Spring was exhibited in Glasgow and Dundee in 1895 when Yule was working as a portrait painter in Edinburgh. It was the era when the Symbolist movement was at its height, as many artists reacted against conventional forms of representation. The idea of showing a young girl in a green dress against a leafy background to symbolise the season of spring was not an original one, but it is beautifully and tenderly executed. She seems genuinely unaware of her own charm and looks out innocently with what James Caw described in 1908 as ‘a certain shy beauty’. Yule’s own promising career was cut short by an illness he contracted on his visit to Spain in the very year he exhibited this work.

William James Yule, 1867-1900

Yule was born in Dundee and trained at Edinburgh School of Art, where he became a close friend of fellow student David Muirhead. Both moved to London in 1889 to study under Fred Brown at Westminster School of Art. Yule went on to Paris, to the atelier of Jean-Paul Laurens, who declared that he "painted like a cello". By 1893 he was back in Scotland, sharing an Edinburgh studio with A.E Borthwick, and in 1894-95 he visited Spain. 

Yule's work is mainly portraits and figure paintings, usually with subtle, low-toned colour harmonies. Velázquez and Whistler were important influences. Tragically, Yule died at thirty-three, at a time when he was attracting major portrait commissions. The art historian Sir James Caw wrote in 1908 that "in his death Scottish painting lost not the most powerful or brilliant perhaps but certainly the most subtle and distinguished talent it has thrown up in recent years".