GEORGE HENRY, LADY IN A WHITE DRESS, 1912, OIL ON CANVAS George Henry (Ayrshire 1858 – 1943) SIGNORA IN ABITO BIANCO 1912 olio su tela, cm 213x127 firmato e datato in basso a destra entro cornice in legno intagliato, dorato e laccato
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) GEISHAS IN A GARDEN Signed, watercolour 55cm x 34cm (21.5in x 13.5in) Visitors to late-19th-century Japan resided in designated European ‘Concession’ areas, segregated from natives. This frustrated the ambitions of the young Glasgow painters Edward Atkinson Hornel and George Henry, who had voyaged to Japan in February 1893 eager to ‘see and study the environment out of which [Japan’s] great art sprung, to become personally in touch with the people, to live their life, and discover the source of their inspiration.’ Buchanan, W., Mr Henry and Mr Hornel Visit Japan, exh. cat., Glasgow Art Gallery 1978, p.9) The intrepid artists had no option but to take to the streets of Tokyo, Nagasaki and Yokohama armed only with a keen eye for authentic detail and drawing materials with which to note them down (see Billcliffe, R., The Glasgow Boys, Frances Lincoln, London, 2008, p.259). When the unfortunate George Henry unpacked his canvases upon his return from Japan to Glasgow he found that they were stuck together or irreparably cracked, and much of his Japanese output in oil was lost. This was an enormous blow to Henry’s morale, and although a large volume of his Japanese watercolours had survived the homeward journey it took time before he could bear to look at them. Happily, their eventual review proved rewarding. The Geisha Garden exemplifies the highly-effective clarification of line and design that Henry developed while in Japan. This was undoubtably informed by the formal qualities of contemporary Japanese art. As Roger Billcliffe observed, Henry used watercolour to ‘easily emulate the tones and colours of Japanese prints’, and these exemplars can also be connected to The Geisha Garden’s use of essentialised forms and ‘stacked perspective. (Billcliffe, R, op.cit., pp.259-262)It was the popularity of Japanese art in Glasgow that had inspired Henry and Hornel to make the extraordinary voyage to the other side of the world. Through Hornel’s acute observation and Henry’s contact with Japanese exemplars, both artists achieved their objective of better understanding the society that had produced the prints and designs they had so admired in Scotland. Japan had enriched each artists’ output indelibly.
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) THE BANKS OF ALLAN WATER: WINTER Signed, oil on canvas 111cm x 221cm (43.75in x 87in) Presented by J. A. D. McKean, Esq., 1932. On the Banks of Allan Water,When the winter snow fell fast, There I saw the Miller’s daughter;Chilling blew the blast,But the miller’s lovely daughter,Both from care and cold was free;On the Banks of Allan Water,There a corpse lay she.Titled ‘Winter’ in Illustrated Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture in the Collections of Paisley Corporation and Paisley Art Institute, 1948. Exhibited:Paisley, A Paisley Legacy, The Paisley Art Institute Collection, Centenaries Catalogue, 2015, no.98.Literature:Martin, David, The Glasgow School of Painting, 1897 (George Bell & Sons), p.26;Fowle, Frances, ‘Het Decoratieve Symbolisme van de Glasgow Boys’, in Willemijn Lindenhovius, ed., The Glasgow Boys, Schots Impressionisme 1880-1900, 2015, (exhibition catalogue, Drents Museum, Assen, The Netherlands), p.143, (illus fig 48). Neglected in the modern literature on the Glasgow Boys, George Henry’s decorative scheme of 1888 ‘illustrative of The Banks of Allan Water’ was, we are told by David Martin, installed in a ‘west of Scotland mansion-house’ and has ‘never been shown in public’. A major sequence of three works designed for an interior, this passing reference gives no hint of the scale and content of the triptych, the importance of which merits ongoing research, fuller scholarly debate and greater appreciation. Best known for his 1890 collaboration with Edward Atkinson Hornel in The Druids, bringing in the Mistletoe (Glasgow Museums), and for his year-long trip to Japan with Hornel (1893-4), Henry’s perspicacity was hailed in A Galloway Landscape (1889) for its instinctive accentuation of the abstract shapes and colours that characterise a very specific terrain. It was, wrote Baldwin Brown, ‘a manifesto’ for the new Glasgow painting. All at once, it seemed as though the young artist had articulated new principles of landscape painting that were less concerned with documentary accuracy than with a fundamental understanding of the primordial forces governing its form. Contemporary critics scrambled to understand this painting, reaching for the term ‘Impressionism’ – a catch-all for anything not quite conventional in contemporary art. Only latterly did it seem possible that this was ‘obviously a post-impressionist picture … fully in spirit with some of the ideas being propagated contemporaneously by the rebellious Gauguin and his circle in France’. Although the signs were there, it has never been