10 March 2025
Scottish Colourists: Disruptors with self-belief
8 minutes
Guy Peploe, grandson of Scottish Colourist Samuel John Peploe and a director of The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh, reveals how four friends became the pioneers of 20th century art
The Scottish Colourists were modernists – artists who were not going to take commissions from the landed gentry or a paint a company chairman’s wife.
The four friends were going to paint what they wanted. They worked all hours and were prepared to fail because they knew what they were doing was significant. In this sense, they were disruptors with absolute self-belief.
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My grandfather Samuel John Peploe and his friends John Duncan Fergusson, Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell and George Leslie Hunter were pioneers of 20th-century Scottish art but they weren’t a group that met every day, rather encouraging each other, sometimes travelling to particular places in Scotland and France together to work and exhibiting together, becoming known as ‘les peintres de l’Ecosse modernes’ in France and then more widely as The Scottish Colourists. (Image: J.D. Fergusson, Self Portrait, c.1910, Conté on paper, 20 x 12 cm. Private collection) |
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None of the four enjoyed significant commercial success in their lifetimes and for each the most important thing for was the next painting. They painted landscape outdoors and travelled to find inspiration and new subject matter, working in Paris and the south of France. Born between 1871 and 1883, each attended drawing and composition classes but were not products of the art school system and none was attracted to teaching nor the conventional career of the painter. In the early 20th century they were still young enough, ambitious enough and curious enough to respond to all the extraordinary changes that were happening in the art world, particularly in Europe, before the First World War, to develop their art and adopt modernist practices. Peploe was the eldest, born in 1871, three years older than his friend John Duncan Fergusson, although it was Fergusson who persuaded him to live in Paris in 1910. Peploe was also close to Bunty Cadell, both artists living in Edinburgh from the war years and painting together on Iona and at Cassis in the South of France. (Image: F.C.B. Cadell, Self Portrait, c.1914, oil on canvas, 113.1 x 86.8 cm Image courtesy of National Galleries of Scotland) |
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With both, Peploe could share ideas, talk about art and enjoy sympathetic, brotherly companionship. The Colourists tended to paint on a modest scale, with materials that you could transport when going on trains to Paris and the South of France or the west coast of Scotland. In the studio they also concentrated on easel painting. At different stages of his long career Fergusson did produce a few monumental scale subject pictures, but otherwise worked on a scale appropriate to the figure, still life and landscape. All four artists were serious, dedicated artists with the drive to make a significant contribution to painting. It’s what another Scottish painter William McTaggart called ‘good habit’. You just go to the studio and work even if you don't feel like it and find that ambition and discipline when there's no one else helping you. (Image: S.J. Peploe, Rocks, Iona, c.1920, oil on board, 36.8 x 44.4 cm. Private collection) |
Who influenced the Scottish Colourists?Of course, art is not created in a vacuum, and at various stages of their lives as painters all four artists were influenced by what they looked at, including their contemporaries. Peploe and Fergusson looked at Whistler and John Singer Sargent when they were painting the single figure and Dutch Golden Age painters influenced their still life. The two great figures of modernism, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, were in Paris at the same time, both actually younger than Peploe and Fergusson. Picasso made a point of going to visit Fergusson in his studio and they got on well. Picasso did a quick drawing for Fergusson which he later used as a little emblem for the Celtic Ballet where his partner Margaret Morris was a founder. (Image: F.C.B. Cadell, Still Life, Tulips, c.1923, oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm. Private collection) |
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Paul Cezanne was important because he provided structure to the next generation, influencing Peploe and The Cubists alike with rigorous compositional analysis of square, triangle and circle. And there would have been others, in the early period. Henri Matisse’s Fauve works were a powerful influence on all, in particular Hunter.
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(Image: G.L. Hunter, Street in Fife, c.1921, oil on canvas, 56 x 69 cm. Private collection) |
(Image: G.L. Hunter, Storm, Lower Largo, Fife, 1925, oil on canvas, 50 x 60.5 cm) |
Can you imagine being in Paris in the early 20th century and going to see retrospective exhibitions of artists like Van Gogh and Gauguin? These were very exciting times and the four artists could say ‘I can do this…’
Fergusson and Peploe recalled going to the Russian Ballet, new music by Stravinski and Rimsky Korsakov and having some of the greatest nights of their lives.
