Joseph Crawhall III was part of an accomplished group of artists known as the Glasgow Boys -- a sort of anti-establishment bunch that were inspired by the Impressionists.

Crawhall himself wasn’t actually from Glasgow, although his hometown of Morpeth in Northumberland is so far north that if he were to trip and fall he’d probably land in Scotland. 

Crawhall had little formal training but a whole lot of natural talent. He switched from oil-painting to watercolor in the mid-1880s, a transition that definitely did his artistic career a major favor. The dude loved animals and painted horses, pigs, owls, ducks, chickens, fish, pigeons, rabbits, parrots, goats, and even monkeys and tigers. The latter two subjects were painted in Africa… our little Glasgow boy spent nine years traveling between Spain and Morocco, probably in an attempt to avoid the northern wind and rain of his homeland. Given the option we’d definitely do the same. Tapas over haggis any day.

Dogs and cats are conspicuously absent from Crawhall’s watercolor menagerie, perhaps because he was a tad temperamental and tended to destroy paintings that didn’t completely satisfy him. Cats don’t really take to portraiture, so we’ll cut him some slack.