Francis Cadell
Scottish Colourist of Iona sands and cool Edinburgh interiors, painted with a loaded brush and no fuss.
Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell was born in Edinburgh in 1883 and was sent to Paris to study at sixteen on the advice of Arthur Melville. He is one of the four Scottish Colourists, with Peploe, Fergusson and Hunter, and the two subjects that carry his name are the New Town interiors — a model in a wide hat against lacquered black furniture and cool grey walls, painted with real economy — and Iona, which he visited almost every summer from 1912 and where he found the white sand and green water that fill the later canvases. He served with the Royal Scots in the First World War. He died in Edinburgh in 1937, in poverty.
Both the interiors and the Iona pictures are unique oils, frequently on board or panel for the smaller works painted on the island. The Colourists as a group have attracted a great deal of imitation and a certain amount of outright faking, so provenance and exhibition history do more work here than they do for artists of comparable value elsewhere. Signature is usually lower left or lower right and is often simply Cadell or F C B Cadell. Watercolours and drawings appear as well and are valued separately.
If you own a work by Francis Cadell
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