signed lower right
EXHIBITED:
S.J. Peploe, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, June 1985, Cat. 114
PROVENANCE:
The Artist’s Estate
Denis Peploe thence by descent
Buddha is a painting with a distinct, enigmatic presence unlike anything else the artist painted. Its tonality and relatively cool palette: soft grey, black and white with notes of blue and green led to a previous dating to the late twenties when Peploe eschewed the strong palette of the previous decade, linking the painting to still lives including Still life with Chops (Aberdeen Art Gallery). However, it seems more likely that the painting belongs with several works, also limited in colour made between1919-1921, for example Boy Reading (RSA Diploma Collection) and Old Duff (Glasgow Museums). It has in common with these works a broad but smooth application of paint which is in contrast with the more impastoed works of the late twenties.
The subject of the Buddha would have appealed to a painter with a strong spiritual side, the object a subject for contemplation, the cool setting an entirely appropriate rendition of inner peace and contentment. An alabaster Buddha (acquired from Whytock & Reid in Edinburgh) is still in the possession of the artist’s family and was painted by both Cadell and Denis Peploe. A smaller sculpture with a coloured Pandit hat is in the same collection and is depicted here, over ‘life’ size.
Click below to hear Guy Peploe discuss this work
About S.J. Peploe
Born in 1871 in Edinburgh, S.J. Peploe is the senior of the four artists known as The Scottish Colourists. He lived in Paris from 1910 until 1912, where his work changed radically from paintings reminiscent of Manet and Sargent to brilliant Fauvist works which placed him in the vanguard of British Modernism.
