Scottish Colour

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Sotheby’s was the first auction house to establish Scottish Art auctions nearly 45 years ago and has been at the forefront ever since, creating many world records for leading Scottish artists. This November Sotheby’s will be staging the first stand-alone Scottish Art sale since 2010, which will contain a strong selection of Scottish Colourists. The four artists we now group as the Colourists were only loosely associated in their life and were never exhibited together, yet they shared the same appreciation of colour and ambition to innovate. – Jane Oakley

Scottish Art
18 November | London

Scottish Colour

  • Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, R.S.A., R.S.W., Florian's Café. Estimate: £400,000–600,000.
    Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell visited Venice only once in his lifetime, and the work he produced there marked a pivotal moment in his artistic development. The intense light warmed and intensified the colours of his palette as shown in this iconic view of Florian’s Café , with St Mark’s Basilica in the background, which is one of a series that rarely appears at auction.

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  • Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A., Still Life with Coffee Pot and Fan. Estimate: £150,000–250,000.
    By 1905 Peploe was already an accomplished painter, very much in the context of Edwardian still life painting, with the obvious influences of Manet and Whistler in the fairly restricted palette. However, we can observe his obvious delight in bright colour tones in his depiction of the orange . This heightened use of pure pigment was to become a hallmark of his later works.

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  • Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A., Pink Roses. Estimate: £350,000–450,000.
    Pink Roses is an exceptional example from what is often considered to be Samuel John Peploe’s best period – the early 1920s. At this time, he had recently been elected to the Royal Scottish Academy and developed into what is now regarded as his mature style.

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  • John Duncan Fergusson, R.B.A., Street Scene, Paris. Estimate: £100,000–150,000.
    John Duncan Fergusson’s pre-war Parisian paintings are often seen as his most innovative period. Like all the Colourists, Fergusson spent periods of time abroad and was at the forefront of European modernism in the early part of the 20th Century. He stayed true to his Scottish roots, however, and managed to construct an individual style without seeking to imitate the work of his contemporaries.

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