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framed dimensions: 79 x 74 cm
signed lower left
EXHIBITED:
Cadell to Eardley: Fifty Years of Scottish Painting, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh, 1989, cat. 7
PROVENANCE:
From the collection of Sir John Beckwith
Peploe had painted roses throughout his life, notably in the Raeburn Studio before his move to Paris in 1910 when at the apogée of his Impressionist style, the petals were rendered in a flurry of broad brushstrokes. When he returned to the subject after the Great War it was in paintings of great poise and stylishness, when the demands of significant form balanced his continuing mastery of his medium, when colour, primary and glorious, was the first impression on meeting his new work. In the early twenties, settled into his new studio on Shandwick Place, he considered the composition of his still life in setting up the subject, balancing diagonals of drapery with the round forms of apples or oranges, creating a taut rhythm between solidity and lightness. Familiar props can be identified, including fruit, often placed on a plate with a red rim, or a French compotier; blue and white vases, a fan with a black ribbon, French paperbacks, bought from the Bouquinists on the left bank all recur.
In Still life, Apples and Pink Roses, the elements are placed on a round tabletop, the back of which is seen set against a mahogany chair. Its back is draped with a rich fabric and the chair set at a sufficient angle for the serpentine right arm to add to the compositional complexity. The chair, known to the family as the Raeburn Chair had travelled to the new studio. This is a supremely coloured example; a blue and white vase anchors a choreography of colour, with cobalt and ultramarine set against flashes of orange and clean greens, and pink petals modelled in confident, economical strokes. The format of the canvas: 22 x 20 inches, as opposed to his more usual 20 x 16 or 24 x 20, and the choice of the square vase lends the work a grandeur, enhanced by the rose blooms on their long stems springing from the solid vase.
By this time Peploe had begun his contract with The Scottish Gallery and Reid & Lefevre, who bought work regularly. It was this subject, alongside his plein air work on Iona, that perhaps consolidated his reputation; bringing new clients like Jack Blyth, Robert Wemyss Honeyman and Ion Harrison. He would move on towards more tonal and textural pictures, but for many his Rosepieces are the highpoint of his remarkable creativity.
Guy 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.
“My memories of S. J. Peploe are the memories of our friendship which was wonderful and interesting all the time. Nothing about it was spectacular. It was merely a happy unbroken friendship between two painters who both believed that painting was not just a craft or profession but a sustained attempt at finding a means of expressing reactions to life in the form demanded by each new experience. This is quite different from arriving at a way of doing a thing and continuing to do it in a tradesmanlike manner. By life we meant everything that happened to us; and, as we were curious about life, we painted all sorts of things – men, women, children, landscape, seapieces, flowers, still-life – anything.” Memories of Peploe, J. D. Fergusson, 1945
S. J. Peploe & The Scottish Gallery
In November 1898, the partners of Aitken Dott & Son bought the painting A Gypsy Queen by S.J. Peploe. Two years before, senior partner Peter McOmish Dott had formed The Scottish Gallery to identify the picture dealing part of the firm as distinct from the other businesses – architectural supplies, artist’s materials, framing, gilding and other services – and determined to represent the best of contemporary Scottish painting. The purchase of Peploe’s painting initiated a close relationship between the firm and the artist, then aged twenty-seven. McOmish Dott was a wholehearted admirer of Peploe’s early paintings, and a show was arranged for January 1903, which was a commercial and critical success. Peploe held a second exhibition in 1909, but from then his practice moved towards modernism and Dott struggled to accept the radical expressionist work the artist brought back from Paris after his move in 1910. However, the younger partner of the firm George Proudfoot, and subsequent directors, continued their support for the artist. From the early 1920s The Gallery held a joint contract with Alexander Reid in Glasgow to buy work directly from the artist, an arrangement that allowed Peploe to remove himself from the commercial world and concentrate on his painting, particularly his new subject of Iona and the magnificent rose and tulip paintings of his maturity. Solo exhibitions were held in 1922, 1923, 1924, 1927, 1934, 1936 (Memorial) and The Scottish Gallery has held numerous notable solo exhibitions subsequently including the artist’s 150th anniversary in 2021.
The Scottish Gallery exhibitions: 1903, 1909, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1927, 1934, 1936 (Memorial), 1947, 1985, 1990 (Edinburgh & London), 2012, 2021 (Bicentenary)
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