Although Kennedy began by concentrating on landscape and peasant themes, working in France with other ‘Glasgow Boys’, he later produced so many military subjects that his friends nicknamed him ‘The Colonel’. This painting of soldiers at rest shows members of the 3rd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who trained every summer in the King’s Park in Stirling close to where he was living. However, it is far from being a conventional group portrait. In the 1890s many painters in Europe followed the example of the French Post-Impressionists and experimented with creating highly decorative compositions, rather than renderings of what they saw, filling these with broadly painted, interlocking and rather two-dimensional forms. The horizon would be high, the colours vivid and the overall aim one of pattern-making rather than description. This work was exhibited in Berlin in 1893.

William Kennedy, 1859-1918

Born in Glasgow, Kennedy studied in Paisley and later Paris, where he came across the work of Bastien-Lepage. Like a number of his Glasgow contemporaries he painted at Grez-sur-Loing, but hardly any of his work from this time has survived. The other great influence on his painting was Whistler, as can be seen is his most famous work, Stirling Station (private collection). In the 1890s Kennedy settled in Berkshire, where he continued to paint rural scenes. For health reasons he moved in 1912 to Tangier, remaining there until his death six years later.