Curators of one of the most important art exhibitions ever staged in Glasgow have confirmed there will be 140 paintings at this year’s landmark exhibition of the group of artists who transformed Scottish art in the late 19th century and laid the ground for the more famous Colourists.
However, the search to find lost works by the Glasgow Boys has, so far, failed to find most of the missing masterpieces that could have featured in the exhibition, held in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum from April 9 until September 27.
Several works by the Glasgow Boys, whose number included James Guthrie, John Lavery and George Henry, are still missing.
Although the final display of the show has been decided, Hugh Stevenson, curator of British Art at Glasgow Museums, said that late entrants could be considered if they are exceptional works.
Works such as Mademoiselle Cunegonde by William Kennedy, exhibited at the Glasgow Institute in 1885, have disappeared. Also missing are more than a dozen works by Lavery from the 1888 Glasgow International Exhibition; unique paintings of Glasgow by James Nairn; and a 5ft by 9ft work by Alexander Roche, The Dominie’s Favourites, a life-size study of girls sitting on a bench, also exhibited in 1885.
Some works were uncovered by the public since The Herald first publicised the search in 2007, but none were considered of sufficient quality to be included in the exhibition, the first of its kind in more than 40 years, which will move down to the Royal Academy in London after its run in Glasgow.
Mr Stevenson said that, in particular, if one of the view of West Regent Street in 1884 and another of the railway by James Nairn came to light, they would merit a place in the final display.
Lavery made 50 paintings for the 1888 exhibition and one third remain untraced while 10 or more pastels by Guthrie are still unaccounted for, which he made between 1888 and 1890 in Helensburgh.
One work that has come to light is Playmates by George Henry. In 2008, it was sold by a private collector for six times its estimated price at Sotherby’s for £401,300. The oil-on-canvas painting was sold to an unnamed UK buyer and it will star in the Kelvingrove show.
“People were very good and got in touch, but unfortunately none of the works could fit into the exhibition,” Mr Stevenson said.
“There were one or two paintings, especially the Glasgow paintings by Nairn, that we were hoping would show up -- but they just did not appear. If it did turn up, or something else that was very, very good, we could smuggle it into the show as a non-catalogue painting. If the Nairn painting showed up, we would sneak it in.”
The show will be arranged in thematic and chronological themes, from the Early Boys through topics such as the Boys in Cockburnspath, Berwickshire, the Boys in France, their treatment of modernity, and the seminal trip to Japan by Henry and EA Hornel.
Overall, more than 38 private lenders are contributing their works to the exhibition, with some individuals donating up to 10 paintings from their private collections. Thirty of the works come from Glasgow Museums’ collections, and 23 more publicly run museums and galleries are also contributing works, with some from the US and Denmark.
“This is officially the biggest-ever show of the Glasgow Boys,” said Mr Stevenson. “There was one at the Kelvingrove in 1968, but this beats it.
“We think interest in all of the painters will rise after this. I think it is fair to say they are not as well known as the Colourists, but in my opinion they were
better than the Colourists: they were leaders rather than followers. They went to other countries, learnt and came back; they were more significant historically.
“One of the issues is that there were quite a few of them -- about 23 -- with 14 being the heavy hitters, the most important probably being Guthrie, Henry, Hornel, Joseph Crawhall, William MacGregor and Arthur Melville.”
The men who took on the Gluepots
The Glasgow Boys were a loose grouping of around 23 artists who worked, lived or were connected to Glasgow in the late 19th century. They travelled, socialised and worked with each other, and shared opinions at the Glasgow Art Club. They generally shared two views: an antipathy to the romanticism of their elders (who they called The Gluepots, because of the thick varnish they used) and a certain hostility to the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. The best-known artists in the group are probably James Guthrie, John Lavery, George Henry and William MacGregor, but it also included EA Walton, James Paterson, EA Hornel, Joseph Crawhall and others. Lavery was born in Belfast in 1856, and died in 1941. He got his first job from a Glasgow Herald advert. He was commissioned to paint the visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1888. He was appointed an official artist during the Great War, and knighted in 1918. Henry, who was born in Irvine in 1858 and died in London in 1943, was an early leading light. MacGregor was born in Finnart in 1855 and died in Oban in 1923. He was the son of a well-known Glasgow shipbuilder. He was known as the “father figure” of the Boys, not so much for his art as for his common sense and advice. Guthrie was born in Greenock in 1859. He lived in London, worked at Cockburnspath in the Borders, and then moved to Glasgow. His appointment as the youngest ever president of the RSA in 1919 was said to mark the end of the antagonism between the Boys and the Edinburgh establishment.
