Edward Atkinson Hornel

Edward Atkinson Hornel ( born July 11, 1864 in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia, † June 30, 1933 in Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland) was a Scottish painter of the late Impressionism and important representative of the Glasgow Boys, a group of artists from the 19th and early 20th century.

Life and work

Edward Atkinson Hornel was born in Australia, where his Scottish parents had emigrated. After his birth, they returned to their homes in Kirkcudbright in Scotland back to where Hornel childhood and youth spent. Hornel studied for three years at the Trustees ' Academy, an art school in Edinburgh, and two years with William Stewart MacGeorge at Charles Verlat in Antwerp.

In 1885 he returned to Scotland and met George Henry know. Both the Glasgow Boys joined in, a group of artists that emerged in the 1870s at the Glasgow School of Art, and from 1890 to about 1910 had a major influence on the art scene. To key members included William York MacGregor, Joseph Crawhall, James Guthrie, Edward Arthur Walton and James Paterson. Closer friends Hornel was with Thomas Morton Corsan.

Hornel and Henry shared a studio and collaborated on folk paintings such as Druids Bringing in the Mistletoe, a polychrome priest procession with gold. Hornel also dealt with texture effects produced by roughening, coloring and straightening. 1892 bought the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the painting Summer. It was the first image of Glagow Boys, which came in a public collection.

From 1893 to 1894 Hornel and Henry spent one and a half years in Japan, where Hornel learned much about decorative design. From this trip he was very impressed and created a series of Japanese-inspired images in the Glasgow Style. Elizabeth MacNicol, an important representative of the Glasgow Girls, portrayed him in 1896 before one of his Japanese painting sitting.

End of the 19th century refined Hornel his use of color and gave his pictures more atmosphere. In the style of his works were naturalistic and poetic. Great commercial success had Hornel with its mosaic-like images of children in the countryside of Galloway, for which he is still known today. The Captive Butterfly, a typical paintings of this period, is also owned by the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Hornels early powerful works in the Glasgow Style, however, are almost forgotten.

1901 should Hornel am accepted to the Royal Scottish Academy, but he refused the choice from. In the same year he was able to buy because of its higher income Broughton House, a large town house with garden in Kirkcudbright, where he lived with his sister Elizabeth until his death. John Keppie, a modern architect from the Glasgow School, designed a studio for Hornels house. The garden was designed in Japanese style. House and garden are now managed by the National Trust for Scotland.

In 1907 he traveled to Ceylon and Australia. In 1919 he began books of all kinds on the region of Dumfries and Galloway to collect. His library, which is still preserved in Broughton House, includes 15,000 volumes. In 1922 he traveled to Burma and Japan. Hornel died in 1933 at the age of 68 years.