Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A.

Mrs. S. J. Peploe, Edinburgh;
Dr. James Harper;
Sale Christie's, London, 19 March 1971, Lot 149;
Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London;
Sale: Christie's, Glasgow, 20 November 1997, Lot 11 (as Madonna Lilies);
Private Collection

Glasgow, The McLellan Galleries, Momorial Exhibition of Paintings by S. J. Peploe R.S.A., 1937, no. 30

The canvas is original. On very close inspection there is a tiny abrasion to the extreme lower left edge. There is some very minor craquelure in a few isolated areas. Otherwise in good original condition, clean and ready to hang. Ultraviolet light reveals no sign of retouching. Held in a decorative composite frame in fair condition.
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Samuel John Peploe painted a striking series of still life subjects dating from c.1919, remarkable for their bright colouring, bold compositions and redolent of the modernism of the unfolding jazz-age. Peploe had used colour at its highest pitch since his return to Scotland from a period in France in 1913. By 1919 he ceased to differentiate the changes of plane and colour with outlines and the juxtaposition of bright colours placed side by side was used to convey intensity; '... the main impression gathered from his paintings is of colour, intense colour, and colour in its most colourful aspect. One is conscious of material selected for inclusion in still-life groups because of its colourful effect; reds, blues, and yellows are unmistakably red, blue and yellow; the neutrals are black and white.' (Stanley Cursiter, Peploe: An Intimate Memoir of an Artist and his Work, 1946, p. 43). By this period in his career Peploe was an established artist with a fully rounded sense of his artistic aims. His reputation was affirmed by his election to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1917 and by highly successful exhibitions at Aitken Dott & Sons in Edinburgh. His paintings were confidently bold in execution and composition, rhythmic in arrangement and vibrant in colour. The paintings of tulips mark the epitome of his still life paintings of this period in which the arabesques of drooping stems are mirrored by the soft curves of ripe citrus fruit and the contours of porcelain. Angles created by the edge of the table and the folds of the drapes add a further element of contrast and divide the pictorial space into a series of shapes flooded with pure colour, not unlike stained-glass or the oriental prints so beloved by the Colourists and immortalised by Peploe in Interior with a Japanese Print of 1916 (University of Hull Art Collection).

The connection between the work of Peploe and Cadell was particularly strong at this time and although the artists did not share a studio on a permanent basis, it is likely that Peploe used Cadell's studio on occasion. The blue painted wall in the background of the present picture features strongly in paintings by Cadell from the early 1920s including Still Life and Rosechatel of 1924 (Hunterian Art Gallery) and also in other pictures by Peploe such as A Vase of Pink Roses c.1925 (Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation). It is likely that Peploe kept his friend Cadell informed of artistic advances in France and that the influence of the Fauves upon the two artists work was predominantly generated by Peploe's enthusiasm for the art he had seen in Paris in the earlier years of the decade. This interest manifested itself in the saturated colours and flattened perspectives of his still-lifes and as Roger Billcliffe observes "the simplification of modelling with a consequent emphasis on pattern. Both the patterns made by the shapes of the objects in these paintings - jug, fruit, bowl, chair - and the flat decorative patterns of the pieces of cloth used as drapes in the background combine to create an overall abstract design which is the true subject of the painting." Peploe chose to paint Arum Lilies only a handful of times, often favouring Tulips or Roses, but the large fluted blooms evident in the present work give the painting a unique sense of energy and vigour which can only be observed in the very finest Colourist works and which owe so much to Henri Matisse, André Derain and other artists working in the Fauvist circle. Arum Lilies is certainly one of the most outstanding examples of Peploe's work at this crucial and celebrated moment in his career.