Crawhall's sensitive watercolours of animals and birds conveyed their individual character and nobility. His avoidance of the cloying sentimentality favoured by many Victorian painters reflected his deep respect for creatures whose undemanding company he enjoyed. Crawhall, who was from Northumberland, met fellow artist Edward Arthur Walton through his brother-in-law, and became one of the so-called Glasgow Boys. Crawhall trained briefly in Paris but found painting with Walton, Guthrie and Melville far more significant for his artistic development. He was further inspired by visits to Spain and North Africa and his later works reflect his admiration for Japanese art.
The Glasgow Boys were a loose group of young artists that represented the beginnings of modernism in Scottish painting. In the early 1880s, 'the boys’ were united by their disillusionment with traditional academic painting, with its strong focus on historical subjects and high levels of finish. Instead, they painted contemporary rural subjects, often working out of doors and painting directly onto the canvas.