The Scottish Colourists & Wider Circle

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.

Born in Leith in Edinburgh, J.D. Fergusson’s studies took him to Paris in the 1890s where he attended the Académie Colarossi and made broad connections in avant-garde life. He exhibited in London in 1905 and finally settled in Paris in 1907 where he experimented with Fauvist and Cubist styles, became a Sociétaire of the Salon d’Automne and acquaintance of many of the leading figures in the movement, including Picasso and Braque.

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.

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.

Anne Estelle Rice was an American painter closely associated with the circle of the Scottish Colourists, particularly through her relationship with J.D. Fergusson.

Margaret Morris was a dancer, choreographer, artist and teacher, and a pioneering figure in the development of modern dance in Britain. Born in 1891, London, she trained from an early age but rejected the constraints of classical ballet, developing instead a freer, more expressive approach to movement. In 1910, she opened her first school in London, and over the following decades formalised her ideas into the Margaret Morris Movement, an innovative system that united dance, design, music and physical training through principles of rhythm, harmony and natural motion.

Denis Peploe RSA (1914–1993) was born in Edinburgh, the second son of the Scottish Colourist S. J. Peploe. Growing up within one of Scotland’s most distinguished artistic families, he accompanied his father on painting trips to Iona and the south of France, yet from an early stage developed an independent artistic identity and remained wary of direct comparison with his celebrated parent.