There was a whole intellectual milieu, the artists attending public lectures by Henri Bergson to hear his ideas about art and philosophy. Each night artists and intellectuals would congregate in the cafes of Montparnasse: La Rotonde, Le Closerie des Lilas, Café Harcourt. The four Scots were very much part of that avant-garde art movement in those years.
How did the phrase ‘Scottish Colourists’ come about
The Scottish Colourists’ name was likely coined by Dr T.J. Honeyman, who wrote a book The Three Scottish Colourists (Peploe, Cadell and Hunter) just after the Second World War. They were referred to as The Colourists from the 20s and 30s and Fergusson, intricately associated in the history, became routinely included within the movement after the war.
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Why I love the Scottish colouristsThe expressionist power of colour, the strength of colour, goes straight to my heart. It lifts you. It's speaking to you very directly. I've grown up with these paintings but when you begin to learn about them it catches your interest and becomes more intense. There’s a picture I’ve always loved of Kirkcudbright, which is a place Peploe painted during the First World War, expecting to be called up any minute. It’s a wonderful painting of the Tollbooth painted in yellows and oranges, it's not naturalistic, it's something in the day which gave him the idea of those colours. The design is so satisfying and the colour is so directly appealing.” (Image: S.J. Peploe, Kirkcudbright, Tolbooth c.1915, oil on canvas, 32 x 40.6 cm Private Collection) |
How did the Scottish Colourists fund themselves?
A market developed for their work through the support of collectors and galleries and they all had some success in their lives and had work bought by museums in their lifetimes.
However, none of the artists had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth; Peploe had a modest inheritance and Fergusson had some support from his adoring family. Cadell’s family were supportive although died young and you can trace his commercial decline from a grand house in Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, to the edge of the New Town and reduced circumstances. These were difficult times for the art market as with the wider economy but also a period of very little inflation so an adequate, modest means was all they needed. As long as they could afford to buy a tube of lead white and have enough for the train fare to Paris they could work.
The continuing support of The Scottish Gallery came into focus, making advances against sales for both Hunter and Peploe to spread the income for the artists.
Who was buying their paintings at the time?
Modest professional classes began buying the painters’ work and they were also supported by some big names including Sir William Burrell and Glasgow shipowner Major Ion Harrison (whose wonderful collection is still significant today). Jack Blyth, the grandfather of Michael Portillo, was a linoleum manufacturer in Kirkcaldy and he owned 83 paintings by Peploe.
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How to buy and who’s buyingThere are a few significant American collectors and people who have made their money in the city. But some buyers do not live with the trappings of extreme wealth and really push the boat out to get something modest, a small painting for £30,000-£40,0000 or a beautiful drawing for £3,000-£5,000. There have been some good solid auction results and gallery sales in the last two or three years. Like any marketplace there are going to be peaks and dips. There was a lot of strength in the market right about the end of the 1990s and a series of museum exhibitions have helped consolidate reputations. At the moment, the Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives exhibition has just opened at the Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, and runs to June 28. If something exceptional comes on the market, it can ask an exceptional price. For an individual picture I would be confident it would make towards £1m for a spectacular Peploe or perhaps one of the major Fergussons. But underneath that, there are really good paintings which, particularly if they're fresh to the market, that can command £250,000 to £500,000. (Image: Guy Peploe, grandson of SJ Peploe. Credit Ian Georgeson) |
The thing about this group of artists is they're eminently collectible but investors should buy because they love the work.
The best way to establish trust and give people confidence is through conversations. Visit galleries and auction houses. If someone comes in and starts a conversation at The Scottish Gallery there’s always someone to give advice. I always recommend booking an appointment.
Guy Peploe can be contacted at guy@scottish-gallery.co.uk
Further information
Exhibition dates
The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives at the Dovecot Studios, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh runs to June 28.
Visit info@dovecotstudios.com
New book
Coinciding with The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives exhibition, The Scottish Gallery Press has published Four Artists, One Gallery, an Enduring Legacy, an 80-page hardback. It is available from March 25, 2025, price £14.95 plus postage. Limited to 500 copies.
Visit scottish-gallery.co.uk
The Scottish Gallery
Established in Edinburgh by Aitken Dott in 1842 as Gilders, Framers, and Artists’ Colourmen, the gallery exhibited and sold work by the leading Scottish artists. It continues to do so from its premises on Dundas Street, Edinburgh.
Art Insurance
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