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Lot Essay
By 1895 it had become clear to leading members of the Glasgow School that they had outgrown the city of their origin. Feted internationally in ‘world’s fairs’ from Barcelona to Chicago, they were awarded dedicated spaces in exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, the Munich Glaspalast, and the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. Unable to reciprocate, a plan was hatched to organize an annual artist-led exhibition in London with James McNeill Whistler as its figurehead President – to be titled, the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers (ISSPG).[1] With Spring, the present work, and three others on display, George Henry was one of the most prominent supporters of its first exhibition in May 1898.[2]
Born in Ayrshire, Henry trained at Glasgow School of Art, and in the fields of southern Scotland, where in 1885, he met fellow student, Edward Atkinson Hornel. Their notorious collaboration on works such as The Druids, 1890 (Glasgow Museums) and subsequent visit to Japan in 1893-4 is well-known.[3] While Hornel would remain in Kirkcudbright, where they first met, Henry was a more active member of the Glasgow ‘brotherhood’. Needing to make a living as an artist, he was constantly looking for opportunities that did not involve compromise.[4] Hailed early in his career for accentuating the decorative lines of the Galloway landscape, Henry developed his own unique form of aestheticism, in schemes based on the seasons that were in turn derived from sketches of crofter’s daughters acting as shepherdesses or goatherds (fig. 1).
The content - youth and beauty flowering in spring, maturing in summer and dying in winter - was universal, and could be found in mid-century European mural cycles, as well as in the work of second wave Pre-Raphaelites. ‘Spring’ was a catch-all – a title that equated the jeune fille en fleur with the annual resurgence of nature. Henry, coming at it for the first time in the late 1880s adopted the current Naturalism. It was only after Henry’s return from Japan and with the assistance of the unidentified model who appears in The Engagement Ring, 1897 (fig. 2, Private Collection) that Henry returned to the subject with confidence that its more ethereal qualities in Spring would be appropriate for the inaugural ISSPG exhibition.
The present canvas was, nevertheless, a transitional work, yet to be fully resolved. Henry, we are told was always ‘striving and experimenting’ at the time and the full realisation of the current abstraction would take a little longer.[5] After its showing at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1899 the canvas returned to the artist’s studio for further consideration – only to emerge three years later in its present reimagined form.
Although the quality of the original catalogue illustration is poor (fig. 3), close comparison of the girl’s profile and other details indicate that elements of the initial working remain in the present painting. When shown in the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1902 (fig. 4), it was recalled significantly by an Edinburgh-based critic as:
'… a picture that carries out, with little modifications, the idea of one shown in the RSA exhibition last year or the year previous. A lady, in an olive-green robe, with flame-coloured hair, walks through a wood when the violets are springing into bloom and the butterflies have just come. The picture is a study in olive greens and blues, balanced by the warm tones of the head of the figure, which is beautifully composed, and well merits its pride of place.'[6]
This important reference confirms the present painting’s trajectory, in its first London outing to its present iteration. Radical overhaul makes it comparable to Lavery’s Portrait Group, also shown at the first ISSPG exhibition, before being reworked for the Salon of 1900 as Père et Fille (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).[7] In different ways, both Henry and Lavery were in dialogue with the prevailing Whistler/Velázquez principles of full-length figure representation, an important Scottish-themed example of which Henry could well have studied in Edinburgh in 1886 in Whistler’s Arrangement in Yellow and Grey, Effie Deans (fig. 5, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).[8]
What Henry brings to the mise-en-place is however, uniquely his own. The handling of foliage, the lush, loaded brushwork in the folds of the dress, its weight and density, sweep pale English Whistlerian aestheticism into full-blown l’art nouveau at a stroke. There is little doubt that when he wrote his ‘appreciation’ of Henry’s work in 1904, Percy Bate, critic and secretary of the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, was thinking of works like Spring when he expressed the hope that Henry, now painting portraits, might revert to ‘imaginative subjects of deep import and sombre power’ adding that,
'one does not forget that there were pictures that he conceived and attempted in bygone years that he was not able to bring to completion … he dreamed enthusiastic dreams of pictures that he … was not at that time capable of putting on canvas … Now he is at the zenith of his powers … may he find time and strength to realise them for our gratification and enjoyment!'
