Robert McGregor RSA, 1847-1922

Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, to a Scottish father, McGregor worked as an illustrator with the publishers Nelson in Edinburgh before concentrating on painting, enrolling in the Royal Scottish Academy's Life Class. He specialised in depicting incidents in the everyday life of the rural community - fieldworkers, fisherman, pedlars, children - working mostly in oil, and employing a plein-air style in low-keyed colour. His early subject-matter was found mainly in Scotland, but Norman and Breton scenes later became common. Jeon-Francois Millet, the artists of the Barbizon School an Jules Bastien-Lepage, a contemporary, were all important influences on McGregor, who developed a Realist style about the same time as Bastien-Lepage in France, and so anticipated, and may have influenced, the art of the young Glasgow Boys several years later.