THE GLASGOW BOYS
Over a century ago, from 1880 until 1900, the vibrant and exuberant work of a group
of young Scottish painters brought a breath of fresh air to British art. They were known
as the Glasgow Boys and their canvases full of brilliant light and bold colour celebrated
the ordinary lives of Scotland’s rural workers. Their paintings were the antithesis of the
sombre genre pictures then favoured by the conservative old guard who ruled Scotland’s
art establishment from Edinburgh. The work of the Glasgow Boys was embraced with
enthusiasm by the more discerning English, German and American collectors long before
it was deemed acceptable at home. Today, the paintings which were once rejected as being
“too modern and unfinished” are among the most sought-after art works in Britain. Next
year they’re to be the subject of a major new exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and
Museum. Isla Macdonald reports from Glasgow.
n the 25 years before the outbreak of the Great
I
sentimental and anecdotal pictures covered with
War in 1914, Glasgow, the “second city of the heavy varnish, while the Boys were keen to follow
empire” was famous for something other the example of Jean Françoise Millet and other
than the unceasing output of its shipbuilding French painters of the Barbizon School, the rustic
and heavy engineering yards along the Clyde. In naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage and the Dutch
the United States and the capital cities of Europe, painters of The Hague School. Their enthusiasm was
Glasgow was seen to be at the cutting edge of a fresh for the real, the natural and for the uncontrived. They
new trend in modern art. It was a reputation that found their subject matter in the unremarkable lives
rested almost entirely upon the shoulders of a group of ordinary folk in the rural villages of Scotland’s
of highly talented, innovative young painters known Central Lowlands. They settled among the people of
collectively as the Glasgow Boys. Although they had Brig o’Turk, Cockburnspath, Cambuskenneth and
no leader, no formally articulated manifesto nor Kirkcudbright and there, often painting in the open
even a pronounced similarity of style, their work was air, they recorded daily life stripped of sentimentality
so utterly different from the conservative mainstream and drama. The result is some of the most delightful
that they were dubbed the Glasgow School of painters works in Scottish Art.
by the press. I asked Kelvingrove curator Jean Walsh how
The artists themselves, not all of whom came the Glasgow Boys coalesced as a group. “Although
from Glasgow or even worked there, could not agree they were scattered far and wide, painting during
on what to call themselves. As one of them, Robert the summer months,” she said, “it was during the
Macaulay Stevenson so aptly put it: “We were just the winter that they generally came back to work in their
boys!” and that is how they are popularly known to Glasgow studios. That’s when they’d get together to
this day. Some of the Boys like James Guthrie, E.A. offer constructive criticism of each other’s work. They
Hornel and John Lavery were to become famous in were feeding off each other all the time and since
their own lifetimes, while others were destined to they were all young artists, this is how they learned
fade into obscurity. and became more adventurous.”
In rebelling against the conservative artistic Although the work of the Glasgow Boys was
conventions of the time, the Boys ran headlong into anathema to the Arts Establishment in Scotland, their
an implacable wall of opposition. They expected to paintings did have a great appeal to the merchants
be judged on the quality and originality of their work, and manufacturers who had latterly made their great
rather than on their geographic and social origins. fortunes along the Clyde. “These mercantile princes
Instead, the mandarins at the Royal Scottish Academy didn’t want anything to do with the Glue Pots,” Jean
in Edinburgh simply refused to have anything to do Walsh said. “That’s the term of derision the Glasgow
with them. The Academy favoured historical genre, Boys used to describe the historical genre pictures that
were turned out by painters like W.Q.Orchardson and
John Pettie. They were invariably coated with dark
Left: A Hind’s Daughter, James Guthrie, 1883.
varnish to give them an air of gravitas. Varnish was
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