Like a fresh breath of air, “he was one of the first artists in the UK who brought the French Avant-Garde and fauvism onto the British Isles,” says curator Guy Peploe, also the grandson of the renowned Scottish artist Samuel John Peploe. To mark S. J. Peploe’s 150th Anniversary since his birth, ‘Studio Life at 150’ is running at the Scottish Gallery from 30 September to 23 October. It is significant that the exhibition is being held at the Scottish Gallery as incidentally, that also happens to be where Peploe held his first-ever solo exhibition in November 1903.
All the works in the exhibition have been selected meticulously. “If I had to pick a favourite, it would have to be Tulips and Fruit or Roses,” says Guy Peploe. Both works are great representations of Peploe’s still life paintings. Painted in 1919, Tulips and Fruit is reminiscent of a Matisse still life: the bright colours that pop, tinges of blue that outline the figures, and traditional triangular composition. Only five years later, Peploe painted Roses but the technique had changed drastically. Especially placed side by side, the contrast is clear. Roses follows the fauvist and cubist styles, with the rose leaves seemingly like sides of origami and much rougher and broader strokes used throughout. Both works are a tribute to Peploe’s love for flowers. Peploe writes, “Flowers, how wonderful they are… Living their closed, unrevealed life; unexposed, but keeping their beauty of form till the very end, longest of all, dark ones, opening and closing in slow rhythm.”
The three years that Peploe spent in Paris from 1910 to 1912 were instrumental to his artistic style. Guy Peploe looks fondly at Luxembourg Gardens, Paris (1910) and says, “There’s something just so modern and innovative about this piece.” Painted just when the artist first arrived in Paris, Peploe captures the fading of summer and the start of autumn with bright, popping tones. There is a sense of liberation in his brush strokes, as Peploe breaks free from the more traditionalist methods of painting that was in vogue when he was studying art in Scotland. “It’s great that my grandfather moved to Paris when he did,” Guy Peploe remarks. “Perhaps if he’d been a decade older, he wouldn’t have adapted these different techniques of the 1910s that was a result of so many changes in society.”
Although Peploe did indeed return to France several times throughout the rest of his life, one of the most sacred places for him to paint was Iona, a small island in the Hebrides. He constantly painted on the north part of the island and was inspired by the craggy rocks, white sands, and the coastline where he could look across the ocean to the Isle of Mull. The North End, Iona is a fantastic example of one of his landscape paintings. Unlike many other Scottish landscape paintings, this piece has a bright, pastel colour scheme, depicting sunlight shining on the rocks with a beautiful, pastel pink hue.
“I think it’s a shame that Peploe was overlooked in the 60s and 70s when there was more of a demand for the new in the art world, when Peploe himself was really a great innovator in his own time,” says Guy Peploe. Peploe’s incredibly diverse paintings executed in many different styles puts him forward as a wonderful artist who always strove to improve, to experiment, and to better express the unique and colourful ways in which he saw the world. The optimism in his paintings brightens up one’s day, and this exhibition is not one to miss, particularly in the grey Edinburgh weather of the coming weeks.
Until 23 October (https://scottish-gallery.co.uk/exhibitions/studio-life-at-150)
[Image: Samuel John Peploe Tulips and Fruit 1919
Image Courtesy of The Scottish Gallery]