departure. Their brushwork was looser; it was bold, country. In such a small country as Scotland it surely
immediate and unpremeditated. It had freshness should not have mattered that Edinburgh was the
and vitality. In short, it was everything that the Art home of the supposedly supreme body in the fine
Establishment loathed. In those days the Royal arts. Unfortunately, petty jealousies, caused the Royal
Scottish Academy ruled the roost. They controlled the Scottish Academy and its members to close ranks,
exhibitions and they decided what was acceptable. If effectively making it impossible for any artist to join
you had your picture hung at the RSA in Edinburgh the body of Academicians and Associates without
you had made it as an artist. If not, you were literally first setting up residence in Edinburgh. At times it
out in the cold.” seemed almost impossible for a Glasgow man to be
Art historian and author Roger Billcliffe, sums up hung on the Academy’s walls, so tight and blinkered
the situation in his book, The Glasgow Boys. “Glasgow,” became the attitude to intruders from the west.”
he writes, “was the largest and, without doubt, most Faced with these attitudes many Glasgow artists
prosperous city in Scotland, but in the visual arts at including the Boys, turned their attention toward
least it played second fiddle to Edinburgh. When this London and the Royal Academy where they were
meant that Glasgow artists had to send to London made to feel welcome. It was at the Grosvenor Gallery
to be guaranteed a showing outside their native city in London in 1890 that the Boys’ work was seen by
it hardened their determination to overcome the Adolphus Paulus, who was responsible for the foreign
bastions of tradition and privilege that held sway in section of the Munich Art Society exhibition. Paulus
Scottish art.” was so impressed by the work of the Scottish artists
While Glasgow was the industrial heart of the that he immediately started making arrangements
country, Edinburgh was its intellectual head. “Given for as many of their new pictures as possible to be
this popular image of the workaday city,” Mr Billcliffe shown in the Glastpalast in Munich later that year.
says, “it’s not surprising that Edinburgh eclipsed In Germany they were to be given the acclamation
Glasgow as the artistic as well as the administrative denied them at home.
capital of Scotland. In the visual arts, the establishment
The exhibition at Kelvingrove will run from April to
of a Scottish Academy in Edinburgh concentrated
September, 2010.
public attention and attitudes to the east of the
75
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