Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A.

Alex Reid & Lefevre Ltd., London;
Private Collection

The canvas is original. On close inspection there are a few very small abrasions in the upper right corner with some resulting paint loss and one extremely minor indentaion with resulting paint loss in the upper left corner. There is some very light craquelure and stretcher marks in places and some minor paint separation on a couple of isolated areas. Some extremely minor surface dirt. Otherwise in good original condition. Ultraviolet light reveals no sign of retouching. Held in a simple gold finished wooden frame in fair condition.
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Flowers in Green Vase was probably painted in the early 1920s, the same period in which several of his greatest still lifes were produced, including Still Life of Pink and Red Roses in a Chinese Vase (sold at Sotheby's, Hopetoun House in 2004). This was the period in which Peploe painted in his most dramatic bold phase, his colours resplendent and contrasted beautifully with one another. After about 1913 Peploe's art became more concentrated on geometric form and vibrant colouring and through the series of beautiful still lifes, he investigated the same possibilities of composition and colour which the Fauves and Cubists had found so fascinating. The pictorial space became flattened and the consideration of spatial arrangement became almost sculptural in its bold outlining and strong contrasts. "Peploe had now reached a stage at which his new technique was fully formed. The war years had been a time of preparation, intensive study, and concentration on the problems of colour, form, and lighting. He was like a coiled spring awaiting merely the opportunity to expand." (Stanley Cursiter, Peploe; An Intimate Memoir of an Artist and of His Work, 1947, pg. 50). Cursiter traced this interest in painting purely for the sake of colour and form back to the work of the Impressionists, "With the coming of Impressionism colour took on a new meaning, and every inch of the colour surface carried a vibrating, living and pulsating colour with tints sub-divided into their components." (ibid Cursiter, pg. 53)

Peploe had been elected a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1917 and "had already weathered the worst of the depression caused by his change in style in the years 1910-13" (ibid Cursiter, pg. 50). This was a period of hightened activity when the artist painted with great confidence and energy in the full knowledge that his popularity was assured and that dealers such as Aitken Dott had a ready market for his still-lives and landscapes. The still lives painted in the first years of the 1920s are perhaps Peploe's most successful and Flowers in Green Vase is a striking and harmonious composition with all of the qualities of Peploe's most confident works.