At the outset of his career most of McGregor’s subjects were drawn from the life of Scottish village and farming communities. In their general conception and monumental treatment of rustic figures, these pictures show an obvious affinity with earlier French Realism (including the work of Millet) and the Hague School. Here, in the diffused light of evening, a group of field labourers is depicted returning home and clustering excitedly round a poster for a travelling circus. McGregor himself was to become an important influence on the younger painters of the Glasgow School during the 1880s.