Robert McGregor (Scottish 1847 – 1922) Young Anglers

Robert McGregor was born in Yorkshire, England, but later moved to Dunfermline, Scotland where his parents had been born. There he trained as a textile designer. He later moved to Edinburgh and found employment as an illustrator for a publishing company. In the 1870s he trained at the Scottish Royal Academy Schools. In 1882, McGregor was elected Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy and a full Member in 1889. He is not known to have received art training on the continent, although some sources believe that he worked in Brittanny (France) at some time.

His works have been described as having an affinity with the plein air style of the Dutch School painters. His oeuvre was genre painting – field laborers, harvesters, and children in rural settings, long before his Scottish colleagues. In fact, he was to go on to influence the Glasgow School. McGregor frequently traveled about the Scottish countryside to find rustic scenes and activities that he could capture on canvas. His feeling for light and tonal values executed with a dramatic flair and freely brushed foreground was a bit more daring in style than his Scottish peers.

High auction record for this artist: $116,000.