George Houston

Shettleston Co-operative Society, Glasgow;
Ian MacNicol, Glasgow

Possibly Glasgow, Warneukes Galleries, 1910;
Possibly Glasgow, Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, 1911, no. 28 as Spring

Euan Robson, George Houston: Nature's Limner, 1997, pp. 28-32

The canvas is original. One close inspection there is some very minor craquelure and stretcher marks to the paint surface in places. Otherwise in good condition, clean and ready to hang. Ultraviolet light reveals some very minor spots of retouching to the sky area and extreme edges. Held in a decorative gold painted composite frame in fair condition.
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George Houston, born in Dalry in Ayrshire in 1869, attended Saltcoats Public School before receiving his formative artistic training at Glasgow School of Art which was a vibrant and thriving establishment. Upon graduating, the young Houston was soon to become an apprentice lithographer, linoleum designer and part time sketch artist for the Glasgow Citizen before becoming a full time painter. Among his contemporaries were of some of the younger Glasgow Boys who provided immediate direction and from whom he developed some key stylistic elements.  However, Houston trod an individual path and developed a powerful, direct and simple technique, which combined elements of both impressionism and naturalism.

Springtime depicts the artist's wife Annie and one of their ten children beside the calm waters of the River Goil in Argyllshire, "among spring bluebells just as the birch trees are coming into leaf.  The bright sun in a cloudless sky lights the purples and browns of the distant trees and hills, providing a contrast with the blue and greens of the foreground.  The rocks in the river and the deep pools together with the figures provide the focal point of the painting, but Houstons's great achievement is to convey so convincingly the fresh cool clear atmosphere of a spring morning." (Euan Robson p32) This picture was likely to have been painted on one of the Houston's many holidays at Lochgoilhead and as a keen fisherman he would have known this river intimately and chose to record it on several occasions.

Springtime is one of Houston's most monumental pictures, displaying the full range of the artist's prowess. Upon Houston's death in 1947, the Royal Scottish Academy council remarked that "his vision was direct and simple and was interpreted with a technique baffling in its apparent ease.  His finest work has a unity- visual, technical and emotional - which places it amongst the finest landscapes produced in Scotland".