Art lovers show colour of their money as exhibition creates Glasgow Boys revival

Published on Sunday 13 September 2009 22:09

A MINI-BOOM is in prospect in the art market for works by the artists known as the Glasgow Boys, according to gallery chiefs and auction experts.

A rising tide of interest and sales is expected to follow a historic exhibition of their century-old pictures which opens at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery next spring, and moves on to London.

Three of the best-known private galleries specialising in Scottish art are now staging selling exhibitions of work by Glasgow Boys artists to coincide with the Kelvingrove show, The Scotsman has learned.

Major books on the artists are back in print and a BBC documentary on the late 19th century painters such as John Lavery, George Henry, James Guthrie and EA Hornel, is in preparation.

"It is very difficult to make discoveries from this period, but I'm sure a few will come on to the market," said Guy Peploe, director of The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh.

Last year, Henry's painting Playmates sold at Sotheby's for 401,300 to a private UK collector. The work will feature in the Kelvingrove exhibition.

"If you look at that, it has already started," said Andre Zlattinger, Sotheby's head of Scottish art. "The Kelvingrove show will hopefully open everyone's eyes."

At the same time experts warn people not to expect to find a fortune in any Glasgow Boys work. Quality paintings from their heyday are thin on the ground, and the art market recession will temper any price boom.

The Glasgow Boys are described as a loose group of up to 25 artists, with a core of about half that number, including WY Macgregor, James Paterson, Joseph Crawhall, Alexander Roche, EA Walton, David Gauld and Arthur Melville. They rejected the highly finished style of the Scottish art establishment in Edinburgh for their more naturalistic west coast approach.

The Kelvingrove show includes about 140 pictures, many barely seen publicly since they were painted. It will move on to the Sackler Galleries in the Royal Academy in London.

"It is a marvellous coup for Scotland," said Lord MacFarlane of Bearsden, chief of the exhibition committee. "It will do a huge amount for Scottish art in general, and the Glasgow Boys in particular."

The prestigious Bourne Fine Art gallery is showing about 35 paintings, both loaned and on sale, in Edinburgh, Belfast, and London. They include works by Lavery, whose prices have topped 1 million.

"The supply is a little thin of the really good works," said director Patrick Bourne.