fully understood how and why Henry arrived at this large ambitious work. Smaller works, ‘boilers’ he called them, provide a series of clues, but these often indicate ambivalence, and the sense that the artist’s work in the preceding years could move in any of a number of directions. Although he had visited key sites – Brig-o-Turk, Cockburnspath and Kirkcudbright – the melting pots for the new Glasgow painting, Henry was no camp follower, and anxious to resolve the visual dilemmas posed by Bastien-Lepage’s Naturalism, he sought to make his mark. His ambition would be expressed in a triptych based on three of the four seasons that would resolve the conflict between direct observation and symbolic intent. To do this he turned to a popular song, On the Banks of Allan Water, taking each of its three verses as a separate theme. On the Banks of Allan WaterWhen the sweet springtime did fallWas the miller’s lovely daughter,Fairest of them all,For his bride a soldier sought her,And a winning tongue had he!On the Banks of Allan Water,None so gay as she.On the Banks of Allan Water,When brown Autumn spreads its storeThere I saw the Miller’s daughter,But she smiled no more. For the summer grief had brought herAnd her soldier, false was he;On the Banks of Allan Water,None so sad as she.On the Banks of Allan Water,When the winter snow fell fast, There I saw the Miller’s daughter;Chilling blew the blast,But the miller’s lovely daughter,Both from care and cold was free;On the Banks of Allan Water,There a corpse lay she.The popular ‘Broadside’ ballad in three stanzas that gives rise to this important sequence is thought to have been written by the gothic novelist, Matthew Lewis (1775-1818). It describes the love of a miller’s daughter who withers and dies like the flowers of spring when her soldier-lover is untrue to her. It is considered to have been one of the inspirations for Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Its afterlife includes a famous rendition by Adelina Patti, with music by Emma Raymond, sung in the 1880s and recorded in 1905, and, with an elaborated plot, On the Banks of Allan Water was used as the basis for a movie in 1916. It appears that Henry’s triptych was acquired by James Anderson Dunlop MacKean (1849-1932), future Paisley Burgh Treasurer and Honorary President of the Paisley Art Institute. His grandfather and father, William MacKean and William Muir MacKean, served as Provosts of the town (1879-1882 & 1908-1913). A director of William MacKean Ltd, the family firm of starch producers at St Mirren’s Walks, Macdowall Street, Paisley, it is possible that he commissioned the Henry series for ‘Rozelle’, the JAD MacKean family home. The commission, if such it was, may have come through James Mavor, who took over editorship of The Scottish Art Review in October 1888, from Macaulay Stevenson. Despite the fact that Henry had visited Bridge of Allan, near Stirling in December 1887 for a gathering of the Glasgow Boys at Cambuskenneth, the confluence of the Allan with the Forth at Bridge of Allan is unlikely to have had much to do with his choice of subject matter for the series - his three paintings being closely related to the girl’s decline in ‘sweet springtime’, ‘brown Autumn’ and ‘Winter snow’. Of greater significance are the connections with Henry’s recent works and the confidence this project gave him in moving forward from Lepage-centred Naturalism to a more decorative and Symbolist facture seen in later addresses to ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’. The present Spring and Autumn however, with their echoes of Lepage’s Jeanne d’Arc, should be regarded as an envoi to this earlier phase of Henry’s career. As for the prone figure in Winter, it may well be the case that Henry was aware of the Edward Burne-Jones’s Briar Rose series or indeed, John William Waterhouse’s Ophelia, a work to be shown at the Royal Academy in 1889, but these are unlikely precedents. Equally improbable is its anticipation of Giovanni Segantini’s 1891 Symbolist painting, The Punishment of Lust, (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) with its prone figures and frieze-like format. It is more probable that the artist was impressed by fellow ‘Glasgow Boy’ Alexander Roche’s Good King Wenceslas (Private Collection) of the previous year. In his own work, the mise-en-scène – a grid of vertical tree trunks punctuating a hillside and glowing – as in the present picture, had been a consistent feature for a number of years, while in his practice and in that of Roche and Macaulay Stevenson, the sinking sun and rising red-yellow moon became a familiar motif. In Winter, trees and dead fronds form a warp with the deep indigo weft of Allan Water, flowing calmly, and for ever, under its fiery moon. Romantic anthropomorphism - growth and decay, a river-run, a music of time, in tune with human forms and feelings. More than simply ‘illustrative’ of a popular air, this is nature’s poetic requiem for lost love, and the key turning point in Henry’s career. We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for writing this catalogue entry.
