Image credit: Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums
The nickname given by critics to a loosely associated group of predominantly Glasgow-based artists on the occasion of their work being shown at the Grosvenor Gallery, London in 1890. Their art represented a reaction against the Edinburgh establishment's (in particular the Royal Scottish Academy's) control of artistic matters in Scotland at that time. It was also an affirmation of Glasgow's industrially-based rise to a commercial prominence whereby it could justly claim to be the second city of the British Empire after London.
The sources for the ‘Boys’ (their own preferred label) work were various and embraced J. F. Millet and the Barbizon School, French Realism (above all the paintings of Jules Bastien-Lepage with their peasant subject-matter and earthy palette), and the tonal harmonies of J. M. Whistler. Their own subject-matter was predominantly rural, drawing heavily on the Scottish landscape and the country way of life. Members of the Boys included W. Y. Macgregor, James Paterson, James Guthrie, Joseph Crawhall, George Henry, E. A. Walton, and John Lavery. Their work was first seen together at the annual exhibition of the Glasgow Institute in 1885. The success of the 1890 London exhibition led to many invitations to exhibit abroad and by 1900 the group had dispersed and very few of its members were still Glasgow-based.
Text source: 'The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms' (2nd Edition) by Michael Clarke