As Bate’s ink dried on the page, Henry was preparing to decamp to London, taking up residence in Glebe Place, Chelsea, with portrait commissions in hand. He would of course return to the present setting of bluebell woods and peaceful riverbanks in spring sunshine, when dress and hairstyles had moved on, but the expressive potential of those days when the ‘Glasgow Boy’ was still ‘striving and experimenting’ while approaching ‘the zenith of his powers’ had been left behind.[9]
We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
[1] Glasgow School painters, James Guthrie, Edward Arthur Walton and Joseph Crawhall were part of the ISSPG’s executive committee with John Lavery as its vice-president, liaising with Whistler.
[2] At the first ISSPG exhibition, Henry’s work appeared in company with that of European masters such as Manet, Degas, Monet, Toulouse Lautrec, Klimt and others.
[3] For The Druids, Bringing in the Mistletoe, see R. Billcliffe ed., Pioneering Painters, The Glasgow Boys, 2010 (exhibition catalogue, Glasgow Museums), pp. 68-70; for Japan see W. Buchanan et al, Mr Henry and Mr Hornel visit Japan, 1978-9 (Scottish Arts Council touring exhibition, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Ayr, Inverness and London).
[4] Although he shared the Boys’ strong reservations about the Royal Academy, Henry, having shown at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts since 1882, had begun to exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1889. He only began to show at the Royal Academy in London in 1904.
[5] D. Martin, The Glasgow School of Painting, 1897 (George Bell & Sons), p. 28.
[6] ‘Glasgow Institute Exhibition’, Edinburgh Evening News, 3 February 1902, p. 4; see also ‘Fine Art Exhibition at Glasgow’, Dundee Courier, 4 February 1902, p. 4.
[7] For further reference see, K. McConkey, Lavery on Location, 2013 (exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), p. 132.
[8] Whistler’s Effie Deans 1876-9 was exhibited at the Edinburgh International Exhibition in 1886, see YMSM 183 in M.F. MacDonald, G. Petri, James McNeill Whistler: The paintings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2020, website at https://whistlerpaintings.gla.ac.uk.
[9] It has been suggested that the present work was shown at the Glasgow Institute in 1910 and again in 1933 with different titles. To the present writer, both occasions seem highly unlikely.
Born in Ayrshire, Henry trained at Glasgow School of Art, and in the fields of southern Scotland, where in 1885, he met fellow student, Edward Atkinson Hornel. Their notorious collaboration on works such as The Druids, 1890 (Glasgow Museums) and subsequent visit to Japan in 1893-4 is well-known.[3] While Hornel would remain in Kirkcudbright, where they first met, Henry was a more active member of the Glasgow ‘brotherhood’. Needing to make a living as an artist, he was constantly looking for opportunities that did not involve compromise.[4] Hailed early in his career for accentuating the decorative lines of the Galloway landscape, Henry developed his own unique form of aestheticism, in schemes based on the seasons that were in turn derived from sketches of crofter’s daughters acting as shepherdesses or goatherds (fig. 1).
The content - youth and beauty flowering in spring, maturing in summer and dying in winter - was universal, and could be found in mid-century European mural cycles, as well as in the work of second wave Pre-Raphaelites. ‘Spring’ was a catch-all – a title that equated the jeune fille en fleur with the annual resurgence of nature. Henry, coming at it for the first time in the late 1880s adopted the current Naturalism. It was only after Henry’s return from Japan and with the assistance of the unidentified model who appears in The Engagement Ring, 1897 (fig. 2, Private Collection) that Henry returned to the subject with confidence that its more ethereal qualities in Spring would be appropriate for the inaugural ISSPG exhibition.
The present canvas was, nevertheless, a transitional work, yet to be fully resolved. Henry, we are told was always ‘striving and experimenting’ at the time and the full realisation of the current abstraction would take a little longer.[5] After its showing at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1899 the canvas returned to the artist’s studio for further consideration – only to emerge three years later in its present reimagined form.
