While lacking qualifications as an artist, such was James Guthrie's talent he became a leading member of the Glasgow Boys, an influential movement in Scottish art during the late nineteenth century. His realistic depictions of rural life became key markers for a generation of painters who responded to trends set by French masters.
Born in Greenock, this son of an evangelical church minister originally studied law at Glasgow University before abandoning his course in 1877 and turning to art. He was initially rejected, though, by the conservative Glasgow Arts Club (GAC), then a minor counterpart to Edinburgh's august Royal Scottish Academy (RSA).
At the time, this institution dominated Scottish cultural life. Yet within a few years, Guthrie found himself at the heart of a new movement based around the west coast's fast-rising industrial powerhouse that rebelled against the RSA's fustiness.
Instead, one of his main inspirations was the French realism movement that included figures such as Jean-François Millet and Jules Bastien-Lepage, already popular among some Scottish collectors. These realists chose to depict their nation's peasant class in a truthful, unsentimental fashion and were committed to painting, or at least sketching, from life.
James Guthrie (1859–1930) 
Guthrie adopted both their subject matter and preference for working en plein air, while from Bastien-Lepage, he also adopted his use of earthy tones and square brushstrokes, varying his patterns to create effects such as distance. This became more pronounced following his visit to Paris in 1882. The Scottish painter also adopted another of the French master's habits, always carrying a sketchbook on his travels.
While several of his peers travelled to France to learn from such stars first hand, in his early career, Guthrie based himself in London, where he could see realist works on show while also closely studying the practice of James Whistler. From one of the most popular portraitists of his time, Guthrie adopted his placement of figures and use of patterned backgrounds to add interest.
Yet it was depicting the countryside that united the Glasgow Boys. From 1879, with friends such as Edward Arthur Walton, who studied at Glasgow School of Art, and Joseph E. Crawhall, Guthrie spent summers around Scotland sketching its countryside, starting at Rosneath on the Clyde coast. Favoured scenes included country lanes and cultivated fields with farm labourers. Often, Guthrie made pencil drawings that he later worked up into large oil paintings during the winter months.
Another inspiration taken from France was the ambition of Guthrie and other artists to create an artists' colony in their home country, just as their French peers had at locales such as Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing. In 1883, he and Walton based themselves at Cockburnspath, Berwickshire, where they resided, on and off, for the next three years. During the summer, the village and surrounding countryside attracted several artists who painted en plein air.
At the beginning of the 1880s, Guthrie was elected a member of the GAC, even though he was still developing his style, something aided by undertaking a series of experimental genre works under the guidance of London-based Scot John Pettie, with whom he was apprenticed from 1879 to 1881. One such is A Gallant of the Terror, Guthrie's historical representation of a French revolutionary.
Over the next few years, his brushwork became more confident – those solid brushstrokes loosening and growing more fluid. This development can be noticed two years later in one of his first portrait commissions: Margaret Helen Sowerby featured the daughter of an industrialist and shows Guthrie's debt to Whistler alongside the contemporary taste for Japanese prints.
Margaret Helen Sowerby (known as Helen Sowerby)
1882
James Guthrie (1859–1930) 
A girl from a vastly different background appears in one of the best-loved works in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh – A Hind's Daughter. A hind was a farm labourer and here Guthrie has captured the young girl just after she has harvested a cabbage.
The artist painted this scene in Cockburnspath during the winter, having chosen to stay on after many of his city pals returned to Glasgow.
Elsewhere, Guthrie applied his skill in portraiture to focus more directly on characters he met in the countryside, such as the figure represented in Old Willie: The Village Worthy, honestly depicting the Kirkcudbright resident's weather-beaten face.
The simple whitewashed wall, used as a background, reflects Willie's quiet dignity.
While oils remained essential to Guthrie, he later experimented with a more contemporary medium: pastels. These allowed him to create works quickly while applying brighter tones. Such colours especially suited the scenes of bourgeois life that were becoming of greater interest to him, notably around his new home in Helensburgh, such as picnics and pleasure cruises.
Touches of colour brought out details, while densely blended layers added texture and depth. He still found time to capture rural sights, as in the sketch Stiff Climb.
By now, Guthrie was becoming a pillar of the establishment that he had once set himself against, thanks partly to his move to portraiture. With studios in Glasgow and London, he earned an international reputation for his likenesses of academics, businessmen, socialites and politicians, including Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908), Statesman
c.1908
James Guthrie (1859–1930) 
Guthrie even joined the RSA, the institution that he had once challenged, first as an associate in 1888, before being elected president from 1902 to 1919. This august institution had opened itself to more modern ideas, while Guthrie himself was starting to be seen as one of the preeminent portrait painters of his time. A further accolade came in 1903 when he was awarded a knighthood.
James Guthrie (1859–1930) 
By some measure, the pinnacle of his career came with the prestigious commission Statesmen of World War I, a commemoration for the National Portrait Gallery, London, of leaders from the British Empire who helped the allies to victory. His friend, the American artist and fellow Whistler acolyte John Singer Sargent, had agreed to take on a similar project to celebrate First World War army generals and suggested his friend Guthrie for this associated work.
Although the Scottish painter initially declined what promised to be a tricky assignment, at that point due to feature 16 politicians, including prime ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, in 1919 he assented. During early discussions, Guthrie suggested the Maharajah of Bikaner should represent India alongside his peers, to which the artist's patrons agreed.
James Guthrie (1859–1930) 
Guthrie then spent £1,000 to increase the height of his studio to allow in more diffuse light (the NPG would also raise its main gallery's ceiling to accommodate the monumental four-metre-high work), before embarking on a series of life studies between 1919 and 1921. Although under pressure to complete the work, Guthrie struggled with ill health and also visited Spain and the Netherlands, to research ways of incorporating important figures in group portraits.
Sri Ganga Singh Bahadur (1880–1943), the Maharaja of Bikaner, Statesman
1918–1930
James Guthrie (1859–1930) 
His finished work was finally displayed in spring 1930, months before he died in September of that year. Even at its unveiling, Statesmen... divided critics, with some preferring Guthrie's original life studies that separately toured Scotland. Other commentators regarded the work as the crowning achievement of his distinguished career.
Nowadays, such portraits of the great and good are less loved than depictions of ordinary people. One example can be found in Aberdeen Art Gallery, which recently ran children's workshops titled Guthrie's Goslings, inspired by one of the best-loved Glasgow Boys works – To Pastures New. Its young girl herding geese arguably contains more character than 17 statesmen in their stern poses.
Chris Mugan, writer
This content was funded by the PF Charitable Trust
