George Leslie Hunter

Alex Reid & Lefevre Ltd, Glasgow;
Private Collection;
Duncan R. Miller Fine Arts, where purchased by the present owner

Glasgow Art Club;
Duncan R. Miller Fine Arts, London, The Scottish Colourists,1995, (Hunter) no.4, illustrated;
Duncan R. Miller Fine Arts, London, The Scottish Colourists, 2000

There is some bowing and unevenness to the board, otherwise the work is in good order. Under UV light, the paint surface fluoresces but this appears to be caused by the artist's pigments, rather than any retouching. Within a plain wooden frame with gold slip, ready to hang
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George Leslie Hunter loved nothing more than to paint fruit or flowers and he relished the prospect of devoting his time to still life painting. Hunter usually composed his still life paintings around a central motif of flowers, fruit or occasionally more unusual objects such as a lobster, inspired by seventeenth century Dutch artists. He would return to his Glasgow studio with bouquets of choice blooms or ripe fruit and despite the chaos of his housekeeping was able to find interestingly shaped ceramics to contain them and construct a pleasing and sophisticated still life from which to work. 

Chrysanthemums in a Chinese Vase probably dates from the mid 1920s, a period when Hunter's still life paintings were particularly vibrant, marked by a richness of colour and bold composition. In 1926, he moved to a studio in the South of France, at St-Paul-de-Vence. The intense Mediterranean sunlight brightened his colour palette. He wrote in his diary that “Everyone must choose his own way, and mine will be the way of colour…” (T. J. Honeyman, Introducing Leslie Hunter, Faber & Faber, 1937. p.97). Hunter was encouraged by his friend and biographer Tom Honeyman to concentrate on painting still life and this was to give him a new and more focused direction in his work.

The painting shows a Chinese vase on a dark table filled with brightly coloured chrysanthemums. The energetic, thickly impastoed brushstrokes inject life and movement to the image through bursts of orange, green, pink, red and white. In the foreground, there is an arrangement of fruit, reflected in the brown varnished table. In places the canvas is visible through the paint, confirming that Hunter was not interested in a highly finished image but one which displays energy. This was something that set him apart from Peploe, Fergusson and Cadell, who inversely became increasingly restricted in both palette and brushstrokes. The bold colouring and the starkness of the forms of the pears, accentuated with black, the striking white tablecloth against the dark backdrop and the unifying use of red on the fruit in the centre, repeated on the Chinese vase, clearly demonstrate Hunter's admiration for Matisse. One of Hunter's chief patrons in Glasgow, William McInnes owned a fine still life by Matisse that Hunter greatly admired and it is said that he would often sit in front of it for hours.

However, although Honeyman noted that both Cézanne and Matisse had exerted some influence upon Hunter, especially during his stay in France, he was adamant that Hunter was far from an imitator of any other artist, stating that "one should not liken him to Matisse. One should contrast them. Each is a colourist, but their perceptions differ." (D. Ogston, The Life and Work of George Leslie Hunter 1877-1931, Baillie know Publishing, 2002. p.138). At this time Hunter's style was fully formed and he was rightly proud of his achievements. As Honeyman points out, Hunter "..was emphatic in the conviction that his present style of painting qualified him for inclusion among the accredited leaders of the post-war European art." (T. J. Honeyman, Introducing Leslie Hunter, Faber & Faber, 1937. p.133).