The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (194 page)

glair
.

White of egg when used as the
medium
in
illuminating manuscripts
, in
tempera
painting, and in gilding with gold-dust. It is also used as an adhesive substance to fix gold leaf.

 
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Glasgow School
.

Term applied to two quite distinct groups of Scottish artists active respectively in the late 19th and early 20th cents. The earlier group (who preferred to be known as the ‘Glasgow Boys’) was a loose association of painters (including
Lavery
) centred in Glasgow who were in revolt against the conservatism of the
Royal Academy
and were advocates of open-air painting (see
PLEIN AIR
). The school had reached its apogee before 1900 and did not outlast the First World War, but it had some influence on younger painters at the opening of the 20th cent. The later group created a distinctive version of
Art Nouveau
. Its most important member was the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928).
Recently the term Glasgow School (or facetiously ‘Glasgow pups’) has been applied to a number of
New Image painters
working in the city from the 1980s. They include Steven Campbell (1953– ) and Adrian Wiszniewski (1958– ).

 
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glass prints
(or clichés-verre)
.

Prints made by exposing sensitized photographic paper to the sun beneath a glass plate on which the design has been drawn. Such prints resemble
etchings
. The medium was popular in the 1850s, its practitioners including
Corot
,
Daubigny
, Jean-François
Millet
, and Théodore
Rousseau
.

 
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glaze
.

A transparent layer of paint applied over another colour or
ground
, so that the light passing through is reflected back by the under surface and modified by the glaze. The effect of an under-colour through a glaze is not the same as any effect obtainable by mixing the two
pigments
in direct painting, for the glaze imparts a special depth and luminosity. From the 15th to the 19th cent. most oil paintings were built up as an elaborate structure of superimposed layers, glazes, and
scumbles
over an underpainting, but since
alla prima
painting became the norm such a highly deliberate, craftsmanly approach has fallen into disfavour.

 
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(1881–1953).
French painter, graphic artist, and writer. His early works were in an
Impressionist
style, but in 1909 he became associated with
Cubism
, and in 1912 he wrote with
Metzinger
the book
Du Cubisme
(an English translation,
Cubism
, appeared in 1913). This was the first book on the movement and is regarded as the most important exposìtion of the theoretical principles of the Cubist aesthetic. It remains Gleizes's chief claim to fame. In 1912 he was among the founders of the
Section d'Or
group and in 1913 he exhibited at the
Armory Show
, New York. After serving in the French Army, 1914–15, Gleizes lived from 1915 to 1917 in New York, where he underwent a religious conversion. Much of his later career was devoted to trying to achieve a synthesis of medieval and modern art, expressing Christian ideas through pseudo-Cubist forms. In this he is generally reckoned to have been conspicuously unsuccessful and his modest reputation as a painter rests on his pre-war work.

 
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(1808–74).
Swiss painter, active mainly in Paris, where he enjoyed a successful career, particularly with anecdotal scenes, sometimes in an
antique
setting, and portraits. He was a renowned teacher and when
Delaroche
closed down his teaching studio in 1843, the majority of his students transferred to Gleyre. He taught
Whistler
and several of the
Impressionists
—
Bazille
,
Monet
,
Renoir
, and
Sisley
—and although his own paintings were conventional, he encouraged open-air painting (see
PLEIN AIR
). Renoir, however, said that his main strength as a teacher was that he left his pupils ‘pretty much to their own devices’. Gleyre closed his studio in 1864 because of an eye ailment.