GEORGE HENRY R.A., R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1858-1943)
GEISHAS IN A GARDEN
£15,120
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale | Lots 103-196 | Thursday 05 December from 6pm
Description
Signed, watercolour
Dimensions
55cm x 34cm (21.5in x 13.5in)
Footnote
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.