ONE hundred years ago George Henry was writing to his friend E. A.
Hornel in Kirkcudbright about a visit to Stirling and conversations with
a third member of the Glasgow Boys, William Kennedy.
''I had a pretty tough time of it . . . The Kurnel (Kennedy) was
pretty stinking in his remarks about Art generally. He seems to have his
knife in you about something or other. He talked a lot of D ---d rot and
seems to have nothing in his head but 'material.' He says that creative
work is easy. The difficult thing to do is to paint Material. Bl--y fool
he is ! I told him in the heat of debate that his work for the last four
years had been Bl---y rot.''
Thus the lively relationships of the Glasgow School, and one painter's
opinion of the work of another. Yet Kennedy had only just exhibited his
''Stirling Station'' at the Glasgow Institute, a work that may fall
short of greatness, but only just. In Roger Billcliffe's view, Kennedy
was never again able to synthesise so well the differing aspects of
French and Scottish painting, together with the influence of Whistler.
It is certainly not ''rot.'' Indeed Henry's judgment is harsh when one
considers that Kennedy remained an equal among them until the last.
Of the 20-odd artists who made up the Glasgow School we number four or
five as great -- certainly James Guthrie, Arthur Melville, John Lavery,
E. A. Walton, and George Henry. We can acknow-
ledge their frequent debt to French inspiration, notably
Bastien-Lepage, but even so, James Guthrie's ''A Hind's Daughter'' and
''To Pastures New'' of the early 1880s deserve the highest respect in
their own right, as do W. Y. Macgregor's ''The Vegetable Stall'' and
Lavery's ''The Tennis Party.''
They are fine paintings by European standards, and not to be confined
to a Scottish yardstick, as recent auction prices have indicated.
With William Kennedy we have an erratic and smaller talent. It is one
which has nevertheless been judged worthy of considerable comment,
starting with a typically opinionated view from James L. Caw, in his
Scottish Painting, Past and Present, 1620-1908.
He mentions Kennedy's Paris training, and names Bouguereau, Fleury,
Bastien-Lepage, Collin, and Courtois among his masters -- ''yet one
cannot say that his work shows the influence of any one of these.
Personal in merits and defects alike, it is eminently typical of his
outlook on life which is vigorous and self-reliant if somewhat deficient
in delicacy of perception and subtlety of feeling.''
Modern commentators tend to be more dismissive. William Hardie calls
Kennedy, Roche, and Millie Dow ''like most of the Glasgow School
painters ... minor figures indeed, but they briefly demonstrate the
catalytic effect which the movement had on its members.''
Kennedy's military and North African subjects, he says, are
''uniformly a bore, unfortunately.'' J. D. Fergusson, whose views on art
are often diffi-
cult disentangle from his nationalist rhetoric, gives us a clue that
Kennedy's claim to significance may be his outspoken views -- the
''rot'' that George Henry complained about to Hornel.
In Billcliffe's book on the Boys, Kennedy's life and work is woven
into the story of them all. The simplest account of his life has been
that given by Ailsa Tanner in her notable contributions to the
two-volume catalogue of the exhibition at Kelvingrove in 1968.
Kennedy was born at Hutchesontown, Glasgow, on July 17, 1859, trained
at Paisley School of Art, and joined various ateliers in Paris. By 1887
he was welcomed as head of the ''secret'' society formed by the Boys in
their reaction against London and Edinburgh.
W. Y. Macgregor wrote to James Paterson: ''Let us forget all our
differences, for if the society is to survive, let us keep down petty
rows. Kennedy will make a very good President, will be perfectly
straight and above board, and will take no end of trouble with the
affair.''
This was a period when Kennedy was painting at Stirling, his main
subjects the army camps, and he sported a waxed military moustache
himself -- the subject of many carica-
tures. He crossed by ferry to Cambuskenneth for more rural subjects,
and particularly horses.
It was at Craigmill, where Denovan Adam ran a school of animal
painting, that Kennedy probably met Lena Scott, a fellow painter (and
fortunately the daughter of a shipowner) whom he married in 1898.
In the early years of the century, Kennedy and his wife painted in
rural Berkshire, and there is some evidence that like other members of
the school (especially Lavery), photography was an aid in capturing
material. It was not the Kodak realism which distinguished the earlier
work of the Boys, however, indeed Kennedy's technique seemed to veer
away from it.
Bad health eventually took him to Tangier, where Lavery had a home,
and his later work concentrated on exotic scenes from Moorish life. He
died in 1918.
Like all judges of Kennedy's work, Ailsa Tanner mixes criticism with
enthusiasm. She ends . . . ''his best work is good by any standard and
is distinguished by a richness of tone and freshness and vivacity in the
handling of the paint, and the presence of that vital element which
makes it live for us all.''
These are welcome words for collectors with slim pockets, who cannot
command ''greatness'' yet who wish to pay their own tribute to
Scotland's painting of the past.
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