Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A.

Acquired from the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Kelvingrove, 7^th June 1942, and thence by descent to the present owner

The canvas is original and sound. There are some very minor frame abrasions. Otherwise the surface is in excellent original condition with areas of strong impasto. Ultraviolet light reveals pigments which fluoresce that are the hand of the artist but no apparent signs of retouching. Held under glass in a gilt composition frame; unexamined out of frame. Please telephone the department on 0207 293 6242 if you have any questions about the present work.
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The present work is distinctive in Peploe's oeuvre in its economy of colour.  The subtle shades of grey, blue and black, heightened with broad  areas of white, produce a suitably muted background to explore the vibrant, jewel-like red of the tulip flowers.  There is a distinct lack of artifice to the composition.  The theatrical colour planes, a defining feature of paintings from the early 1920s, have been dispensed with in favour of a purer arrangement.  Rather than employ a wide variety of colours, the artist explores the one primary colour while the yellow at the base of the petals and the one, pinker coloured flower head, provide subtle flashes of complimentary tones.  The consistent tone of red is also used to render different aspects of the composition; the arranged tulips standing in the vase, the apple behind the vase and the unplaced tulip in the foreground, providing a firm, repetitious tonal structure and thread.

'It is similar, to a degree, in execution to Peploe's old master style-work from the turn of the century, where the elements of still life are set against a dark background with contrasting light creating form and perspective.  It is likely, however, that the present work was executed after 1926 where his output is '...in the spirit of Chardin: still, demanding contemplation: having a simplicity, even a nobility' (Guy Peploe, S.J. Peploe 1871-1935, Mainstream Publishing, 2000, p.72). 

It is possible that this, purer, more focused palette stemmed from the artist's increasingly regular visits to Morar and Iona.  Unlike a still life, the arrangement of which Peploe would painstakingly create and adjust where necessary, the wild landscapes, by definition, left him far less scope for artistic manipulation beyond the choice of site.  Furthermore it demanded a disciplined interrelationship between tone and texture.  With Peploe's most successful views of Iona, the brilliant white of the sand imbues the primary colours with an extra intensity, and this concentration of colour is clearly evident in the present work.  Stanley Cursiter summarises this honed and mature style thus:

'Both in landscape and in the still life and flower pieces painted in his studio, his work had a still greater richness and fullness due in great measure to an increased acceptance of the muted harmonies of quieter and more broken colour. There was no longer the slightest suggestion that the colour was being searched for and accentuated for its own sake, but rather that the whole picture surface was a web of some rich material in which notes of colour emerge and forms take shape. This continuity of colour content seems to give his work in these years the broad, flowing depth which one feels in great orchestral music.' (Stanley Cursiter, Peploe, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1947, p.76).