Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A.

Peploe painted in France with his friend John Duncan Fergusson several times during the first decade of the twentieth century, first in 1904 when they visited Brittany and again in 1905 when they visited Paris, Dieppe and Paris-Plage. Paris and Paris-Plage were to be the destinations of another visit in 1907 which is likely to have been when the present work was painted. Peploe's quickly executed oils of this period contain wonderfully free paint application, investing the works with an intense, lively spirit and energy. In March 1909, after previous successes and a growing reputation, Peploe was given another solo exhibition at Aitken Dott & Son in Edinburgh and his name was put forward to become a member of the Royal Scottish Academy. This election failed and in a letter to Margaret Mackay, whom he was to marry the following year, his relief is explicit described: "I didn't get elected today – isn't it splendid. Everyone is congratulating me. For myself I am really and truly, awfully glad. I was looking forward to it with a kind of dread." Rejection by the academic establishment confirmed Peploe's tiredness of Edinburgh and its artistic narrowness decided to join his great companion John Duncan Fergusson on a semi-permanent basis in Paris, thus beginning highly important period for both artists.

The importance of these early trips to Paris in Peploe's development and the influences to which he was exposed is abundantly clear and "these brilliant works are also the culmination of Peploe's work as an impressionist." Instead of nurturing a self-conscious style derivative of the Impressionists, Peploe develops a way of painting, uniquely found in British painting, which "seeks to find in his painted surface a direct equivalent to his subject, harnessing the power of light to make colour vibrate; to make permanent the compelling beauty he saw in a model, harbour or promenade." On the Seine, displays the markings of a talented, supremely confident artist experimenting with a fresh subject and a stylistic freedom that had taken significant advances during his formative years in Paris.