Peter Howson: Monumental Figures and Modern Masculinity
Peter Howson chose to work on a monumental scale reminiscent of traditional history painting. But rather than kings, generals or heroic episodes from the past, Howson populated his paintings with brawlers, workers and figures drawn from the margins of contemporary urban life.
He consciously subverted the traditions of history painting by elevating these subjects to heroic proportions. Howson drew upon his own experiences in the military and working as a bouncer in Glasgow city-centre bars. Lifting figures from memory, he transformed them into exaggerated character archetypes through which he examined aggression, vulnerability and some of the most destructive aspects of masculinity.
The acerbic social commentary of Weimar-era artists including Max Beckmann and Otto Dix provides an important reference point, yet Howson's work is also filled with pathos. His characters can possess a tragic heroism. They are not simply embodiments of violent systems but, frequently, victims of them too.
Peter Howson as a War Artist
In 1992, Howson was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to record the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the following year he became an official British war artist in Bosnia. The experience had a profound impact on him and subsequently fed into some of the darkest imagery of his career.
Later works also introduced increasingly explicit religious imagery following Howson's conversion to Christianity in 2000.
Ken Currie: From Industrial Glasgow to the Human Body
Born in 1960, Ken Currie graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1983. His work is typically dark and confrontational. Deeply aware of the traditions of Western art, Currie has drawn inspiration from artists including Goya and Velázquez. Like Francis Bacon, he has also been fascinated by the capacity of the human face and body to express trauma, pain and psychological states.
Currie's early work was heavily informed by his childhood in Glasgow's declining industrial landscape. His paintings observed people and ways of life that seemed to be disappearing as the city changed. They also engaged critically with the social and political upheavals affecting working-class Glasgow during the 1980s.
The imagery could be unflinching and occasionally grotesque, yet it was also multilayered and, at times, unexpectedly romantic.
Mortality, Ageing and the Body
Currie's later work moved increasingly towards the human body at both a physical and metaphysical level. Often characterised by a ghostly luminosity, these paintings examine illness, ageing, injury and mortality, using the body to pose broader questions about what it means to be human.
The Glasgow of Currie's early paintings may have gradually receded, but his interest in vulnerability, power and the physical condition of humanity remained.
Steven Campbell
Steven Campbell followed a rather different path to art. Born in Glasgow, he initially worked as a maintenance engineer in a steelworks before attending Glasgow School of Art as a mature student, becoming one of the leading Scottish figurative painters of his generation.
After graduating in 1982, Campbell won a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York. He worked from a Brooklyn studio until 1986, a period that helped establish his international reputation while bringing greater attention to contemporary Scottish painting. Campbell's influences ranged widely, from literary fiction and murder mysteries to children's book illustration. His paintings often resemble scenes extracted from elaborate stories, yet those stories stubbornly refuse to resolve themselves.
Figures perform unexplained actions in theatrical landscapes; objects seem laden with significance; events appear to be taking place just beyond our understanding. Campbell described himself as a kind of “director, writer and producer” of these worlds. Figures recur between paintings almost like a repertory cast, but the viewer is rarely given enough information to establish a conventional narrative. That ambiguity is part of their fascination. Campbell died in 2007, aged just 54.
Adrian Wiszniewski: Dreamlike Landscapes and Languorous Figures
Adrian Wiszniewski was born in Glasgow in 1958 and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1979 to 1983. His work occupies another distinctive corner of the New Glasgow Boys story.
An oblique, poetic exploration of burgeoning sexuality frequently appears in Wiszniewski's paintings, often accompanied by an undercurrent of melancholia. Like Steven Campbell, he developed a highly theatrical approach to composition. His paintings can be monumental in scale, with elongated figures occupying strange, Arcadian landscapes that feel closer to stage sets or dreams than recognisable places.
Wiszniewski became particularly known for his depictions of languorous young men. These figures often share similar features and can be interpreted as forms of alter ego for the artist. Symbolism seems to be everywhere, but its precise meaning remains elusive. The effect is peculiar and compelling: we seem to have stumbled into someone else's dream without being given the key to interpret it.
What Did the New Glasgow Boys Have in Common?
Calling Campbell, Currie, Howson and Wiszniewski a group can disguise just how different their paintings are.
Howson's muscular urban figures bear little resemblance to Wiszniewski's elongated dreamers. Campbell constructed elaborate fictional worlds, while Currie increasingly turned towards mortality and the physical vulnerability of the body.
Yet several ideas connect their work. All four placed the human figure at the centre of ambitious contemporary painting. They were willing to work on a scale traditionally associated with history painting, while replacing its conventional heroes and narratives with subjects drawn from modern experience, imagination and psychology.
They also demonstrated that figurative painting did not have to mean retreating into the past. Instead, the figure became a vehicle through which contemporary artists could investigate politics, masculinity, sexuality, mortality, memory and identity.
The Vigorous Imagination: New Scottish Art in 1987
A defining moment came in 1987 with The Vigorous Imagination: New Scottish Art, presented at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art during the Edinburgh International Festival. The exhibition showcased 17 young artists who were attracting increasing attention within the international art world.
Campbell, Currie, Howson and Wiszniewski appeared alongside a much broader generation that included sculptor David Mach, artists Calum Colvin and Ron O'Donnell, and painters including Sam Ainsley, Philip Braham, Gwen Hardie, Ian Hughes, Keith McIntyre, June Redfern, Mario Rossi, Joseph Urie and Kate Whiteford. Its significance extended beyond the four painters who had become known as the New Glasgow Boys.
Together, these artists demonstrated that contemporary art in Scotland was not a peripheral story. A new generation was producing ambitious work capable of taking its place on an international stage.
Why Do the New Glasgow Boys Matter?
The New Glasgow Boys form part of a much larger transformation in Scottish art during the closing decades of the twentieth century.
Their emergence helped challenge assumptions about what contemporary Scottish painting could look like. Landscape and still life remained important traditions, but here was a generation placing large-scale figures, difficult social subjects, imagined worlds and psychological unease at the centre of the canvas.
Their international success also helped focus attention on Glasgow as a city capable of producing significant contemporary artists. The generation that followed would be very different again, but the remarkable concentration of talent around Glasgow School of Art during the 1980s remains one of the defining chapters of modern Scottish art.
Collecting the New Glasgow Boys
Works by Peter Howson, Ken Currie, Steven Campbell and Adrian Wiszniewski continue to appear at auction, ranging from drawings and works on paper to major large-scale paintings.
As with any artist, value can vary considerably according to the work. Specialists consider factors including date, medium, scale, subject, provenance, exhibition history and condition, as well as the importance of a work within an artist's wider career.
For collectors, understanding when a work was made can be particularly revealing. The New Glasgow Boys developed substantially after their emergence in the 1980s, and an early work may occupy a very different position within an artist's career from paintings made decades later. Lyon & Turnbull's specialists regularly research and value works by the New Glasgow Boys and other leading figures in Modern and Contemporary Scottish Art.
