Legacy

Legacy

Peploe died aged only sixty-four, saying before the operation on his thyroid, from which he would not recover, that if he had another ten years he might do something decent. He left a widow and two sons, launching themselves on the world. The elder, Willy, had read History at Magdalen Oxford and began a career as an art dealer with Bignou in Paris and then Reid & Lefevre in London. Denis was taking his diploma in Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art. Memorial exhibitions came in Edinburgh and Glasgow and the major private collectors continued to buy from the dealers. Stanley Cursiter did much, writing his book after the War and before this as Director of the National Gallery of Scotland, acquiring significant works for the nation, and organising a number of exhibitions. The War intervened and the show in 1941 focussing on The Colourists, did much to fly the flag for a European facing Scottish Modernism. In the last two years of his life, Peploe taught senior students at Edinburgh College of Art including Wilhelmina BarnsGraham and Margaret Mellis. There was much in his professionalism and generosity as well as the direct links to the crucible of modern painting in Paris before the War, to make him an inspiration to the next generation of Scottish painters. Gillies and MacTaggart had exhibited with Peploe in the Society of Eight and SSA. His great friend F. C. B. Cadell did not much outlive him, but J. D. Fergusson, that paragon of Bohemian life, continued to be the grand old man of Scottish art when he returned to Glasgow from Paris at the outbreak of war, inspiring many independently minded artists. The belle peinture of the Edinburgh School, best exemplified by Anne Redpath and even the expressive honesty of Joan Eardley has part of their origins in Peploe. Painting inspired by the natural world, modified by intellect but led by love and integrity will persist as fashions come and go. In the fifties a new curatorial class began to assert novelty, always a vital if unstable ingredient in art, and the thirties quickly seemed a strange, lost time. By the sixties and seventies art was atomised and qualities like beauty and longevity were declared irrelevant. However, in this century reappraisal and even rediscovery have flourished, and it can be noted that a painting like Boat of Garten (p.74–75) can entirely escape the harsh judgments which have to be passed on so much dated, hollow art of the last quarter of the 20th century. Of course, the modest charms which sometimes transform into greatness in Peploe are vulnerable to a metropolitan commentary which assumes that any easel painting, apart from Bacon and Freud, is derivative and commercial, especially if, heaven forfend, it is made outside London. When Jack Blyth, who eventually owned eighty-four Peploes, organised a Scottish Art show at the Royal Academy in 1939, supported by the young, influential dealer Lilian Browse, he might have been shocked to know that it would be another sixty years before the SNGMA Scottish Colourist Exhibition would bring the work of Peploe back to the Academy. And he would have been horrified that the show would extract ill-informed, careless nastiness from Brian Sewell and other London-based reviewers. There were missed opportunities before this, particularly when Peploe and Fergusson’s omission from the RA’s British Art of the 20th Century was part of a thorough Scot-wash. Today however, with two hundred works held in British public collections alone and renewed support from the recent dazzling shows at the SNGMA showcasing The Colourists, Peploe can be seen as a national icon, a great of British 20th century painting. Now regularly included in Christies and Sothebys ‘Mod Brit’ high value evening sales and, thanks to enlightened continental curators, included in any appraisal of the vital early 20th century Europe-wide Expressionist movement.

Self-Portrait: Painting in Devon Place Studio, Edinburgh, c.1902 charcoal and chalk on paper, 46.5 x 30 cm signed lower left Private collection

Denis and Willy Peploe, photographed by S. J. Peploe, Iona, c.1923

Denis, ‘painting’, Iona, c.1923

Sam and Denis, George Street, Edinburgh, c.1934 Willy, Denis and Mrs Pyatt, Edinburgh, c.1934

S. J. Peploe and his students, Edinburgh College of Art, Easter 1934

Selected UK Collections

Abbot Hall Cartwright Hall Art Gallery City Art Centre Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh Ferens Art Gallery Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC) Gracefield Arts Centre Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Kirkcaldy Gallery Laing Art Gallery Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds Museums and Galleries Lillie Art Gallery Manchester Art Gallery McLean Museum and Art Gallery Middlesbrough Institute Modern Art (mima) National Galleries of Scotland, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art National Galleries of Scotland, Scottish National Portrait Gallery National Trust for Scotland, Brodie Castle National Trust for Scotland, Culzean Castle, Garden and Country Park National Trust for Scotland, Greenbank Garden National Trust for Scotland, Hermiston Quay Paisley Museum and Art Galleries Pallant House Gallery Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture Rozelle House Galleries The Burrell Collection The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust) The Fitzwilliam Museum The Fleming Collection The Stewartry Museum Ulster Museum University of Aberdeen University of Edinburgh Wardlaw Museum William Morris Gallery

S. J. Peploe, c.1920

S. J. Peploe

S. J. PEPLOE by Guy Peploe Published by Lund Humphries Price: £35.00; 192 pages

S. J. Peploe, published by Lund Humphries, was fully-revised and expanded in 2012. There are 160 colour images and extensive use of family archives of letters and photographs which lends insight into the life of one of Scotland’s best loved painters. The text attempts to place him in the complex development of art which forms the emergence of Modernism in the early years of the 20th century as well as tell the story of a painter’s life with all its minor triumphs and setbacks. Guy Peploe is a grandson of the artist as well as a Director of The Scottish Gallery, where Peploe had his first exhibition in 1903. The Scottish Gallery has designed a new jacket cover to mark the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth.

Grandson of S. J. Peploe, Guy Peploe, Director of The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh, is a specialist in 20th Century Scottish Art and is the acknowledged expert on his grandfather’s work and The Scottish Colourists. He has written and lectured extensively on Scottish Art. He is currently working on the catalogue raisonné for S. J. Peploe.

Portrait of Guy Peploe by David Eustace, photographed at the Raeburn Studio, 32 York Place, Edinburgh, 2020

Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition

S. J. PEPLOE (1871–1935) S. J. Peploe’s Studio Life at 150 30 September – 23 October 2021

Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/sjpeploe

ISBN: 978-1-912900-41-1

Produced, researched, and edited by Christina Jansen, The Scottish Gallery Designed by Kenneth Gray Photography by John McKenzie and John Glynn Photography Printed by Pureprint Group

All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers.

Cover: Tulips and Fruit, c.1919, oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm Back cover: The Lobster, c.1901, oil on canvas, 41 x 51 cm (detail) Cover inside jacket – front: Académie Julian, 1893. Robert Brough is numbered 43 and Peploe 41 at back right of group Cover inside jacket – back: Photograph of the memorial exhibition of paintings by S. J. Peploe, McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, Feb 1937

S. J. Peploe was a great man, his pictures are the ardent outpourings of a great heart and a great mind – to live with them is a sheer delight.