Rare works by the Glasgow Girls, recently exhibited at Lyon & Turnbull, to go on sale in auctions later this year

By Susan Mansfield, 11.10.2022

Glasgow Girls at Lyon & Turnbull 2022. Image by Julie Howden.

Lyon & Turnbull’s Glasgow Girls exhibition presented numerous rare works from the Glasgow Girls, including five paintings by Bessie MacNicol, pastel portraits of First World War soldiers by Norah Neilson Gray, embroidery by Jessie Newbery and enamel work by De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar, as well as paintings by Stansmore Dean and Eleanor Allen Moore.

Associate director of Lyon & Turnbull James McNaught, who curated the show at the company’s Glasgow offices, said: “I was trying hard not to do what people expect to see. Bessie MacNicol paintings are as rare as hen’s teeth. I don’t think people will have seen five together for a long time, and one of them has never been seen before.

“I wanted to whet people’s appetite for more, and bring attention to how superb the art scene was in Glasgow at the turn of the century. Many dealers and galleries raised the profile of these artists in the 1990s, but I wanted to bring it to another generation.”

The Glasgow Girls is the name given to the women artists and designers active in the city between the 1880s and the First World War, and includes diverse figures such as sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, Jessie M. King, Annie French, Katherine Cameron and Helen Paxton Brown.

When Francis (known as Fra) Newbery became director of Glasgow School of Art in 1885, he pioneered a policy of admitting equal numbers of men and women. He also elevated the status of applied arts and encouraged all students to get a grounding in a range of art, craft and design practices.

While Charles Rennie Mackintosh is the most famous figure of the era, recent scholarship has explored the broader community of artists who pioneered the Glasgow style, in particular the important role played by women. 

A seminal exhibition curated by Jude Burkhauser in 1990, Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880-1920, brought the achievements of these women to the fore for the first time. This has been followed, in more recent years, by exhibitions such as Modern Scottish Women at the National Galleries of Scotland in 2016, curated by Alice Strang, and the book Scottish Women Artists by Charlotte Rostek, published by the Fleming Collection.

An embroidered silk collar by Ann Macbeth, who was head of embroidery at GSA, was included in the show as a facsimile due to its fragility. It will be auctioned at Lyon & Turnbull’s Design Since 1860 sale on 12 October, valued at £3,000-£5,000, along with small works by Katherine Cameron and Helen Paxton Brown.

A larger watercolour, ‘Marguerites’ by Katherine Cameron (valued at £2,000-£3,000), and an oil painting by Bessie MacNicol, ‘Elizabeth’ (valued at £15,000-£20,000), will be sold in the Scottish Paintings and Sculpture sale on 8 December. MacNicol is regarded as one of the outstanding painters of the group, whose career was tragically cut short by her death in childbirth at the age of 34.

James McNaught said: “I hope that more things might appear for sale. If someone has something from their granny and they’re not sure what it is, it could be of importance so have it checked out. Also, I wanted to point out to people that these works are available, they are accessible, if you want to start a collection.”

The Glasgow Girls was exhibited at Lyon & Turnbull, Glasgow. The exhibition has now closed.