£11,250
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture | 603
Auction: 15 July 2020 at 18:00 BST
Signed, oil on canvas
Provenance: Ian MacNicol, Glasgow
Note: Glasgow Boy artist George Henry painted some of his most successful compositions in Galloway, having been encouraged to try painting there by his close-friend and artistic collaborator Edward Atkinson Hornel. The two artists also travelled together to Japan, spending eighteen months exploring, learning and innovating their individual painting techniques in response to their discoveries there. A quintessentially elegant scene by Henry, ‘Autumn by the Lake, Galloway’ deploys some of the key features of his celebrated approach: rich colour, and a slight flattening of the picture plane, to allow for more focus on the decorative effects of colour and pattern. Our Edwardian lady with her russet hair and draping cloak appears gazing out over a serene lake, her elegance mirrored in the bevy of swans, with their gracefully arching necks, gliding across the gentle pool. The late afternoon autumnal colours are rich and warm, with the oranges and greens offset by the rippling cool blue of the water.