SIR JAMES GUTHRIE P.R.S.A., H.R.A., R.S.W., L.L.D (SCOTTISH 1859-1930)

SIR JAMES GUTHRIE P.R.S.A., H.R.A., R.S.W., L.L.D (SCOTTISH 1859-1930)
THE STONEBREAKER
Signed and dated '95, oil on canvas
160cm x 106cm (63in x 41.75in)
Sir Frederick C Gardiner LLD, by 1924; Presented by James H Brown to Paisley Art Institute, 1948.
Exhibited: Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1924 no.141;Glasgow, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 1926, no. 107, lent by Sir Frederick C Gardiner, KBE, LLD;Newcastle Polytechnic Art Gallery, Peasantries, 1981-82, no. 58 (cover repr. in catalogue; p. 59, entry by Kenneth McConkey) and tour to Sheffield, Paisley and Aberdeen Art Galleries. Literature:Caw, James L., Sir James Guthrie, PRSE, HRA, RSW, LLD, MacMillan & Co., London, 1932, pp.43, 215 & 230; Bilcliffe, Roger, The Glasgow Boys, Frances Lincoln, London, 2008, pp.169 & 171 repr.; A Paisley Legacy: The Paisley Art Institute Collection, Centenaries Catalogue, Paisley, 2015, p.46 repr. On 8 October 1931 Sir John Lavery rose to his feet at the opening of the Sir James Guthrie Memorial Exhibition in Kelvingrove Art Gallery to pay tribute to his old friend who had died in the previous Autumn. Casting his mind back to the days when Guthrie was one of the guiding spirits among the Glasgow Boys, Lavery ‘doubted if there existed half-a-dozen of Sir James’s pictures that he didn’t struggle over to the extent of re-painting again and again after they were adjudged to be complete’.[1] Guthrie, wracked with self-doubt in his early years, was a perfectionist who failed to recognize perfection.When he, Lavery, Melville, Walton and Macaulay Stevenson were together like ‘a brotherhood of the early Christians’, Guthrie would embark on a large canvas – Fieldworkers Sheltering from a Shower, for instance, begun at Cockburnspath in 1884 - only to abandon it. Then, having managed to complete In the Orchard 1885-86 (Glasgow Museums/National Gallery of Scotland) he would embark upon the equally ambitious depiction of a wayside conversation between a stonebreaker and a farmhand riding a white horse. Begun at Kirkcudbright in 1886, this was also never resolved at the time. In 1923, in his mid-sixties, he removed the section containing the horse and completed the present monumental Stonebreaker standing at rest, straightening his back and flexing his neck muscles.[2]For many years this work has puzzled historians in its apparent references to contemporary French Realism and Naturalism. A specific relationship has been proposed to Gustave Courbet’s iconic Stone Breakers of 1849.[3] Although evidence for a possible visit to Paris in 1882 during the posthumous Courbet Retrospective Exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux Arts may never be completely confirmed, it is clear that Guthrie and his Glasgow contemporaries were profoundly influenced by recent developments that brought peasant subject matter back into focus in France and Britain in the 1880s, and for this they looked to contemporaries such as Jules Bastien-Lepage and George Clausen.[4] Breadth of handling and square brushwork, modified in the present canvas, is obvious in the small version of The Stonebreaker, also painted at this time, while it is possible that both were painted in the vicinity of Kirkcudbright, on St Mary’s Isle, the long peninsula that stretches due south of the town towards the Solway Firth.[5]   However, of the works of this year, there can be no doubt that the present monumental Stonebreaker is the most formidable. It carries a message that, to some limited extent, equates to Courbet’s programme. The motto adopted for the new Glasgow School by Macaulay Stevenson – ‘Progress and Poverty’ – seems embedded in this iconic image. We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for writing this catalogue entry.[1]         ‘A Wonderful Artist …’, The Scotsman, 9 October 1931, p. 6. The full text of Lavery’s speech is contained in the Caw Papers, National Gallery of Scotland Library.[2]          Guthrie’s model wearing a shabby felt hat and jerkin may well be the fieldhand who appears in contemporary work by George Henry and Edward Atkinson Hornel.[3]          Guthrie’s visit to Paris in 1882, (Caw 1932, p. 49), is confirmed in Macaulay Stevenson’s notes on the artist, (c. 1891, unpublished ms; private collection). Guthrie would for instance, have known of future members of the Glasgow School – Lavery, William Kennedy and Thomas Millie Dow – who had decamped to Paris in November 1881.[4]          Both Lepage and Clausen had exhibited at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.[5]          The smeared blues in the background of The Stonebreaker can be read as an estuary.