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) THE BANKS OF ALLAN WATER: AUTUMN Oil on canvas 111cm x 104cm (43.75in x 41in) Presented by J. A. D. McKean, Esq., 1922. On the Banks of Allan Water,When brown Autumn spreads its storeThere I saw the Miller’s daughter,But she smiled no more. For the summer grief had brought herAnd her soldier, false was he;On the Banks of Allan Water,None so sad as she.Titled ‘Autumn’ in Illustrated Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture in the Collections of Paisley Corporation and Paisley Art Institute, 1948. Exhibited:Paisley, A Paisley Legacy, The Paisley Art Institute Collection, Centenaries Catalogue, 2015, no.97.Literature:Martin, David, The Glasgow School of Painting, 1897 (George Bell & Sons), p.26;McConkey, Kenneth, ‘Listening to the Voices: A study of some aspects of Jules Bastien-Lepage’s Jeanne d’Arc …’ Arts Magazine, (New York), vol.56, no.5, January 1982, p.156 (illus fig 5). Neglected in the modern literature on the Glasgow Boys, George Henry’s decorative scheme of 1888 ‘illustrative of The Banks of Allan Water’ was, we are told by David Martin, installed in a ‘west of Scotland mansion-house’ and has ‘never been shown in public’. A major sequence of three works designed for an interior, this passing reference gives no hint of the scale and content of the triptych, the importance of which merits ongoing research, fuller scholarly debate and greater appreciation. Best known for his 1890 collaboration with Edward Atkinson Hornel in The Druids, bringing in the Mistletoe (Glasgow Museums), and for his year-long trip to Japan with Hornel (1893-4), Henry’s perspicacity was hailed in A Galloway Landscape (1889) for its instinctive accentuation of the abstract shapes and colours that characterise a very specific terrain. It was, wrote Baldwin Brown, ‘a manifesto’ for the new Glasgow painting. All at once, it seemed as though the young artist had articulated new principles of landscape painting that were less concerned with documentary accuracy than with a fundamental understanding of the primordial forces governing its form. Contemporary critics scrambled to understand this painting, reaching for the term ‘Impressionism’ – a catch-all for anything not quite conventional in contemporary art. Only latterly did it seem possible that this was ‘obviously a post-impressionist picture … fully in spirit with some of the ideas being propagated contemporaneously by the rebellious Gauguin and his circle in France’. Although the signs were there, it has never been fully understood how and why Henry arrived at this large ambitious work. Smaller works, ‘boilers’ he called them, provide a series of clues, but these often indicate ambivalence, and the sense that the artist’s work in the preceding years could move in any of a number of directions. Although he had visited key sites – Brig-o-Turk, Cockburnspath and Kirkcudbright – the melting pots for the new Glasgow painting, Henry was no camp follower, and anxious to resolve the visual dilemmas posed by Bastien-Lepage’s Naturalism, he sought to make his mark. His ambition would be expressed in a triptych based on three of the four seasons that would resolve the conflict between direct observation and symbolic intent. To do this he turned to a popular song, On the Banks of Allan Water, taking each of its three verses as a separate theme. On the Banks of Allan WaterWhen the sweet springtime did fallWas the miller’s lovely daughter,Fairest of them all,For his bride a soldier sought her,And a winning tongue had he!On the Banks of Allan Water,None so gay as she.On the Banks of Allan Water,When brown Autumn spreads its storeThere I saw the Miller’s daughter,But she smiled no more. For the summer grief had brought herAnd her soldier, false was he;On the Banks of Allan Water,None so sad as