Impressionism Comes To Scotland
In the late nineteenth century Glasgow was the ‘Second City of the British Empire’, and some of the world’s biggest industrial and manufacturing companies were based there. Scotland’s rich mercantile collectors were keen to acquire works of art that reflected their progressive outlook, as well as their rising social status. As a result, Scotland became one of the first nations to appreciate the work of the French Impressionists.
In 1892 Arthur Kay, director of a Glasgow drapery firm, bought Degas’s L’Absinthe from the Glasgow dealer Alex Reid. The picture was famously ‘hissed’ when it appeared at auction in London: the British public was outraged by the degrading subject of a common prostitute drinking in a Parisian café.
