The Glasgow Boys were a loose group of around twenty young, mostly Scottish artists who, in the 1880s and 1890s, rebelled against the stuffy conventions of Victorian Scottish painting. Working out of doors and drawing on French and Dutch realism, they painted ordinary rural life with a fresh, honest eye, and won international fame. They are seen today as the beginning of modern art in Scotland, and their work is a highlight of Glasgow’s cultural story.

A rebellion against the ‘Gluepots’

The Boys were young painters disillusioned with the art establishment of their day. They had no interest in the sentimental history scenes that filled the galleries, and they mocked the older academic painters, with their dark, heavily varnished canvases, as the ‘Gluepots’. Noisy, modern and anti-establishment, they set out to paint the world as they actually saw it.

Painting real life out of doors

What united them was a love of naturalism and of painting en plein air, out of doors and directly in front of their subject. They painted farm workers and country life in loose, square brushstrokes and earthy tones, inspired by the French realist Jules Bastien-Lepage and by the American James McNeill Whistler. Many worked together at artists’ colonies in the countryside, at Cockburnspath and at Kirkcudbright.

The leading Boys

The best known of them were James Guthrie, whose A Hind’s Daughter became a touchstone for the group; John Lavery, later a celebrated society portraitist; George Henry and E. A. Hornel, who travelled to Japan and returned with a rich, decorative style; and Joseph Crawhall and E. A. Walton. They gathered in the studio of W. Y. Macgregor, often called the father of the group, and were backed by the Glasgow art dealer Alexander Reid and by the city’s wealthy merchant collectors.

Fame, and what came after

The Glasgow Boys won acclaim far beyond Scotland, exhibiting to great praise in London and Munich around 1890 and becoming known across Europe and America as ‘the Glasgow School’. Many later settled into comfortable, establishment careers, but their finest works still hang in Kelvingrove. They should not be confused with the later ‘Glasgow Style’ of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, though the two overlapped in time. You can read more about the group on our Glasgow Boys page.

Who were the main Glasgow Boys?

James Guthrie, John Lavery, George Henry, E. A. Hornel, Joseph Crawhall and E. A. Walton were among the leading figures of the roughly twenty artists in the group.

What style did the Glasgow Boys paint in?

Naturalism and plein-air realism, painting ordinary life out of doors, influenced by French and Dutch art. Later some turned to a more decorative, symbolist style.

Are the Glasgow Boys the same as the Glasgow Style?

No. The Glasgow Boys were painters of the 1880s and 1890s. The Glasgow Style was the later decorative movement led by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.