Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell 1883-1937

'There was no mistaking the house in Ainslie Place in which Bunty lived... The main rooms, on the ground floor, were large and well proportioned. He used the drawing room as his studio, and painted the walls in a rich mauve colour in sharp contrast to the brilliant white painted woodwork of the panelled, inter-connecting doors. The highly polished dark wooden floor, reflected the bright colours of the carefully placed Whytock and Reid furniture and provided the theme for many of his more dramatic interiors.' (Tom Hewlett, Cadell; The Life and Works of a Scottish Colourist, 1883-1937, 1988, pp.53-54)

Cadell's interiors painted in the late 1920s and 1930s are perhaps his most sophisticated and accomplished paintings, capturing an elegant intelligence in the placing of objects and furniture and a striking juxtaposition of swathes of bright colour. Unlike his landscapes and still lifes which capture the undulating organic rhythms of the natural world the interiors depict the more formal lines of man-made spaces. The overlaying of spaces leading the eye from one room to another, is reminiscent of seventeenth century Dutch painting but the effect of the bright colours gives the pictures a striking modernity. This was described by the critic Andre Salmon in 1926; 'Cadell aims... to charm without undesirable concession... his themes are full of grace. Yet if he wishes to attract people, he imposes tyrannically his taste for rigid line and the kind of geometrical harmony of his most attractive works.' (Ibid Hewlett, p. 76).

The rooms of his artistically decorated home at 6 Ainslie Place in Edinburgh supplied him with innumerable subjects and in the late  1920s when this picture appears to have been painted, he particularly favoured views of rooms through open doorways. He often used the white and blue painted fireplace of his sitting room as a focal point for these interiors, often with a red ladder-back or blue upholstered chair placed in the open doorway. There are several paintings from the late 1920s entitled The Red Chair (for example Sotheby's, 1 September 2004, lot 863) but this favourite piece of furniture was raised to greatest prominence in the 1930s in a series  of still lifes and interiors, including The Red Chair and The Blue Fan of c.1934.

There are several items included in Interior, The Red Chair which are recognizable from other paintings by Cadell, including the oriental blue-and-white pot and the Persian ceramic tile on the mantle-piece and the lacquer Japanned cabinet. The painting hanging above the fire-place is a version of The Blue Fan (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) which also appears in the comparable The Opera Hat also known as Interior, The Marble Fireplace (Christie's, 7 December 1989, lot 358).

It is possible that the present picture is the painting exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in  1929 entitled Interior, The Red Chair but as there are several contemporary interiors that include the red chair, it is not possible to be sure that it was this example.