The mountains of Sutherland: Suilven, Stac Pollaidh, Cul Mor and Quinaig need no dramatisation. Rising from sea level to near 3,000 feet, from a barren plane of rock and lochans, the mountains are Scotland’s most dramatic. Few painters have sought to attempt their portraits, content to allow their distant ridges to form horizons. Denis Peploe liked to let his mountains fill the picture space, he liked the harsh, adamantine presence, shrouded with cloud, weather closing in. Often based in Wester Ross, in Plockton at the home of his friends Torquil and Isabel Nicholson, he walked and climbed seeking the familiarity which allowed him to make this ancient landscape his own. Commando-training in the War had made him tough and confident with map and compass, but always respectful of the unpredictability of the high tops, respect conveyed in each brushstroke.
Denis Peploe was born in 1914, the second son of the celebrated Scottish Colourist S J Peploe. Denis Peploe enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art at the age of seventeen where he was a contemporary of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Margaret Mellis. He won post-diploma scholarships to Paris and Florence and took advantage of opportunity to travel extensively in Spain, Italy and Yugoslavia. He first exhibited at The Scottish Gallery in 1947, to critical acclaim. The Glasgow Herald critic responded to the exhibition, saying he was “an artist born fully armed”; and The Bulletin critic wrote: “the general impression of the exhibition is that we have in Denis Peploe a vital and adventurous painter”. Reviewers never avoided mention of his father, and though one couldn’t confuse their work there were similarities in their approaches: each picture was a response to a particular subject, either intellectual or emotional. His son, Gallery Director, Guy Peploe explains:
‘While he was intimately exposed to the mainstream of European art he remained better defined as an artist who responded directly to his subject, en plein air or in the studio. Here the challenge was a live model, or the intellectual exercise of reinvigorating the still life subject. His work remained free of political or art-world references but was at the same time formed by the century of modernism, the times of unprecedented turmoil and change to which he belonged. His response was to cleave to the idea that art was important, even redemptive and that it could somehow describe a better, or more vital place.’
We would be delighted to hear from you if you are considering selling any works by Denis Peploe.