This intimate study dates from a couple of years after Henry’s visit to Japan in the company of his friend E.A. Hornel. Swiftly drawn and understated, it shows the influence of Whistler, whose interest in Japan had led to a widespread enthusiasm for Japanese prints among European artists; it also shares some of the schematic qualities of Japanese art itself. As was noted at the time by a critic in The Studio, Henry was quick to learn from the Japanese sense of colour, with its monochrome emphasis and ‘notes of pure colour used as sparingly and as effectively as jewels’. The viewer’s eye is instinctively drawn to the blackness of the girl’s hair and the whiteness of her neck while her book - with no visible means of support - is indicated by just a few lines. Henry later had a highly successful career as a society portrait painter, especially after he moved to London in about 1904.

George Henry RA RSA RSW, 1858-1943

Born at Irvine, Henry was brought up in Glasgow. He started work drawing in a patent office, attending evening classes at Glasgow School of Art. One of the longest surviving members of the Glasgow Boys, Henry is thought to have encountered the emerging group of Glasgow-trained painters in 1880 through the St Mungo Society, a club for young painters who were not yet admitted to the Glasgow Art Club. During the early 1880s his closest associate among the Glasgow Boys began to spend summers paintings at Cocksburnpath. Henry joined E.A. Walton, James Guthrie and Joseph Crawhall there in 1883. Two years later he visited Kirkcudbright, possibly with Guthrie. there he met E.A. Hornel and the two became firm friends, collaborating later on a number of paintings.
In 1889 Henry painted A Galloway Landscape (Glasgow Art Gallery), which, although it was criticised when it was exhibited at the Glasgow Institute, is now considered to be one of the masterpieces of the Glasgow School. With its emphasis on rich colour and regard for decorative patterns of a flattened picture plane, it approaches the work of the Pont-Aven group, although Henry had no contact with France. Henry and Hornel’s most notable collaboration, The Druids (Glasgow Art gallery), was painted the following year, and again there is a strong decorative element.
To convalesce after a serious illness Henry went to Japan with Hornel in 1893, a visit that was to have considerable influence on his paintings, The only written documentation from their stay is five brief letters from Henry to Hornel when they were painting apart, the text of a lecture on Japan by Hornel and an interview Henry did in the Glasgow Evening News. The several letters they sent home never arrived. Nor did most of the oil paintings that Henry executed in Japan survive the journey home: they became stuck together in the hold of the boat and could not be saved. He wrote in a letter to Hornel: “I have just got my canvases unrolled , and Oh Heaven’s what a result – I feel very sick. With a few exceptions, they are simply one mass of cracks…”