mèche. Translated into British as “Nothing Doing”, it depicts a wee boy in big boots. He is out work. His face is expressionless.
Wealthy industrialists supported the new group of artists, as did the prospering middle classes looking for stuff to bung on their walls
Bastian-Lepage painted the everyday, real life of his hometown of Damvillers. In 1883, having visited France the previous year, Guthrie found his Damvillers in Cockburnspath, a small village on the Berwickshire coast, in whose life he immersed himself, painting what he found in fields and allotments, and encouraging his artist friends to come too, forming an effective commune, with every cottage said to have had an artist lodger.
Cabbage patch
THE aforementioned George Henry painted his A Cottar’s Garden at Cockburnspath with, again, cabbages playing a prominent role. The equally aforementioned Lavery was also particularly inspired by Jules Bastien-Lepage.
Lavery had met Guthrie and the other Boys in the Bath Street studio of William York Macgregor where they worked in a collective spirit, exchanging ideas, experimenting and offering mutual critiques. In 1881, Lavery was training in Paris, particularly outdoors, and then stayed at the artists’ colony at Grez-surLoing, producing remarkable paintings of local scenes.
Edward Arthur Walton’s scenes of Ceres in Fife show the influence of French realism, too, though we should record that Japanese print, and the exotic colours of Spain and North Africa, also inspired the likes of Henry, Hornel and Melville.
We should also mention the Glasgow Girls – including Margaret and Frances Macdonald, Jessie M King, Annie French, Helen Paxton Brown, Jessie Wylie Newbery and others – many of whom found encouragement at Glasgow’s enlightened School of Art, and who doubtless deserve deeper treatment another time.
In the meantime, galleries up and down the land record the Boys among their most popular collections. Glasgow’s Kelvingrove has a large collection, as you might expect, and there are more works at the Burrell and the Hunterian. Boys can also be found at Broughton House in Kirkcudbright, Paisley Art Galleries, Aberdeen Art Gallery, and Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Even the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh have an admirable selection.