‘Amusement’ by A E Hornel, oil on canvas

This painting shows two rosy-cheeked girls playing with a red admiral butterfly in a flower filled garden by the sea.

Literature: The Scottish artist Ernest (aka Edward) Atkinson Hornel was born in Australia but his parents returned to Scotland shortly after and he studied at the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh from 1881-1883 and Antwerp under Verlat in 1887. He was a founding member of the ‘Glasgow Boys’, artist-followers of Jules Bastien-Lepage, the French ‘plein-air’ painter. He began exhibiting in Glasgow from 1890 and showed 103 works over the years.

He also collaborated closely with his friend George Henry, with whom he shared ideas and a studio. Here, they created modern paintings concentrating on the decorative effects of the inter-relationship of colour.

In 1892, the pair visited Japan. On their return in 1893-4, they produced paintings of Japanese subjects in the ‘Glasgow Style’ which, in time, developed into local images, typically of girls in idyllic floral and woodland settings, full of dappled colour and light. Hornel’s paintings of this period display his contemporary success and popularity. In 1904 he was granted the prestige of becoming a member of the Royal Insititue of Oil Painters.

Signed/Inscribed: Signed and dated 1908