Nick Curnow
21 May 2024
We are delighted to present E.A. Hornel's A Japanese Tea Garden in our June 2024 flagship Scottish Paintings & Sculpture auction.
A Japanese Tea Garden is a beautiful and rare painting from Hornel’s landmark trip to Japan in 1893-94. Moreover, it comes from a distinguished private collection and has not been seen in public since it was shown in the Scottish Arts Council’s touring exhibition Mr Henry and Mr Hornel visit Japan of 1978-79.
Hornel’s decision to travel to Japan, with his friend and fellow Glasgow Boy George Henry, was the culmination of a growing interest in the country, its culture and its art.
As Jean Walsh has explained:
“Henry and Hornel regarded Japan as the model society, one whose people embodied an enviable honesty, simplicity and spirituality, completely at one with their natural surroundings. The Boys admired what they saw as the external manifestation of this inner beauty and harmony in Japanese art.”
(Jean Walsh, ‘A Reed Shaken by the Wind: From Kirkcudbright to Japan’, Roger Billcliffe et al, Pioneering Painters: The Glasgow Boys, Culture and Sport Glasgow and the Royal Academy of Arts, 2010, pp.58-59)
Hornel himself explained the impetus behind the trip:
“A reed shaken by the wind; to those acquainted even slightly with Japanese art the words express the spirit and motif of its dainty achievements. Japanese art, rivalling in splendour the greatest art in Europe, the influence of which is now fortunately being felt in all the new movements in Europe, engenders the desire to see and study the environment out of which this great art sprung, to become personally in touch with the people, to live their life and discover the source of their inspiration.”
E. A. Hornel, lecture for the Corporation Art Galleries, Glasgow, 9 February 1895, quoted by Walsh, op.cit., p.59
With financial support from the art dealer Alexander Reid and ship-owner and collector William Burrell, both of Glasgow, Hornel and Henry set sail from Liverpool in February 1893 and arrived in Nagasaki in April; they were to return to Scotland after eighteen months away. As Europeans, they were required by law to live in within the confines of the ‘Concessions’. However, by working as house agents for some time, they were able to gain access to wider aspects of the country and its residents.
Hornel delighted in direct contact with Japanese culture and the trip proved to be a turning-point in his oeuvre. As can be seen in A Japanese Tea Garden, he revelled in the customs, clothing and decorative schemes that he witnessed. Richly evocative paintings, teeming with luminous colour and beguiling detail were realised in thickly applied oil paint, and met a triumphant reception when exhibited at Reid’s gallery La Société des Beaux-Arts in 1895. All but one of the forty-four works sold. The critic of the Glasgow Evening News exclaimed:
“Though lust of the eye is his first and last consideration he has deigned to be more intelligible in form and incident than ever before; and to most people, we fancy, those scenes of a sunny and apparently happy land of tearooms, gardens, cherry blossoms…dancing girls, samisens and junks will have even a literary appeal…There is not in the collection a single picture commonplace or feeble. They are all without exception strong, original, impressive, balanced and complete.” (Glasgow Evening News, 25 April 1895). Such was the impact of the trip that Hornel returned to Japan in 1922 and established a garden in the Japanese style at his home, Broughton House in Kirkcudbright.
Mr Henry and Mr Hornel Visit Japan catalogue for the touring exhibition of 1978-79 featuring A Japanese Tea Garden (no.81 / EH50)
A Japanese Tea Garden is also of note in regard to Hornel’s use of photography to inform his imagery. Antonia Laurence Allen has explained that the hair styles, profiles, the little table, lanterns and kakemono which appear in it were all popular features used in contemporary photographs of Japanese landscapes and interiors. (emails to Alice Strang of 3 and 29 April 2024).
She continues:
“He was more of a compositor, taking bits he wanted from a variety of photos he took or composed while out in Japan and those he purchased from commercial photographers, like Ogawa and Tammamura…He would have also seen Ogawa’s books. He knew the commercial photographers and he knew William Burton who worked with Ogawa on publications. Hornel and Henry joined the photo society of Japan in 1893 when they arrived and both Ogawa and Burton were members. Hornel certainly would have seen images by Ogawa that were published in Scenes from Everyday Life (1893) and Views of Tokyo in Collotype (1896). (Antonia Laurence Allen, op.cit.)
Ben Reiss has elaborated further, stating:
“There are direct links between poses in a good number of the photos and poses in lots of paintings, showing pretty conclusively that the photos he took or collected in Japan were crucial to his artistic success. You can go further, and state that it was really his exposure to photography in Japan that properly opened his eyes to the potential of the camera for his art (although he was using painting from photos before his trip).” (email to Alice Strang of 3 October 2023)
A Japanese Tea Garden formerly belonged to William Davidson (1861-1945), a Glasgow-based businessman and great patron of the arts. His collection came to include work by ‘The Four’, namely Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, Frances Macdonald MacNair and James Herbert MacNair, as well as many of the ‘Glasgow Boys’ including George Henry, E. A. Hornel, W. Y. McGregor and E. A. Walton. David was a particular supporter of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and John Quinton Pringle. Many important works from this collection are now in the holdings of the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow.
Further works by Hornel from the 1893-94 trip to Japan can be found in public collections, including the National Galleries of Scotland, Fleming Collection, National Trust for Scotland, Yale Center for British Art, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.
We are grateful to Marianne Fossaluzza, University of Aberdeen, Antonia Laurence Allen, National Trust for Scotland and Ben Reiss, Historic Environment Scotland, for their help with our research.
