Lot 142
£25,200
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale | Lots 103-196 | Thursday 05 December from 6pm
Signed, oil on canvas
61cm x 51cm (24in x 20in)
Christie's Scotland, The Scottish Sale 31st October 2002, lot 131;
Private Collection, Scotland.
George Leslie Hunter’s prowess as a still-life painter is well known and Still Life of Fruit and Flowers is a beautiful example of his work in this genre. It illustrates the praise that the critic of The Times gave to his paintings of the early 1920s, writing on 6 January 1923 that ‘Mr Hunter loves paint and the flatness of paint. He loads it on lusciously…His still lifes are strong and simple in design and gorgeous in colour…He makes the heart glad…like wine.’
The present painting shows Hunter’s preferred ensemble of a table-top still life arrangement, presented in the corner of his studio. Here, colour and pattern vie for attention, as the brilliant colour of the flower heads and fruit combine with the design of the vase and the material draped in the background to create an asymmetrical but perfectly pitched composition. Expanses of lighter tones, seen in the tablecloth and the panelling provide a contrast with the brilliance and energy of other passages, the whole completed with the confident ‘L. Hunter’ signature at the lower right.
Hunter’s bright palette and vigorous brushstrokes speak of the prolonged periods he spent in Paris before and after World War One and his extensive knowledge of Post-Impressionist and early twentieth-century French art, from Paul Cézanne to Henri Matisse. Another critic, this time of The Glasgow Herald, declared on 17 December1925 that ‘if his colour schemes are sometimes daring they are always harmonious…presenting the essence of his subject with directness and vigour that is yet elastic, sprightly and joyous.’ It is with paintings such as Still Life of Fruit and Flowers that Hunter emerged as a ‘Scottish Colourist’ and one of the country’s most important artists of the last century.