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framed dimensions: 53 x 45.5 cm
George Leslie Hunter stayed in California when his family returned to Scotland in 1898. He was already determined to be an artist and moved to San Francisco, the town Robert Louis Stephenson called the ‘Smelting pot of the races’. Someone else described it as ‘Montparnasse with six-shooters’. Hunter found studio digs in one of the terraces overlooking the panorama of the bay. Years later Hunter recalled his time with great affection, getting a square meal at the Hotel de France or Lola’s for fifteen cents, drawing constantly, finding his subjects in the music halls, street markets and theatres of China Town. He worked hard, joining the Californian Society of Artists – what Hunter’s biographer TJ Honeyman called the ‘Salon des Refusés’ of San Francisco, though it is not recorded that he ever sold a painting. He did derive an irregular income from commissions from newspapers and magazines and befriended the writers Bret Harte and Jack London for whom he also made illustrations. Hunter made a trip to Paris in 1904, returning via New York where he briefly kept a studio. He came back to hard work and the prospect of an exhibition. All hopes were dashed when his studio was destroyed in an earthquake on the 18th of April 1906. Hunter was out of town, but was left with no more than the clothes he wore and the contents of his weekend bag. Our drawing may well be one of those acquired from SS White of Philadelphia by Honeyman after the artist’s death. White had met Hunter in Paris in 1904 and acquired the sketches. The title may well be original although it is now recorded that Hunter visited New Orleans. Instead, the subject may represent a commission most likely for a book illustration. The dominant male figure is strikingly similar to the illustration which is plate 4 in Honeyman’s Introducing Leslie Hunter entitled The Luck of Roaring Camp from Bret Harte’s story of 1868. The drawing has a strong narrative element and is typical of Hunter’s best early work; strong, direct, dramatic and highly skilfully handled medium.
Born in Rothesay in 1877, George Leslie Hunter emigrated to California in 1892 where his father bought a farm. He spent all his time drawing and when his family came back to Scotland in 1900 he remained in California and became part of the Bohemian lifestyle of San Francisco. He earned money by acquiring illustration work for newspapers and magazines. He went to New York with friends and then on to Paris in 1904, working in each city for a few months. Back in San Francisco he lost everything in the 1906 earthquake and shortly thereafter returned to Scotland. He had his first solo exhibition with Alexander Reid in Glasgow in 1915, an association which continued until his death in 1931. From 1923 he exhibited with Peploe and Cadell as the Three Scottish Colourists, and spent much of the twenties in France, often subsidised by Reid and a coterie of dedicated collectors, including T.J. Honeyman who wrote his biography after his untimely death at the age of fifty-four.
Leslie Hunter, as I review the good old days, seems to be all-pervasive. I knew him first in San Francisco, and we lived the carefree Bohemian life and were unaware of it. I moved to New York; and he came down Broadway as accustomed as a piece of scenery. Paris – and there was Hunter sketching on a street corner. London – and Hunter hailed me from the next table of a Chelsea restaurant. Glasgow – and Hunter, finding my name at a hotel in an obscure newspaper paragraph, called me up on the telephone. I have no doubt that if I ever visit Damascus I shall find him there ahead of me. And always the same Hunter; Scotch from his accent to his walk, quietly friendly, quaintly witty. I had laughed with him many times over these recurrent meetings of ours before I realised how much the boy I knew and starved with in San Francisco was coming to mean in modern art. When in the first decade of this century painting shook off the Victorian shackles, he found himself. Reid, the famous Glasgow dealer, a leader in the Modernist movement, ‘brought him out’. Reid it was who introduced Degas, Manet and Renoir to Great Britain. Tradition says that he was one of the few men whom the crusty Degas would admit to his Studio. He sold most of Whistler’s paintings. And Reid’s verdict that Hunter is ‘a more powerful Colourist than Matisse and equally refined’ carries authenticity. Hunter belongs to that school which Paris calls les écossais modernes. This group of late has given exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries in London and the select Barbazanges Gallery in Paris: in both instances the force and purity of their colour attracted sensational attention. Fergusson and Peploe of this modern group have already exhibited in New York; but although Hunter grew up in California this is his first appearance in an American gallery. He lives and paints, now, on the Côte d’Azur; and that richly coloured country is the inspiration for most of these landscapes. Will Irwin, 1929 (reviewing Hunter’s exhibition at the Ferargil Gallery, New York)
G. L. Hunter & The Scottish Gallery
In April 1924, Alexander Reid and The Scottish Gallery signed a joint contract with G.L. Hunter and his first solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery was held in the autumn. This was a momentous year for The Colourists which saw the exhibition Les Peintres de l’Écosse Moderne at the Galerie Barbazanges in Paris, featuring Peploe, Fergusson, Hunter and Cadell. It was also a productive time for Hunter, who worked in Fife, on Loch Lomond and in a Glasgow studio for most of the next three years. From 1928, Hunter was living mostly in the South of France, based in Saint[1]Paul-de-Vence, but he continued to send work back to The Gallery.
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