she.On the Banks of Allan Water,When the winter snow fell fast, There I saw the Miller’s daughter;Chilling blew the blast,But the miller’s lovely daughter,Both from care and cold was free;On the Banks of Allan Water,There a corpse lay she.The popular ‘Broadside’ ballad in three stanzas that gives rise to this important sequence is thought to have been written by the gothic novelist, Matthew Lewis (1775-1818). It describes the love of a miller’s daughter who withers and dies like the flowers of spring when her soldier-lover is untrue to her. It is considered to have been one of the inspirations for Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Its afterlife includes a famous rendition by Adelina Patti, with music by Emma Raymond, sung in the 1880s and recorded in 1905, and, with an elaborated plot, On the Banks of Allan Water was used as the basis for a movie in 1916. It appears that Henry’s triptych was acquired by James Anderson Dunlop MacKean (1849-1932), future Paisley Burgh Treasurer and Honorary President of the Paisley Art Institute. His grandfather and father, William MacKean and William Muir MacKean, served as Provosts of the town (1879-1882 & 1908-1913). A director of William MacKean Ltd, the family firm of starch producers at St Mirren’s Walks, Macdowall Street, Paisley, it is possible that he commissioned the Henry series for ‘Rozelle’, the JAD MacKean family home. The commission, if such it was, may have come through James Mavor, who took over editorship of The Scottish Art Review in October 1888, from Macaulay Stevenson. Despite the fact that Henry had visited Bridge of Allan, near Stirling in December 1887 for a gathering of the Glasgow Boys at Cambuskenneth, the confluence of the Allan with the Forth at Bridge of Allan is unlikely to have had much to do with his choice of subject matter for the series - his three paintings being closely related to the girl’s decline in ‘sweet springtime’, ‘brown Autumn’ and ‘Winter snow’. Of greater significance are the connections with Henry’s recent works and the confidence this project gave him in moving forward from Lepage-centred Naturalism to a more decorative and Symbolist facture seen in later addresses to ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’. The present Spring and Autumn however, with their echoes of Lepage’s Jeanne d’Arc, should be regarded as an envoi to this earlier phase of Henry’s career. As for the prone figure in Winter, it may well be the case that Henry was aware of the Edward Burne-Jones’s Briar Rose series or indeed, John William Waterhouse’s Ophelia, a work to be shown at the Royal Academy in 1889, but these are unlikely precedents. Equally improbable is its anticipation of Giovanni Segantini’s 1891 Symbolist painting, The Punishment of Lust, (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) with its prone figures and frieze-like format. It is more probable that the artist was impressed by fellow ‘Glasgow Boy’ Alexander Roche’s Good King Wenceslas (Private Collection) of the previous year. In his own work, the mise-en-scène – a grid of vertical tree trunks punctuating a hillside and glowing – as in the present picture, had been a consistent feature for a number of years, while in his practice and in that of Roche and Macaulay Stevenson, the sinking sun and rising red-yellow moon became a familiar motif. In Winter, trees and dead fronds form a warp with the deep indigo weft of Allan Water, flowing calmly, and for ever, under its fiery moon. Romantic anthropomorphism - growth and decay, a river-run, a music of time, in tune with human forms and feelings. More than simply ‘illustrative’ of a popular air, this is nature’s poetic requiem for lost love, and the key turning point in Henry’s career. We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for writing this catalogue entry.
