The Glasgow Boys

The Glasgow 'Boys' or School was formed when a group of young Glasgow-based artists came together to challenge the pre-eminence of Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Academy in the 1880s. Many had trained in Paris and were influenced by the new ideas of social realism in art as expressed by French artist Jean Bastien-Lepage; they also admired the work of James McNeil Whistler. The school evolved out of three groups: one consisting of James Paterson and W Y Macgregor, another with William Walton and James Guthrie and the third of John Lavery, Kennedy, Millie Dow and Roche. The Glasgow School was loosely constituted with no official membership or annual exhibition, and there are even discrepancies as to who was actually a member. By the early 1900s the great period of the School had pasted, but their influence helped to shape the face of art in Scotland for many years to come.