The National Galleries of Scotland is home to the largest collection of Scottish Art
in the world and in that collection the most popular part is, by far, The Glasgow boys.
They had the courage to go against tradition and to really paint from the heart.
They completely rejuvenated the whole artistic scene.
Glasgow at the end of the nineteenth century was really booming and you get this new generation
of industrialists and merchants who are interested in art, which is one of the reasons why you
get the proliferation of artists at that time in the city. The Glasgow Boys, even though
they were known as The Glasgow Boys, didn’t all come from Glasgow but they congregated
on Glasgow and it was very useful for them to have the city as a focus.
It provided them with a core group of very wealthy patrons. They also received the support of the local
dealers and they were also able to exhibit their work at the Glasgow Institute and at
other establishments.
The really kind of important moment came though, in 1888, when Glasgow was host to the
International Exhibition of that year and that was really, I think, the moment when their work was launched
as far as the public was concerned. The Glasgow Boys were predominantly interested in painting
in a naturalistic way, they were very anti-academic and the kind of artists that they
admired included people like Jules Bastian- Lepage who was one of the great naturalist
painters of that period. They also admired the work of the realist, French realist painters
like Courbet and Millet who again focussed on the poorer members of society. So, they
were responding to that kind of painting and then they came back to Scotland and they formed
their own little group where they would try to produce the equivalent of this French Naturalism
in a Scottish context. The reason why they were interested in this new Naturalistic style
of painting was that it was so opposite to what was established and it was contemporary
it was like a painting with a sense freedom which had really never existed before and
also this idea of painting out of doors in front of the motif. Traditionally the artist
would have painted in the studio, painted from memory, he might have made a few sketches
out of doors but he was interested more in the historical subjects or mythological subjects,
subjects from the past which were dead and gone. They wanted something which was contemporary
and happening and now.
Cockburnspath is really important in the history of The Glasgow Boys as it became a major colony
for them and I think the reason why they chose to paint there was first and foremost that
it was a picturesque spot on the east coast of Scotland. There was plenty of accommodation
for the artists and they could eat together in the evenings and they could exchange ideas
and so there was a real sense of camaraderie of working together towards the same goal
and it produced some of the key works of The Glasgow Boys.
'A Hind’s Daughter' is really typical of the Glasgow Boys work of the 1880s
It’s a subject of rural labour, is painted in this very direct style. It doesn’t paint
a romanticised image in any way, it is very direct.
In the 1890s you get a bit of breakup of the group. Some of them going off to become
society portrait painters like Guthrie and Lavery and then others like Henry and Hornel
who were working in Kirkcudbright and developing a new more decorative style of painting.
In 1889 George Henry went and joined E.A. Hornel in Kirkcudbright and they worked together
in the landscape and they also discussed the artists that they were interested in and at
this particular time they were developing an interest in Japanese prints. And so, you
see in both their work this development towards a much more decorative brightly coloured style
of painting which borders on Symbolism, in other words, they are not painting the landscape
as they see it but they are painting the ideas that were underlying their paintings.
Hornel remained in Kirkcudbright for the rest of his life. If you visit Broughton House
today the garden behind the house is inspired by these Japanese prints, these Japanese aesthetic,
and is something which infuses his work for the rest of his life.
The Glasgow Boys are extremely important as a movement because they not only challenged
the academy, the art establishment, they also paved the way towards modernism and they were
an important example for the next generation, The Scottish Colourists
and also for modern art today.