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) THE BANKS OF ALLAN WATER: SPRING Signed, oil on canvas 111cm x 104cm (43.75in x 41in) Presented by J. A. D. McKean, Esq., 1922. On the Banks of Allan WaterWhen the sweet springtime did fallWas the miller’s lovely daughter,Fairest of them all,For his bride a soldier sought her,And a winning tongue had he!On the Banks of Allan Water,None so gay as she.Titled ‘Autumn’ in Illustrated Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture in the Collections of Paisley Corporation and Paisley Art Institute, 1948. Exhibited:Paisley, A Paisley Legacy, The Paisley Art Institute Collection, Centenaries Catalogue, 2015, no.96.Literature: Martin, David, The Glasgow School of Painting, 1897 (George Bell & Sons), p.26. Neglected in the modern literature on the Glasgow Boys, George Henry’s decorative scheme of 1888 ‘illustrative of The Banks of Allan Water’ was, we are told by David Martin, installed in a ‘west of Scotland mansion-house’ and has ‘never been shown in public’. A major sequence of three works designed for an interior, this passing reference gives no hint of the scale and content of the triptych, the importance of which merits ongoing research, fuller scholarly debate and greater appreciation. Best known for his 1890 collaboration with Edward Atkinson Hornel in The Druids, bringing in the Mistletoe (Glasgow Museums), and for his year-long trip to Japan with Hornel (1893-4), Henry’s perspicacity was hailed in A Galloway Landscape (1889) for its instinctive accentuation of the abstract shapes and colours that characterise a very specific terrain. It was, wrote Baldwin Brown, ‘a manifesto’ for the new Glasgow painting. All at once, it seemed as though the young artist had articulated new principles of landscape painting that were less concerned with documentary accuracy than with a fundamental understanding of the primordial forces governing its form. Contemporary critics scrambled to understand this painting, reaching for the term ‘Impressionism’ – a catch-all for anything not quite conventional in contemporary art. Only latterly did it seem possible that this was ‘obviously a post-impressionist picture … fully in spirit with some of the ideas being propagated contemporaneously by the rebellious Gauguin and his circle in France’. Although the signs were there, it has never been fully understood how and why Henry arrived at this large ambitious work. Smaller works, ‘boilers’ he called them, provide a series of clues, but these often indicate ambivalence, and the sense that the artist’s work in the preceding years could move in any of a number of directions. Although he had visited key sites – Brig-o-Turk, Cockburnspath and Kirkcudbright – the melting pots for the new Glasgow painting, Henry was no camp follower, and anxious to resolve the visual dilemmas posed by Bastien-Lepage’s Naturalism, he sought to make his mark. His ambition would be expressed in a triptych based on three of the four seasons that would resolve the conflict between direct observation and symbolic intent. To do this he turned to a popular song, On the Banks of Allan Water, taking each of its three verses as a separate theme. On the Banks of Allan WaterWhen the sweet springtime did fallWas the miller’s lovely daughter,Fairest of them all,For his bride a soldier sought her,And a winning tongue had he!On the Banks of Allan Water,None so gay as she.On the Banks of Allan Water,When brown Autumn spreads its storeThere I saw the Miller’s daughter,But she smiled no more. For the summer grief had brought herAnd her soldier, false was he;On the Banks of Allan Water,None so sad as she.On the Banks of Allan Water,When the winter snow fell fast, There I saw the Miller’s daughter;Chilling blew the blast,But the miller’s lovely daughter,Both from care and cold was free;On the Banks of Allan Water,There a corpse lay she.The popular ‘Broadside’ ballad in three stanzas that gives rise to this important sequence is thought to have been written by the gothic novelist, Matthew Lewis (1775-1818). It describes the love of a miller’s daughter who withers and dies like the flowers of spring when her soldier-lover is untrue to her. It is considered to have been one of the inspirations for Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Its afterlife includes a famous rendition by Adelina Patti, with music by Emma Raymond, sung in the 1880s and recorded in 1905, and, with an elaborated plot, On the Banks of Allan Water was used as the basis for a movie in 1916. It appears that Henry’s triptych was acquired by James Anderson Dunlop MacKean (1849-1932), future Paisley Burgh Treasurer and Honorary President of the Paisley Art Institute. His grandfather and father, William MacKean and William Muir MacKean, served as Provosts of the town (1879-1882 & 1908-1913). A director of William MacKean Ltd, the family firm of starch producers at St Mirren’s Walks, Macdowall Street, Paisley, it is possible that he commissioned the Henry series for ‘Rozelle’, the JAD MacKean family home. The commission, if such it was, may have come through James Mavor, who took over editorship of