Pink and yellow roses in a blue and white vase; Still life with fruit and flowers (verso)

SAMUEL JOHN PEPLOE RSA

1871 - Edinburgh - 1935

Ref: CC 172

Pink and yellow roses in a blue and white vase;

Still life with fruit and flowers (verso)

Signed lower right: SJ Peploe

On the reverse is another finished painting,

Still life with fruit and flowers

Oil on canvas: 22 x 20 in / 55.9 x 50.8 cm

Frame size: 29 ½ x 27 ½ in / 74.9 x 69.8 cm

In a Louis XIV style carved and gilded frame

Painted in the mid to late 1920s

Provenance:

Private collection, Scotland, then by descent

This exceptional canvas features two remarkable paintings by SJ Peploe, which document his enduring passion for still life and increasingly sophisticated style. The first is a classic flowerpiece of yellow and pink roses, whose warmth and structured softness are beautifully balanced by the elegant blue and white Chinese porcelain vase and plate, echoed in the cool blue backdrop beyond. The oblique angle of the table, off-centre vase and cropped flowers to the right, add dynamism to the composition, as does Peploe’s expressive technique. Peploe was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1927 and the following year held an important solo show at the Kraushaar Gallery in New York, while closer to home, Kirkcaldy Art Gallery dedicated a room to his work in their new extension. Writing in the catalogue, the curator, Corsan Morton, declared, ‘it is in his still lifes, his arrangements of flowers…that he has of late years achieved a very definite personal style of great beauty, which places him in a class by himself.’[1]

On the reverse of the canvas, Still life with fruit and flowers is a slightly later work, and like Roses in a grey jar, circa 1933, at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, displays a refined, almost monochrome palette in harmony with the pale grey vase, enlivened by areas of bright red, orange, yellow and green in the fruit and flowers.

Image of the reverse

[1] Cited in Stanley Cursiter, Peploe, An Intimate Memoir of an Artist and of his Work, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.,  Edinburgh 1947, p.63.