Details

Object type

watercolour

Title

Calf

Artist/Maker

Joseph Crawhall

Culture/School

Glasgow Boys

Date

1885

Materials

bodycolour and watercolour on paper

Dimensions

unframed: 165 mm x 140 mm

Description

Like the Glasgow Boys, Crawhall’s works were a reaction against the sentimental, detailed narrative paintings and dramatic landscape paintings full of literary and romantic associations that were so popular at the time. This early watercolour shows Crawhall’s interest in ordinary rural life, the effects of light, bright colour, decorative balance and a fluid, experimental application of the watercolour medium. It is not descriptive or finished in any traditional sense but gives the feel of a warm summer’s day under the trees and may well have been painted out of doors.

From 1879 James Guthrie (1859–1930), E. A. Walton (1860–1922) and Crawhall went on summer sketching trips together. They stayed in the village of Rosneath on the shores of Gare Loch in 1879 and 1880; Brig o’Turk in the Trossachs in 1880 and 1881 (in the second year meeting up with George Henry (1858–1943) who was then taking evening classes at Glasgow School of Art); Crowland in the flat fenlands of Lincolnshire in 1882; and Cockburnspath, a picturesque village near Dunbar on the east coast of Scotland in the summers of 1883 and 1884, where they were joined by not only Henry, but a much wider group of Glasgow artists. They painted out of doors in all weather, capturing local rural life, inspired by the French Naturalist painter Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848–1884). Crawhall was also influenced by the example of Arthur Melville (1855–1904) during their Cockburnspath stay, and began moving away from painting in oils to watercolours.

According to R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936), the Glasgow Boys’ aims ‘were totally dissimilar’ to Crawhall’s. It is true that unlike the other Boys, Crawhall wasn’t drawn to paint people. The human figure features prominently in much of the Glasgow Boys’ work, and many of the group were to find portraiture lucrative, but Crawhall preferred to focus on animals and birds. His friend George Denholm Armour (1864–1949) wrote: ‘He was an animal painter in the main, and a genius in the sense that he did everything in his own way, and one that no one else could follow.’ However, he shared with the Boys an interest in colour and tonal values, a decorative approach to compositional design and a tendency to suggest rather than describe form. Like the Boys he was influenced by contemporary Dutch and French art. The subject here is reminiscent of Hague School artist Willem Maris (1844–1910), who often painted cattle in pasture with lively colour and was interested in depicting the effects of light.

Glasgow shipping magnate William Burrell (1861–1958) bought this work from the dealer John Hunt on 15 November 1938 for £15.

Credit Line/Donor

Gifted by Sir William and Lady Burrell to the City of Glasgow, 1944

Collection

Burrell Collection: Pictures [Oils, Pastels and Watercolours]

ID Number

35.90

Location

In storage