Sold at Auction: Samuel John Peploe

(b Edinburgh, Scotland 1871; d Edinburgh 1935) Scottish painter. Samuel John Peploe painted a series of still life subjects dating from 1919, remarkable for their bright colouring, bold compositions and redolent of modernism. Peploe had used colour at its highest pitch since his return to Scotland from a period in France in 1913. By this period, Peploe was an established artist with a fully rounded sense of his artistic aims. His reputation was affirmed by his election to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1917 and by highly successful exhibitions at Aitken Dott & Sons in Edinburgh. The connection between the work of Peploe and [Scottish painter Francis] Cadell was particularly strong at this time and although the artists did not share a studio on a permanent basis, it is likely that Peploe used Cadell's studio on occasion. It is likely that Peploe kept Cadell informed of artistic advances in France and that the influence of the Fauves upon the two artists work was predominantly generated by Peploe's enthusiasm for the art he had seen in Paris in the earlier years of the decade. Peploe favoured depicting tulips, roses, and lilies with a unique sense of energy and vigour which can only be observed in the very finest Colourist works and which owe so much to Henri Matisse, André Derain and other artists working in the Fauvist circle. (Credit: Sotheby’s, London, Scottish Pictures, April 29, 2009, Lot 68).