Fine_Art_Society

The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh
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Edward Arthur WALTON RSA 1860 – 1922
Pastoral, 1891 signed, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inch

By Courtesy of Fine Art Society in Edinburgh

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Edward Arthur Walton: Pastoral, 1891 signed, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inch

In 1880s Glasgow, the second city of the Empire was financially rich but culturally impoverished. Within a decade, the city had produced some of the most avant-garde artists working in Britain – of whom E A Walton was one. During the period 1885- 1895, the Glasgow Boys were a cohesive group painting in a style and using subjects entirely different from their predecessors and most of their contemporaries. Trained in Europe and exhibiting there as well as London and America, the internationalism of Scottish painting in the twentieth century, particularly the Colourists, stems from the Glasgow Boys’ far reaching success.
As one of the first painters from the west of Scotland to adopt the rural naturalism of Bastien-Lepage, Walton’s shepherds and cowherds were among his earliest motifs.