GUTHRIE, SIR JAMES (1859- ), Scottish painter, and one of the leaders of the so-called Glasgow school of painters, was born at Greenock. Though in his youth he was influenced by John Pettie in London, and subsequently studied in Paris, his style, which is remarkable for grasp of character, breadth and spontaneity, is due to the lessons taught him by observation of nature, and to the example of Crawhall, by which he benefited in Lincolnshire in the early ’eighties of the last century. In his early works, such as “The Gipsy Fires are Burning, for Daylight is Past and Gone” (1882), and the “Funeral Service in the Highlands,” he favoured a thick impasto, but with growing experience he used his colour with greater economy and reticence. Subsequently he devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture. Sir James Guthrie, like so many of the Glasgow artists, achieved his first successes on the Continent, but soon found recognition in his native country. He was elected associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1888, and full member in 1892, succeeded Sir George Reid as president of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1902, and was knighted in 1903. His painting “Schoolmates” is at the Ghent Gallery. Among his most successful portraits are those of his mother, Mr R. Garroway, Major Hotchkiss, Mrs Fergus, Professor Jack, and Mrs Watson.
GUTHRIE, THOMAS (1803-1873), Scottish divine, was born at Brechin, Forfarshire, on the 12th of July 1803. He entered the university of Edinburgh at the early age of twelve, and continued to attend classes there for more than ten years. On the 2nd of February 1825 the presbytery of Brechin licensed him as a preacher in connexion with the Church of Scotland, and in 1826 he was in Paris studying natural philosophy, chemistry, and comparative anatomy. For two years he acted as manager of his father’s bank, and in 1830 was inducted to his first charge, Arbirlot, in Forfarshire, where he adopted a vivid dramatic style of preaching adapted to his congregation of peasants, farmers and weavers. In 1837 he became the colleague of John Sym in the pastorate of Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, and at once attracted notice as a great pulpit orator. Towards the close of 1840 he became minister of St John’s church, Victoria Street, Edinburgh. He declined invitations both from London and from India. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the movement which led to the Disruption of 1843; and his name is thenceforth associated with the Free Church, for which he collected £116,000 from July 1845 to June 1846 to provide manses for the seceding ministers. In 1844 he became a teetotaller. In 1847 he began the greatest work of his life by the publication of his first “Plea for Ragged Schools.” This pamphlet elicited a beautiful and sympathetic letter from Lord Jeffrey. A Ragged School was opened on the Castle Hill, which has been the parent of many similar institutions elsewhere, though Guthrie’s relation to the movement is best described as that of an apostle rather than a founder. He insisted on bringing up all the children in his school as Protestants; and he thus made his schools proselytizing as well as educational institutions. This interference with religious liberty led to some controversy; and ultimately those who differed from Guthrie founded the United Industrial School, giving combined secular and separate religious instruction. In April 1847 the degree of D.D. was conferred on Guthrie by the university of Edinburgh; and in 1850 William Hanna (1808-1882), the biographer and son-in-law of Thomas Chalmers, was inducted as his colleague in Free St John’s Church.
In 1850 Guthrie published A Plea on behalf of Drunkards and against Drunkenness, which was followed by The Gospel in Ezekiel (1855); The City: its Sins and Sorrows (1857); Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints (1858); Seedtime and Harvest of Ragged Schools (1860), consisting of his three Pleas for Ragged Schools. These works had an enormous sale, and portions of them were translated into French and Dutch. His advocacy of temperance had much to do with securing the passing of the Forbes Mackenzie Act, which secured Sunday closing and shortened hours of sale for Scotland. Mr Gladstone specially quoted him in support of the Light Wines Bill (1860). In 1862 he was moderator of the Free Church General Assembly; but he seldom took a prominent part in the business of the church courts. His remarkable oratorical talents, rich humour, genuine pathos and inimitable power of story-telling, enabled him to do good service to the total abstinence movement. He was one of the vice-presidents of the Evangelical Alliance. In 1864, his health being seriously impaired, he resigned public work as pastor of Free St John’s (May 17), although his nominal connexion with the congregation ceased only with his death. Guthrie had occasionally contributed papers to Good Words, and, about the time of his retirement from the ministry, he became first editor of the Sunday Magazine, himself contributing several series of papers which were afterwards published separately. In 1865 he was presented with £5000 as a mark of appreciation from the public. His closing years were spent mostly in retirement; and after an illness of several months’ duration he died at St Leonards-on-Sea on the 24th of February 1873.
In addition to the books mentioned above he published a number of books which had a remarkable circulation in England and America, such as Speaking to the Heart (1862); The Way to Life (1862); Man and the Gospel (1865); The Angel’s Song (1865); The Parables (1866); Our Father’s Business (1867); Out of Harness (1867); Early Piety (1868); Studies of Character from the Old Testament (1868-1870); Sundays Abroad (1871).
See Autobiography of Thomas Guthrie, D.D., and Memoir, by his sons (2 vols., London, 1874-1875).
GUTHRIE, THOMAS ANSTEY (1856- ), known by the pseudonym of F. Anstey, English novelist, was born in Kensington, London, on the 8th of August 1856. He was educated at King’s College, London, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1880. But the popular success of his story Vice-Versa (1882) with its topsy-turvy substitution of a father for his schoolboy son, at once made his reputation as a humorist of an original type. He published in 1883 a serious novel, The Giant’s Robe; but, in spite of its excellence, he discovered (and again in 1889 with The Pariah) that it was not as a serious novelist but as a humorist that the public insisted on regarding him. As such his reputation was further confirmed by The Black Poodle (1884), The Tinted Venus (1885), A Fallen Idol (1886), and other works. He became an important member of the staff of Punch, in which his “Voces populi” and his humorous parodies of a reciter’s stock-piece (“Burglar Bill,” &c.) represent his best work. In 1901 his successful farce The Man from Blankley’s, based on a story which originally appeared in Punch, was first produced at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, in London.
GUTHRIE, the capital of Oklahoma, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Logan county, extending on both sides of Cottonwood creek, and lying one mile south of the Cimarron river. Pop. (1890) 5333, (1900) 10,006, (1907) 11,652 (2871 negroes); (1910) 11,654. It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, the Fort Smith & Western, and the St Louis, El Reno & Western railways. The city is situated about 940 ft. above the sea, in a prairie region devoted largely to stock-raising and the cultivation of Indian corn, wheat, cotton and various fruits, particularly peaches. Guthrie is one of the headquarters of the Federal courts in the state, the other being Muskogee. The principal public buildings at Guthrie are the state Capitol, the Federal building, the City hall, the Carnegie library, the Methodist hospital and a large Masonic temple. Among the schools are St Joseph’s Academy and a state school for the deaf and dumb. Guthrie has a considerable trade with the surrounding country and has cotton gins, a cotton compress, and foundries and machine shops; among its manufactures are cotton-seed oil, cotton goods, flour, cereals, lumber, cigars, brooms and furniture. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,200,662. The municipality owns and operates the waterworks. The city was founded in 1889, when Oklahoma was opened for settlement; in 1890 it was made the capital of the Territory, and in 1907 when Oklahoma was made a state, it became the state capital.