In the 1880s and 1890s, Europe and America saw the rise of artistic colonies practicing a form of painting known as "Naturalism, " which was inspired by the work of the young French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage. In Britain, the artists of Newlyn and St Ives competed with a group of Scottish painters centered in Glasgow; among them were George Henry, E.A. Walton, and James Guthrie. The Glasgow Boys were to seize the mantle of Bastien-Lepage, and their paintings became the toast of Europe as they exhibited in Munich, Berlin, Barcelona, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and then Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York. By 1900, most of the Glasgow Boys had left the city that nurtured them, achieving fame and fortune in London and beyond.

Gradually they were forgotten, and only in the last twenty years has their reputation been restored, placing them at the forefront of art's first international movement.