Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, R.S.A., R.S.W.

James Connell & Sons, Glasgow;
Sotheby's, 1 May 1990, lot 272;
The Drambuie Collection, their sale, Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh, 26 January 2006, lot 157;
Richard Green, London, where purchased by the present owner

Possibly, Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1932, no.164, or, 1933, no.230

Tom Hewlett and Duncan Macmillan, F.C.B. Cadell, The Life and Works of a Scottish Colourist, 1883-1937, 2011, illustrated, Fig.144, p.139

The original canvas which has not been lined. The work is in excellent overall condition and is clean and ready to hang. UV light inspection reveals a few very fine specks of cosmetic retouching to the top of the white door and a few further minor touches along left hand edge. Well presented in a gilt plaster frame.
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Cadell’s official standing as an artist escalated in the latter years of his life. In 1935 he was elected to the Royal Society of Watercolours and by 1936 he had been elected a Royal Scottish Academician. In a similar manner to his academic position, throughout the thirties Cadell’s painting style matured, particularly in the elegant interior scenes executed at 30 Regent Terrace. The interiors which Cadell produced at this time can be described as extremely intimate, offering an insight into the Colourist’s private life in Edinburgh. Unfortunately Cadell’s late achievement in becoming an Academician did not reflect upon a long, commercially successful career. His relationship with dealers was at times fraught, often selling few, if any, paintings over the course of his commercial exhibitions. That being said, Cadell is now considered one of Britain’s great twentieth-century artists and his legacy both as a founding member of the Society of Eight and as a Royal Academician is testament to the quality of his work.

Each of Cadell’s interior scenes is unique; having as many as six studios throughout his career as well as the private homes of many friends in which he chose to paint. Although in a less fashionable part of Edinburgh than his flat at Ainslie Terrace, 30 Regent Terrace was an enticing prospect for the maturing artist, with views across the gardens of Holyrood House and Arthur’s Seat rising in the distance. The walls were painted mauve with white wood panelling, a tonal palette reflected faithfully in Interior, 30 Regent Terrace with Easel. A similar view of the space can be seen in Interior, The Open Window (Sold in these rooms, 29 August 2007, lot 127), in which the artist painted the favourable southern view.

In both works Cadell’s characteristic motifs, including a chair laid with drapery, remain prominent; utilising a more subdued palette than Cadell’s works of the 1920s but inheriting the same emphasis on design. Moreover, the layering of space found in the present work will be recognisable to those familiar with Cadell’s works of that decade; Interior, 30 Regent Terrace with Easel can be read as a variation on those crisp interiors produced by Cadell through the 1920s, where the viewer looks through an open door into the room beyond. The composition of the present work is therefore comparable with works The Gold Chair of 1921 and Interior, the Opera Hat of 1922, which also feature regency-style chairs laid with drapery in the foreground.

Whilst the brushwork of Interior, 30 Regent Terrace with Easel is elegant in its impressionistic application of paint, Cadell’s quick-witted and playful personality has not escaped the painting. Through the central doorframe we can see a painting on an easel, identifiable as Cadell’s Interior, Regent Terrace of 1932-33 (Dundee Art Galleries and Museums Collections, Dundee City Council). That another painting of the interior of 30 Regent Terrace was included in the composition of the present picture signifies the influence of the Dutch interior tradition on Cadell’s work. The focus on apertures as key to composition, with open doors part-obscuring objects of interest, is undoubtedly reminiscent of the seventeenth-century painters Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. Even in Cadell’s work in other genres, such as portraiture, the viewer is able to find the idea of the interior entrenched; an idea which Cadell used fluently to frame his subjects, who are often to be found reflected by a well-placed mirror, or leaning against a geometric fireplace.

It is generally agreed, however, that Cadell’s interiors lack the significance of meaning now attributed to the Dutch works, and the artist’s inclusion of an interior within an interior is simply testament to Cadell’s enduring sense of humour even in later life. Whilst the presence of the painting on the easel may be read as whimsical, it is also a stark reminder of the reality of Cadell’s financial situation whilst resident at 30 Regent Terrace. In addition to the sparsity of furniture, the inclusion of his own works stacked against the walls, as seen under the table in Interior, 30 Regent Terrace with Easel and on the easel, are proof of the tough market in which the artist found himself with many works latterly remaining unsold at Cadell’s studio.

True recognition of Cadell’s contribution to the arts came in 1938 when the Royal Scottish Academy mounted a memorial exhibition of Cadell’s work, as did the National Gallery of Scotland in 1942. No doubt attendees would have noted an enduring link between Cadell’s early works and his later, similarly Impressionistic style for which inspiration derived from the timeless works of Whistler, Sargent and Lavery. In Interior, 30 Regent Terrace with Easel, the elegance and optimism of the late Edwardian era is palpable, when Cadell’s interior scenes became the foundation for an art which ‘celebrated the elegance and sophistication of the architecture, interior decoration, society and lifestyle of the Scottish capital’ (Alice Strang, F.C.B. Cadell, exhibition catalogue for the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2011, p.69).

Cadell tended to exhibit his pictures with generic titles, making identifying specific exhibits difficult. The present picture is titled on the reverse simply ‘interior’ and given that it was probably painted contemporaneously with Interior, Regents Terrace at Dundee Art Gallery, it is likely that the present picture is one of the interiors exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1932 or 1933.