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Original article: https://theconversation.com/scottish-colourists-exhibition-the-painters-who-stood-shoulder-to-shoulder-with-matisse-and-cezanne-249624
The exhibition curator James Knox is to be congratulated on bringing together an impressive collection of work that tells the story of a diverse group of artists who helped transform and modernise British art in the early 20th century and contains work held in private collections not seen by the public before.
The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives centres on the creativity of four Scottish artists: Samuel John Peploe, John Duncan Fergusson, Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell and George Leslie Hunter, who are known to be among Scotland’s most innovative and radical painters.
The Scottish colourists, as they were known, all visited and lived in Paris and were heavily influenced by the burgeoning avant-garde movement there in the early years of the 20th century. This was during its most dynamic and transformative stages, when cubism, post-impressionism and fauvism movements were evolving.
The Fleming Collection.
The exhibition highlights and contrasts the work produced by the colourists to that of Roger Fry’s Bloomsbury group members, Vanessa Bell and her amour Duncan Grant. It also includes work by the Fitzroy Street Group and several distinguished Welsh artists of that time, Augustus John and James Dickson Innes, as well as fauvist artists Andre Derain and Kees van Dongen.
The colourists’ paintings stand out in the exhibition through the maturity and confidence of their artworks, the tonal qualities and vibrancy of their colour palettes consistently rising above the more muted works surrounding them.
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The capacity of the colourists to study, travel and seek inspiration internationally, away from a grey Scottish Presbyterian climate, and particularly, embedding themselves in the Paris art scene in the early 20th century is impressive.
These artists stood shoulder to shoulder with their European contemporaries, inspired by the post-impressionist work of Cezanne, Matisse, Van Gogh and Derain. They delivered consistent and highly sophisticated artworks throughout their careers exploring light, shape and dynamic colour ranges, and often painted outdoors.
Each of the Scottish colourists returned to Scotland bringing new approaches to art with them. Peploe experimented with Cezanne-like geometric forms, whereas Fergusson’s practice was heavily influenced by the fauves. Hunter experimented with simplified post-impressionist blocks of colour to create dynamic shapes, while Cadell often focused on bold shapes and stylish impressionistic compositions.
Peploe, Hunter and Cadell exhibited in London’s Leicester Gallery in 1923 where they were first described as the “three colourists” by critic P.G. Konody.
The Fleming Collection.
Peploe, Fergusson and Hunter’s reputations were enhanced in 1924 when their work was bought by the French state after an exhibition organised by one of the most influential art dealers in Europe, Glaswegian Alexander Reid. He represented the four artists at the Galerie Barbazanges in Paris entitled Les Peintres de L’Ecosse Moderne, and turned their loose affiliation into an art movement.
Reid had also been responsible for developing the profile of The Glasgow Boys – a group of radical young painters whose disillusionment with academic painting signalled the birth of modernism in Scotland in the late 19th century. Reid was also a central figure in developing Sir William Burrell’s art collection. This was closely followed by a further exhibition in London’s Leicester Gallery in 1925 and then in Paris in 1931.
Peploe was the most commercially successful of the four artists, having a still life purchased by the Tate in 1927. His painting of Paris Plage captures the atmospherically startling white light of that French region. His studio work with a still life of flowers and fruit had the hallmarks of Cezanne’s style.
S.J. Peploe’s Paris Plage
His love of outdoor landscapes, as shown in Kirkcudbright, painted in south-west Scotland, also resemble Cezanne’s primary geometric forms. He visited the island of Iona on a number of occasions with Cadell and other painters, revealing his love of the white sands, rocks and water which can be seen in Green Sea, Iona.
Cadell was known for his powerful still lifes, stylish portraits of elegant women in hats, and for his landscape painting on Iona. Cadell’s Green Sea on Iona and Ben More on Mull on show are part of a series of paintings of the white sands he produced on his regular visits there.
Peter Barritt / Alamy
J.D. Fergusson‘s The Blue Hat, Closerie de Lilas is an outstanding piece on show which dazzles with the vibrancy of Parisian cafe life. He was attracted to fauve-like expressive colours and strong outlines in his work. The one piece of sculpture on display is by Fergusson, whose foray into sculptural medium in the Eastre, Hymn to the Sun is striking in its modernist aesthetic – like the female robot character in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
Having no art training like the others, Lesley Hunter’s Still Life with White Jug and Peonies in a Chinese vase highlight his developing skills as a still life painter and they have a striking vibrancy to them. His outdoor scenes use loosely styled daubs of colour in a post-impressionistic style often in vibrant colours.
The Fleming Collection.
All the Scottish colourists were recognised for their influence and contribution to the development of Scottish art during their lifetimes, combining aspects of The Glasgow School and cutting-edge Parisian avant garde. But they fell out of fashion due to economic decline before the second world war.
They were rediscovered and packaged as a collective in the 1950s initially by art historian T.J. Honeyman in his book Three Scottish Colourists and were brought together with the inclusion of J.D. Fergusson in the 1980s. Although their key role in the development of Scottish art history is assured, interestingly their appreciation in France is even greater than in Britain.
The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives is on at the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh until June 28.