Edward Atkinson Hornel
Early Years and
Training
Edward Atkinson Hornel was born in Australia in 1864. His parents,
a Scottish couple from Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, had
emigrated there 7 years previously. For unknown reasons, shortly
before Edward's second birthday the family left Australia and
returned to Scotland. Hornel attended school in Kirkcudbright where
he demonstrated a natural talent for drawing. Recognising his
potential, his mother, widowed when her son was 15, decided that he
should attend art school.
He was sent to the Trustee's Academy in Edinburgh in 1880 but the
traditional teaching there left him uninspired and frustrated.
After completing 3 years there he travelled to Belgium with fellow
students - W S MacGeorge and William Walls - to continue his
training at the Academie des Beaux Arts in Antwerp where, by
contrast, he found his passion for painting encouraged. He studied
there for almost two years and then returned home to Scotland. He
rented a studio in Glasgow but chose to settle in his hometown of
Kirkcudbright. Kirkcudbright remained his home for the rest of his
life, but he travelled abroad, first to Japan in 1894 with George
Henry, and later to Ceylon, Australia, America and elsewhere with
his sister Elizabeth ('Tizzie').
Friendship with George
Henry
During the years that Hornel had been training the group of
artists known as the Glasgow Boys had been forming. Amongst their
number was George Henry. Hornel was introduced to Henry soon
after his return to Scotland and they struck up a close friendship
which centred around their art. They worked closely together
visiting each others' studios and exchanging ideas and constructive
criticism on each others' work. Working this way the two artists
encouraged each other to experiment and with the work that resulted
they were to lead the Glasgow Boys into their most innovative and
controversial phase.
Up until this time, the Glasgow Boys had been working mainly in a
naturalistic manner inspired by the French artist Bastien-Lepage.
Hornel also began working in this style but increasingly he and
Henry became interested in the decorative possibilities of
painting. They began to focus their attention on the canvas
surface; on the creation of textures and pattern and the design of
a composition. Gradually, the creation of form and a sense of
perspective and even subject matter itself came to be of secondary
importance to them.
Their handling of paint became broader and large areas of flat
colour appeared in their paintings. On two paintings that they
collaborated on, they went so far as to apply gold leaf to areas of
the canvas. The resulting works were very two-dimensional in
appearance and, in parts, quite abstract.
Colour
Colour had an important role to play in the decorative focus of
Hornel's work and colour was certainly his great interest and
strength. He had a brilliant and unique sense of colour and used
bold harmonies which give his work a very distinctive appearance.
He was influenced by the experiments in colour of French artist
Monticelli who was enjoying considerable popularity amongst British
artists at this time. Hornel also spoke of his admiration for Ford
Maddox Brown's use of colour.
Subject Matter
With regards to subject matter, Hornel was at first influenced by
the subject choices of Jules Bastien-Lepage and his followers
amongst the Glasgow Boys who mainly painted scenes from everyday
rural life - humble figures going about their work on the land.
Lepage in particular, tended to use high horizon lines in these
scenes which had the effect of enclosing his figures, giving them a
certain psychological intensity. Both Hornel and Henry were
interested in this symbolist effect but of even more interest to
them was the way in which it opened up the opportunity to explore
the decorative. The enclosing nature of the high horizon made it
easier to do away with perspective and focus on patterns and
textures.
Woodland scenes allowed Hornel to avoid horizon lines altogether
and to explore the contrasts and patterns of the vertical tree
trunks against the surrounding foliage. He nearly always chose to
include figures in these scenes, mostly young women and girls who
become trapped in, and merged with, his mosaics of colour. This
theme of groups of young girls within nature preoccupied him for
the rest of his career.
Summer
In 1891 Hornel completed a painting called Summer. This painting
was to raise his profile significantly and is regarded as one of
the most important and controversial paintings produced by the
Glasgow Boys. It features two girls playing in a clearing amongst
trees. The rich colours of their hair and clothing are repeated all
across the canvas in the vegetation that surrounds them so that the
whole is a mosaic of texture and colour.
The painting was shown in Glasgow in 1892 and received
considerable praise. However, it received quite a different
reaction from the Liverpool public when it was exhibited there with
work by other of the Glasgow Boys later that same year. Many of the
works in the show were criticised for their failure to capture a
likeness to what is seen in nature and Summer was singled out as
the strongest example of this pursuit of the decorative. The
controversy heightened when it was announced that the Walker Art
Gallery intended to buy the painting. When it did, Summer became
the first major work by one of the Glasgow boys to be bought by a
British public collection.
The following year Hornel and Henry decided to travel to Japan
together. Their intent was to learn more about Japanese art and
culture and to spend some time painting there. It was a productive
time for Hornel and even after his return to Scotland he continued
to work with the studies he had made there. In 1895 he held a very
successful solo exhibition of this body of work.
Later Years
By the mid 1890s Hornel had achieved considerable critical acclaim
and was enjoying success. However, his work continued to elude the
interest of many potential patrons. His decorative experiments were
still ahead of public taste which favoured a more realist style. In
order to achieve financial success he felt he needed to broaden the
appeal of his work and a change is evident in his work from this
period on. Form and subject matter began to take a more prominent
role again. He continued to paint young girls in nature but now
they became more distinct from their backgrounds, occupying their
own space. Their activities became increasingly frivolous, instead
of engaging in, or resting from, the everyday tasks of rural life
they now chased butterflies and pored over flowers.
These works were popular and they did bring the desired financial
success he sought. In the following years Hornel spent less and
less time with Henry and, giving up his studio in Glasgow, he
worked in increasing isolation in Kirkcudbright. He also began now
to use photography as an aid to his work: He had local children
pose for photographs for him and would later transfer these poses
on to his canvases in the studio. He would use the same photographs
for several works so that the same pose was often
repeated.
Hornel's experimental period was at an end and his work eventually
descended into something quite repetitive and formulaic and given
the commercial success of these works this is not surprising.
Unfortunately however, the resulting volume of work in this later
style has tended to overshadow the brilliant and innovative work of
his early career.
By this time, his interests were moving towards a project which
was to preoccupy him for the rest of life, and which was financed
by his continuing commercial success as a painter. In 1901 he had
purchased Broughton House in Kirkcudbright, to which he later added
a gallery and studio designed by the Glasgow architect, John
Keppie. From 1920 and with the support of Thomas Fraser, publisher
and book collector himself, Hornel resolved to create a Dumfries
and Galloway Library in Broughton House, containing books either
written about the three counties of Wigtownshire, the Stewartry of
Kirkcudbright and Dumfriesshire, or written by authors from this
area. By the time of his death in 1933, a very large collection had
been gathered together, including perhaps the best private
collection of Robert Burns' works. Under the terms of his will he
left the house and library to the people of the Stewartry of
Kirkcudbright under trustees. The Hornel Trust came into operation
on the death of his sister Tizzie in 1950. Broughton House is now
managed by the National Trust for Scotland, and re-opened to the
public last year following a major programme of building
refurbishment works and conservation of the collections.
