A Century of the Scottish Colourists

I am delighted to have written a blog called ‘A Century of the Scottish Colourists‘ for the National Galleries of Scotland.

Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935), Landscape at Cassis, 1924
oil on canvas, 54 x 46cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh:
Bequeathed by Mr Gordon Binnie 1963

The Scottish Colourists

The four artists F. C. B. Cadell, J. D. Fergusson, G. L. Hunter and S. J. Peploe, are collectively known as the ‘Scottish Colourists‘ after their shared nationality and love of bold colours. They all spent time in Paris in the early twentieth-century and so had first hand experience of Post-Impressionism and avant-garde French art as it developed, which had a profound influence on their own practices. This was combined with a deep love of their native Scotland and they have become the country’s most celebrated artists.

John Duncan Fergusson (1874-1961)
Eástre (Hymn to the Sun), 1924 (cast 1971) brass, 42 x 22 x 23cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh: Purchased 1972
(c) Culture Perth & Kinross Museums & Galleries

A Century Ago

My blog marks a century since the quartet first exhibited together in London, at the Leicester Galleries during the month of January 1925. All four showed a range of paintings, but Fergusson, as the only sculptor of the group, also showed three sculptures. Eástre (Hymn to the Sun) is his most celebrated work in three dimensions and a cast of it was purchased by the National Galleries of Scotland in 1972.

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883-1937), Iona Croft, mid-1920s
oil on canvas-board, 38 x 45cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh: Bequeathed by Dr R.A. Lillie 1977

‘Knees of Granite’

Walter Sickert wrote the exhibition catalogue preface and referred to the artists’ nationality by saying that they came from a ‘race with knees of granite’. In his review of the exhibition, the critic P. G. Konody praised their ‘very modern synthetic simplification of form’ in The Daily Mail.

George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931), Still Life, early 1920s
oil on board, 46 x 51cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh: Purchased 1942

And on to Paris

The Scottish Colourists only showed together three times whilst all four were alive: at the Leciester Galleries in 1925, at Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1931 (joined by Telfer Bear and Ronald Ossory Dunlop) and finally at Barbizon House in London in 1932 (joined by Bear and William Gillies). The term ‘Scottish Colourists’ was not coined and applied to the quartet exclusively until all but Fergusson had died, in the title of an exhibition of their work staged by T. & R. Annans & Sons Ltd in Glasgow in 1948.

A century after the quartet first showed together in London, their work is being celebrated with the exhibition The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives organised by the Fleming Collection and Dovecot. I shall be giving the lecture ‘A Century of the Scottish Colourists‘ to accompany it on 22 April 2025.

For more about the Colourists, try this blog. You will find out more about Cadell here, Fergusson here, Hunter here and Peploe here.