Glasgow School

Glasgow experienced an economic boom at the end of the 19th century, resulting in an increase in distinctive contributions to the Art Nouveau movement, particularly in the fields of architecture, interior design and painting.

"[4] The Glasgow Girls is the name now used for a group of female designers and artists including Margaret and Frances MacDonald, both of whom were members of The Four, Jessie M. King, Annie French, Helen Paxton Brown, Jessie Wylie Newbery, Ann Macbeth, Bessie MacNicol, Norah Neilson Gray,[5] Stansmore Dean, Dorothy Carleton Smyth, Eleanor Allen Moore, De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar, Marion Henderson Wilson,[6] the silversmith Agnes Banks Harvey[7] and Christian Jane Fergusson.

[8] This is sometimes attributed to the "influential" and "progressive"[9] head of the art school, Fra Newbery, who established an environment in which women could flourish, both as students and as teachers.

In the 1960s there was an attempt to give due attention to the work of the city’s women artists to balance the plentiful discussion of the Glasgow Boys.

Through the 1880s and 1890s, around the same time that the Spook School was gaining prominence, a collective which came to be known as the Glasgow Boys was interpreting and expanding the canon of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting.

The third wave of artists were David Gauld (1865–1936), William Kennedy (1859–1918), John Lavery (1856–1941), Harrington Mann (1864–1937), Stuart Park (1862–1933), William Wells (1872–1923), David Young Cameron (1865–1945), Alexander Ignatius Roche (1861–1923), Arthur Melville (1855–1904), Thomas Corsan Morton (1859–1928), James Nairn (1859–1904), George Pirie (1863–1946) and John Quinton Pringle (1864–1925).

[15] Their main influences were that of Japanese print, French Realism including Jules Bastien-Lepage, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, but all of their experiences around the world greatly impacted on and inspired their work, in particular in Spain, North Africa, and Japan.

The group was constantly influenced by what they saw in the world around them and strove to display these images by utilizing the techniques of realism and naturalism; they had a passion to depict things as they actually are.

A large collection of work from the Glasgow Boys is held in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, where one room is dedicated to the group.