Samuel Peploe
Scottish Colourist who painted the same roses, fan and Chinese bowl until he had them exactly right.
Samuel John Peploe was born in Edinburgh in 1871, trained there and in Paris, and is generally taken as the most rigorous of the four Scottish Colourists. The early work is dark and fluent, painted with a loaded brush on a light ground in the manner of Manet and Hals. After a period in Paris from 1910 the palette lifts and the handling hardens under the influence of Cezanne, and the pictures that followed are the ones he is known for: still lifes of tulips or roses in a Chinese bowl, with a black fan, a book and a piece of drapery, arranged and rearranged over years. He also painted at Iona and Cassis. He died in 1935.
Still lifes are the subject most asked for, ahead of the Iona and French landscapes. The paintings are unique oils, often on panel or board. The Colourists as a group attract imitation, and Peploe in particular has been copied since his lifetime, so provenance, exhibition history and the standing literature matter more here than the appearance of the picture. The signature is generally a plain Peploe, lower left or right, and is not evidence in itself. Watercolours and drawings appear, and his son Denis was also a painter.
If you own a work by Samuel Peploe
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