Description
Oil on panel
Dimensions
25.5cm x 31cm (10in x 12in) with a study of a mother and child verso
Footnote
Provenance:Wemyss Honeyman Collection
Private Collection, Scotland 1998
Note:It has been variously suggested that this study was painted in 1898 and 1903.
Peploe first travelled to the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides in 1894, staying in the studio of his friend Robert Cowan Robertson, and returning on further occasions until 1903. He was accompanied on these trips by his brother W. W. Peploe who was also an artist but better remembered as a poet. Both were inspired by the great beauty of the tiny island, particularly the perfect horseshoe of Castlebay with its stone buildings huddled together against the Atlantic elements, including the tower of the picturesquely titled Church of Our Lady Star.
On these trips Peploe worked en plein air and always on a small scale; painting directly onto wooden panels. These works are early in his career, and are astonishing in their modernism. The technique itself is notable - swiftly executed to convey a sense of the wind buffeting the waves in the bay and shaking the grasses on the hills, daubed in fluid, darting brushwork of un-mixed colour and glossy impasto.
The style is extraordinary and wild; verging on Post-Impressionism in a manner no other British artist was practising at the time. As historian and critic Duncan MacMillan noted in reference to this particular picture, "There is nothing quite like it in contemporary British art and little enough in France either… it is quite clear from the patterns of brushwork that somewhere Peploe has seen and understood Van Gogh's painting." This early exposure to the great French artist was possibly a result of Peploe's relationship with Alexander Reid, the Glaswegian art dealer and friend of the Van Gogh brothers.
Works such as this provide a fascinating and exciting insight into Peploe's development. Even as early as 1894 he was painting in an extremely avant-garde and experimental fashion; on the cusp of developing his friendship with J. D. Fergusson and heading to Paris. His role as an artistic pioneer cannot be overstated.