Although the quality of the original catalogue illustration is poor (fig. 3), close comparison of the girl’s profile and other details indicate that elements of the initial working remain in the present painting. When shown in the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1902 (fig. 4), it was recalled significantly by an Edinburgh-based critic as:
'… a picture that carries out, with little modifications, the idea of one shown in the RSA exhibition last year or the year previous. A lady, in an olive-green robe, with flame-coloured hair, walks through a wood when the violets are springing into bloom and the butterflies have just come. The picture is a study in olive greens and blues, balanced by the warm tones of the head of the figure, which is beautifully composed, and well merits its pride of place.'[6]
This important reference confirms the present painting’s trajectory, in its first London outing to its present iteration. Radical overhaul makes it comparable to Lavery’s Portrait Group, also shown at the first ISSPG exhibition, before being reworked for the Salon of 1900 as Père et Fille (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).[7] In different ways, both Henry and Lavery were in dialogue with the prevailing Whistler/Velázquez principles of full-length figure representation, an important Scottish-themed example of which Henry could well have studied in Edinburgh in 1886 in Whistler’s Arrangement in Yellow and Grey, Effie Deans (fig. 5, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).[8]
What Henry brings to the mise-en-place is however, uniquely his own. The handling of foliage, the lush, loaded brushwork in the folds of the dress, its weight and density, sweep pale English Whistlerian aestheticism into full-blown l’art nouveau at a stroke. There is little doubt that when he wrote his ‘appreciation’ of Henry’s work in 1904, Percy Bate, critic and secretary of the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, was thinking of works like Spring when he expressed the hope that Henry, now painting portraits, might revert to ‘imaginative subjects of deep import and sombre power’ adding that,
'one does not forget that there were pictures that he conceived and attempted in bygone years that he was not able to bring to completion … he dreamed enthusiastic dreams of pictures that he … was not at that time capable of putting on canvas … Now he is at the zenith of his powers … may he find time and strength to realise them for our gratification and enjoyment!'
As Bate’s ink dried on the page, Henry was preparing to decamp to London, taking up residence in Glebe Place, Chelsea, with portrait commissions in hand. He would of course return to the present setting of bluebell woods and peaceful riverbanks in spring sunshine, when dress and hairstyles had moved on, but the expressive potential of those days when the ‘Glasgow Boy’ was still ‘striving and experimenting’ while approaching ‘the zenith of his powers’ had been left behind.[9]
We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
[1] Glasgow School painters, James Guthrie, Edward Arthur Walton and Joseph Crawhall were part of the ISSPG’s executive committee with John Lavery as its vice-president, liaising with Whistler.
[2] At the first ISSPG exhibition, Henry’s work appeared in company with that of European masters such as Manet, Degas, Monet, Toulouse Lautrec, Klimt and others.
[3] For The Druids, Bringing in the Mistletoe, see R. Billcliffe ed., Pioneering Painters, The Glasgow Boys, 2010 (exhibition catalogue, Glasgow Museums), pp. 68-70; for Japan see W. Buchanan et al, Mr Henry and Mr Hornel visit Japan, 1978-9 (Scottish Arts Council touring exhibition, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Ayr, Inverness and London).
[4] Although he shared the Boys’ strong reservations about the Royal Academy, Henry, having shown at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts since 1882, had begun to exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1889. He only began to show at the Royal Academy in London in 1904.
[5] D. Martin, The Glasgow School of Painting, 1897 (George Bell & Sons), p. 28.
[6] ‘Glasgow Institute Exhibition’, Edinburgh Evening News, 3 February 1902, p. 4; see also ‘Fine Art Exhibition at Glasgow’, Dundee Courier, 4 February 1902, p. 4.
[7] For further reference see, K. McConkey, Lavery on Location, 2013 (exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), p. 132.
[8] Whistler’s Effie Deans 1876-9 was exhibited at the Edinburgh International Exhibition in 1886, see YMSM 183 in M.F. MacDonald, G. Petri, James McNeill Whistler: The paintings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2020, website at https://whistlerpaintings.gla.ac.uk.
[9] It has been suggested that the present work was shown at the Glasgow Institute in 1910 and again in 1933 with different titles. To the present writer, both occasions seem highly unlikely.