The Glasgow Boys at Knockderry House
Late last year, the BBC approached Knockderry House to be the location for a documentary on the ‘Lives of the Glasgow Boys’ to tie in with the wonderful exhibition that is currently running at Kelvingrove Art Gallery, in Glasgow.
The documentary is presented by Muriel Gray who tells the story of the Glasgow Boys, a group of late 19th century painters who put Glasgow on the art world map. The film is focuses mainly on just four of the Boys – John Lavery, James Guthrie, George Henry and EA Hornel – and Gray examines their masterpieces in detail and charts their shifting friendships.
Knockderry House circa 1901 as it was at the time of the Glasgow Boys
Muriel travels throughout Scotland and northern France to uncover the sources of their inspiration and show just how radical their paintings were and visits many of the locations of their paintings including Helensburgh.
Lavery lived in Helensburgh for a while and painted a number of paintings of the town. Guthrie too was well known in the town as he was often a guest of one of his patrons and dentist, who lived there. As a footnote Guthrie’s son – Guthrie Jnr has some extremely fine stained glass in Knockderry’s Dining Room.
The documentary will be shown on Thursday 3rd June 2010 at 9pm on BBC Two (Scotland only). A BBC webpage has further details on The Glasgow Boys.
