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framed dimensions: 40 x 35.5 cm
titled lower left
PROVENANCE:
John Cadell, the artist’s nephew; Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh, 1988, the collection of the Hon James Bruce, CBE, JP
This delicately rendered self-portrait offers a rare and intimate glimpse of Cadell as a young prodigy, likely drawn in the late 1890s when he was still a teenager. Seated in what appears to be sporting attire, the young Cadell sits with his right leg casually crossed over his left, absorbed in a book. There is a subtle, lifelike energy to the composition, even the position of his foot hints at movement, as though gently swinging. The title Myself is both direct and endearing, and entirely typical of Cadell, who was affectionately known as ‘Bunty’ to his family. It captures something of the self-awareness and charisma that would come to define his personality and artistic confidence in later years, the title placed in lieu of signature. Despite its modest scale, this drawing glows with the vitality of youth and early talent, offering a quietly compelling insight into the formation of one of the most flamboyant and distinctive Scottish Colourists.
The almost complete lack of ‘angst’ in his work seems to derive from an intense love of life, a sensuous enjoyment of good living and an admiration for men who were masculine and women who were elegant. His subject-matter reflected his hedonism. Guy Peploe
Cadell was born in Edinburgh in 1883 and from an early age, showed a precocious talent for art and was producing very capable watercolours and drawings in his early teens. Half French, he was taken to France and Munich by his mother for artistic education and some very fine, freely painted farmyard paintings date from this early period. Despite his sophistication, Cadell’s most natural habitat was the west Highlands, Iona in particular, and he made only a few painting trips to France after the War. He produced some of his most brilliant Colourist works while staying with the Peploes in Cassis in 1924. Very fashion conscious, his work before 1914 had an Edwardian opulence and breadth unique in Scottish painting. By the twenties his work had a hard edge with clear colour, chiming with the jazz-age, and the compositions have a deco stylishness full of sophistication of concept and originality of palette. He is as original and distinctive a voice as any in Scottish painting.
F.C.B. Cadell & The Scottish Gallery
F.C.B. Cadell first exhibited with The Gallery in 1909, and his second in 1910 showcased his Venetian paintings. The visit to Venice had been productive and represented (as with Peploe and Fergusson in Royan in the same year) his full engagement with a personal impressionism in which colour was used for direct expressionist purpose. His was a precocious early career, brilliant in watercolour, encouraged by Arthur Melville. In oil, his earlier work is characterised by rich medium, broad-brush marks and is high in tone, unlike the more sonorous works of Peploe and Fergusson’s early Edinburgh years. His next exhibition with The Scottish Gallery was not until 1932, at a time when picture sales were in decline due to the Great Depression. Cadell had always been comfortable to be his own agent, using the artist-run Society of Eight for many of his exhibitions of new work, and on Iona, where he spent every summer after The Great War. There he set up a daily exhibition of the fruits of his labour, his manservant Charles Oliver acting as sales agent, selling to the many wealthy summer visitors, like David Russell of Markinch and George Service of Cove.
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