Born in Australia, E. A. Hornel immigrated to Kirkcudbright, Scotland, as a young boy. Although he attended art school in Edinburgh and completed his training in Antwerp, he eventually re-joined his parents in Kirkcudbright and became part of a constellation of artists working there during the 1880s and 1890s. The self-described 'Glasgow Boys' formed the loosely affiliated Glasgow School that took inspiration from James McNeill Whistler and collectively resisted the dominance of London and Edinburgh over the fin-de-siècle art scene. Hornel formed a particular friendship with George Henry, whose Blowing Dandelions is also in the collection and, like Flower Market, Nagasaki, reflects the group’s tendency to emphasize shape and colour over realism, in a manner sympathetic to impressionism and postimpressionism.