The Scottish Art Review in October 1888, from Macaulay Stevenson. Despite the fact that Henry had visited Bridge of Allan, near Stirling in December 1887 for a gathering of the Glasgow Boys at Cambuskenneth, the confluence of the Allan with the Forth at Bridge of Allan is unlikely to have had much to do with his choice of subject matter for the series - his three paintings being closely related to the girl’s decline in ‘sweet springtime’, ‘brown Autumn’ and ‘Winter snow’. Of greater significance are the connections with Henry’s recent works and the confidence this project gave him in moving forward from Lepage-centred Naturalism to a more decorative and Symbolist facture seen in later addresses to ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’. The present Spring and Autumn however, with their echoes of Lepage’s Jeanne d’Arc, should be regarded as an envoi to this earlier phase of Henry’s career. As for the prone figure in Winter, it may well be the case that Henry was aware of the Edward Burne-Jones’s Briar Rose series or indeed, John William Waterhouse’s Ophelia, a work to be shown at the Royal Academy in 1889, but these are unlikely precedents. Equally improbable is its anticipation of Giovanni Segantini’s 1891 Symbolist painting, The Punishment of Lust, (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) with its prone figures and frieze-like format. It is more probable that the artist was impressed by fellow ‘Glasgow Boy’ Alexander Roche’s Good King Wenceslas (Private Collection) of the previous year. In his own work, the mise-en-scène – a grid of vertical tree trunks punctuating a hillside and glowing – as in the present picture, had been a consistent feature for a number of years, while in his practice and in that of Roche and Macaulay Stevenson, the sinking sun and rising red-yellow moon became a familiar motif. In Winter, trees and dead fronds form a warp with the deep indigo weft of Allan Water, flowing calmly, and for ever, under its fiery moon. Romantic anthropomorphism - growth and decay, a river-run, a music of time, in tune with human forms and feelings. More than simply ‘illustrative’ of a popular air, this is nature’s poetic requiem for lost love, and the key turning point in Henry’s career. We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for writing this catalogue entry.
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) THE MEADOW Signed, watercolour 27cm x 38cm (10.5in x 15in) La Société des Beaux-Arts, Glasgow A label verso states that this watercolour was purchased from Alex Reid for £35
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) BY THE WAYSIDE, BARR Signed, inscribed and dated 1895, oil on panel (35cm x 24cm (14in x 9.5in))
George Henry, RA RSA RSW, Scottish 1858-1943- Portrait of Reverend Frederic Chase, Bishop of Ely, seated, wearing clerical dress; watercolour on paper, signed, dated, and dedicated 'TO MRS. CHASE / FROM GEORGE HENRY / 1925' (upper left), 29.5 x 23 cm. Provenance: Private Collection, UK. Note: The present work is presumably a posthumous portrait of Reverend Chase (1853-1925), commissioned in 1925 by his wife, and conceived from a photograph. Chase served as the Bishop of Ely from 1905 until his resignation in 1924, and is here fittingly pictured in his clerical dress. Henry was one of the last surviving members of the Glasgow Boys, alongside William York Macgregor (1855-1923), James Paterson (1854-1932), James Guthrie (1859-1930), Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933).
GEORGE HENRY (SCOTTISH 1858-1943)PORTRAIT OF A BOY IN A FUR COAT, FULL-LENGTH, STANDING BY A CHAIR IN AN INTERIOROil on canvasSigned and dated 1896 (upper right)125 x 67cm
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) SUSSEX LANDSCAPE With the Artist's Trustees stamp verso, watercolour (20cm x 24.5cm (8in x 9.75in)) Exhibited: George Henry Memorial Exhibition, 1944
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) FEEDING THE SWANS Signed, oil on canvas (51cm x 61cm (20in x 24in)) Footnote: Note: This delightful pair of oil paintings are replete with an air of easy summer leisure. Both pictures implement George Henry’s distinctive, rich palette which seems almost to radiate heat. The paintings, which appear to represent the same bridge from alternate perspectives, offer a unique insight into the artist’s commitment to his subject-matter through a thorough exploration of composition and technique. Henry has constructed an absorbing interplay of dynamics between his figures, catalysed by the contemplative, observant figure on the far left of each composition. An interest in the interrelationships between his subjects is also evident in this attractive watercolour, which exemplifies Henry’s ability to wield the medium using delicate, feathery brushwork to bring a composition to life. George Henry studied at Glasgow School of Art in the early 1880s. He relocated to Kirkcudbright to refine his practice, then spent nineteen months working and travelling in Japan, an experience that impacted his painting profoundly. He is remembered today as one of the most prominent members of the Glasgow school.
