Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A.

Aitken Dott & Son, Edinburgh;
Eric Linklater Esq.;
Thence by descent to the present owner

Stromness, The Pier Arts Centre, The Linklater Collection: Works from the Collection of the late Eric Linklater, 16 May - 12 June 1980, no. 15

The panel is sound. The work is in good original condition, clean and ready to hang. Ultraviolet light reveals no sign of retouching. Held in a decorative frame in fair condition. Under glass and unexamined out of frame.
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Peploe first visited the island of Barra in 1897 with his brother William Watson Peploe and Robert Cowan Robertson, but re-visited the island in 1903 when the current picture was painted. Peploe had begun to paint en plein air in around 1896 when he first visited North Berwick and the loosely handled, brightly coloured oil sketches of this early period certainly point towards his development as a Colourist. Roger Billcliffe identifies that from 1902, when he was painting in Comrie in Perthshire, "the beginnings of Peploe's future commitment to colour can first be seen. His rush to capture a particular quality of light or colour in the landscape forced Peploe to work more quickly than in the controlled and measured atmosphere of his studio and his brushwork became more loose and ample as the paint was hurriedly swept on to the canvas boards that he used for these small studies. These were complete paintings in their own right, as Peploe did not take them back to the studio to work up into more studied works. They were an aide-memoire of a particular quality of light that Peploe sought to recapture in his more slowly painted still-lifes and life studies in the studio." The virtuosity of execution in the current work displays the confidence and fervour with which the young artist was working at this formative time and is comparable to a work of the same date and title held by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. Billciffe further highlights that "Peploe's Barra landscapes of c.1902-3 are more accomplished than anything he had yet produced" and they were greatly admired and influential to John Duncan Fergusson who persuaded Peploe to join him on a painting trip to Britanny in the summer of 1904 marking the first of many important trips to France.

The current work was acquired by Eric Linklater, the popular novelist and writer of short stories, travel literature, military history and autobiography at Peploe's first solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery of Aitken Dott & Son from 3 November – 1^st December 1903. The son of Captain Robert Linklater of Dounby, Eric was born on 8^th March 1899 in Penarth, South Wales but received his early education at Aberdeen Grammar School and later at Aberdeen University. Despite his formative years in South Wales due to his father's work as a master mariner, Linklater regarded Scotland, and particularly the islands, as his spiritual home. When James Caw reviewed the Aitken Dott exhibition he commented that "almost all [of the pictures] were remarkable for the virile, fresh and vigorous way in which they were handled", which, along with the subject matter and use of colour, made the current work so attractive to Linklater. Barra was exhibited at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness as part of the 1980 exhibition of The Eric Linklater Collection, the remainder of which was donated to the University of Aberdeen by Eric's widow, Marjorie. The collection included wonderful examples by the full range of Scotland's most celebrated twentieth century painters – the paintings which today hang in the University of Aberdeen are The Brass Kettle (1904) and Hortensia (1910) by John Duncan Fergusson; Still Life (1930) by Samuel John Peploe; Still Life with Bottles (1931) by George Leslie Hunter; Eric Linklater (1933) and Marjorie Linklater (1933) by Stanley Cursiter; Set Square (1957) by James Cowie; Tulips in a White Jug (1957) by Anne Redpath; Salmon Nets on the Shore (1961) by Joan Eardley and Threnody in Red (1969) by Robin Philipson.