After the phenomenal success of the showing of The Glasgow Boys at the Kelvingrove Art Museum and Gallery, Glasgow earlier this year, the exhibition has arrived in London. It is the first to bring together this work for some 40 years. It is both lively and inventive, the artists picturing the world as they saw it, tending to prefer a robust form of naturalism rather than opting for mythological or religious subjects. The city of Glasgow, in the last decades of the 19th century, was experiencing an economic boom, with the adventurous young artists benefiting from thoughtful patronage.
Despite their seemingly coherent grouping, most of the artists mainly worked individually. Inspired by French naturalist painters such as Bastien-Lepage and Jean Francois Millet, Dutch painting and also from the close-toned work of Whistler, “the Boys”, as they called themselves, produced often colourful and sometimes exotic images. One such is Druids by George Henry and Edward Atkinson Hounel, the richly patterned fabrics and composition suggesting more than a passing influence of Japanese art. In fact, both artists visited Yokohama, paid for by a wealthy patron. Henry also painted Japanese Lady with Fan, which is equally rich in texture and colour.
More homespun are the images of working-class life in rural Scottish communities. James Gutherie’s To Pastures New, of a young girl with a stick in hand directing and guiding a flock of geese to a fresh pastures, is captivating in its innocence. Although a scene little seen today, there is something timeless about the image, even if it is a little picturesque.
Equally engaging is A Hind’s Daughter, also by James Gutherie, of a young woman stopped in a field of cabbages to stare at the artist, a moment of reprieve from the back-breaking task of harvesting the crop.
Inspired by Millet’s sense of unsentimental realism, Bastien-Lepage’s compositions allow the figure to dominate the landscape setting. His unflinching depictions of the rural poor are nowhere better captured than in the picture of Poor Fauvette, the young girl keeping out the cold with a piece of old stacking. Other engaging and honest images include Honel’s Potato Pickers and Henry’s The Hedgecutter.
A very different mood is evoked in James Lavery’s The Tennis Party, a muted summer afternoon in which a group of men and women play a game of tennis on court merely marked out on the grass. The image exudes charm and serenity – and civilised bonhomie in which you almost hear the thwack of the ball on the net.
A more international flavour was explored by artists such as Arthur Melville. Working often in the freedom of watercolour, he selected subjects derived from his extensive travels to Venice, Spain, North Africa and the Middle East. Developing a light and lively touch with the watercolour, he caught the intense colours of the Galician coast, as can be seen in such evocative images as The Little Bullfight: Bravo Toro, which pictures the bullfight in full throttle.
By the turn of the century, the Glasgow Boys had begun to follow different paths. While some continued to devote their attention to landscape, others moved into the academy and opted for the more profitable subject of portraiture. Whether the Boys were as revolutionary as claimed by some may be open to debate, their work seems as fresh as when it was first painted and still stands as a testament to artists who sought to picture the world as they experienced it.
The Glasgow Boys continues until January 23
