George Leslie Hunter

Alex. Reid, Glasgow

Private Collection

Sale, Sotheby's Hopetoun House, 10 April 2000, lot 170, where acquired by the present owners

Landscape works constituted a significant part of George Leslie Hunter’s oeuvre, and he painted images of numerous locations, including Paris, San Francisco, Italy and the South of France. It was in the years after the First World War, however, that Hunter frequently painted scenes in Fife, notably in Lower Largo, Ceres and other locations along the East Neuk coast. Derek Ogston and Margaret Carlaw attribute Hunter’s interest in Fife to 'the light…and the varied colours of its lime-washed houses with their red pantiled roofs' (D. Ogston and M. Carlaw, George Leslie Hunter 1877-1931, 2002, p. 68).

In Cornfield in Fife, Hunter draws together many of the best elements of his paintings from this series to capture the distinctive pastoral warmth of the scene. Painting with thick, vital impasto in a manner reminiscent of Van Gogh, Matisse and Cezanne, Hunter conveys the striking effect of bright sunlight on the auburn-gold piles of corn and saturated crimson pantiles that dominate the foreground. These warm tones are then further accentuated through the contrast with cool blues, greys and greens that depict trees, meadows and clouds in the background.

In character, works painted in Fife constitute an important moment in Hunter’s artistic development, both embodying his sophisticated appreciation of French modernism and prefiguring the landscapes he would paint on the Côte d’Azur from 1925. Significantly, it was there that he made the break to paint en plein air, which in turn opened up new areas of development in both his landscapes and still lifes.