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) THE BRIDGE Signed, oil on canvas (51cm x 61cm (20in x 24in)) Footnote: Exhibited: Royal Academy 1932, no.61 Note: This delightful pair of oil paintings are replete with an air of easy summer leisure. Both pictures implement George Henry’s distinctive, rich palette which seems almost to radiate heat. The paintings, which appear to represent the same bridge from alternate perspectives, offer a unique insight into the artist’s commitment to his subject-matter through a thorough exploration of composition and technique. Henry has constructed an absorbing interplay of dynamics between his figures, catalysed by the contemplative, observant figure on the far left of each composition. An interest in the interrelationships between his subjects is also evident in this attractive watercolour, which exemplifies Henry’s ability to wield the medium using delicate, feathery brushwork to bring a composition to life. George Henry studied at Glasgow School of Art in the early 1880s. He relocated to Kirkcudbright to refine his practice, then spent nineteen months working and travelling in Japan, an experience that impacted his painting profoundly. He is remembered today as one of the most prominent members of the Glasgow school.
Watercolor and gouache on paper, signed 'George Henry' center right. 16 1/2 x 8 in. (sight), 22 x 13 1/4 in. (frame). Exhibited: The Scottish Arts Council, Henry and Hornel Visit Japan, December 1978-June 1979. Property from the Collection of Gloria and Richard Manney, NY
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943) AUTUMN BY THE LAKE, GALLOWAY Signed, oil on canvas (61cm x 51cm (24in x 20in)) Footnote: Provenance: Ian MacNicol, Glasgow Note: Glasgow Boy artist George Henry painted some of his most successful compositions in Galloway, having been encouraged to try painting there by his close-friend and artistic collaborator Edward Atkinson Hornel. The two artists also travelled together to Japan, spending eighteen months exploring, learning and innovating their individual painting techniques in response to their discoveries there. A quintessentially elegant scene by Henry, Autumn by the Lake, Galloway deploys some of the key features of his celebrated approach: rich colour, and a slight flattening of the picture plane, to allow for more focus on the decorative effects of colour and pattern. Our Edwardian lady with her russet hair and draping cloak appears gazing out over a serene lake, her elegance mirrored in the bevy of swans, with their gracefully arching necks, gliding across the gentle pool. The late afternoon autumnal colours are rich and warm, with the oranges and greens offset by the rippling cool blue of the water.
GEORGE HENRY RA RSA RSW (1858-1943) Study for Picture for His Imperial Majesty, The Emperor of Japan no.2 signed and dated ‘George Henry/1928’ (lower left); signed and inscribed to artist’s label (verso) watercolour 36 x 53 cm. (14 3/16 x 20 7/8 in.)
GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W.,(SCOTTISH 1858-1943) SWAN LAKE Signed and dated 1919, watercolour 56cm x 23cm (22in x 9in) and a companion, a pair 'The bluebell wood' (2)
BINDINGS - Alfred W. DRAYSON. Sporting Scenes Amongst The Kaffirs of South Africa. London: G. Routledge, 1858. 8vo. 10 engraved plates. Contemporary calf (rebacked, boards rubbed). Provenance: "George Henry W. Hervey from his sincere friend W. Cavendish on his leaving Eton Easter 1860" (inscription). With 9 other bindings including Adolphe Lalauze's Sophie Arnould. Actress and Wit (Paris, 1898). (10)
(ATTRIB.) GEORGE HENRY (British, 1858-1943) Two Ladies Smelling Flowers watercolour 21 x 14cm PROVENANCE: Purchased in Hobart c.1971 Private collection, Melbourne
Attrib. GEORGE HENRY (British, 1858-1943) Two Ladies Smelling Flowers watercolour 21 x 14cm PROVENANCE: Purchased in Hobart c.1971 Private collection, Melbourne
GEORGE HENRY RA, RSA, RSW (1858 - 1943, Scottish) WILLIAM ROBERTSON Half length portrait, signed oil on canvas dated 1916 and Mrs Robertson, half length portrait, signed oil on canvas dated 1921, 102 x 75cm (40 x 29 1/2") and 102 x 77cm (40 x 30 1/4"), (2) Mr Robertson - James McClure label, verso and labelled George Henry, 26 Alba Place, Chelsea, London, SW Mrs Robertson inscribed verso for Mr Frank Robertson William Robertson (1832 - 1919) founded William Robertson & Company Limited in 1852. The Gem Line Shipping Company began with schooners and steamships sailing around the Firth of Clyde and Western Isles. Later they diversified into trading commodities such as coal and limestone dealing with European ports, several ships were lost in the First and Second World Wars. Frank Robertson was the grandson of William Robertson.
