Lot 129
FRANCIS CAMPBELL BOILEAU CADELL R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1883-1937)
JEAN CADELL AMONG TREES
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale ft. A Century of Scottish Colourists | Lots 88 to 168 | Thursday 04 June 2026 from 6pm
Description
Signed and dated '12, oil on board
Dimensions
45.5cm x 36.5cm (18in x 14in)
Provenance
Given by the Artist to Sir Patrick Ford (1880-1945) and thence by family descent to the present owner
Literature:
Tom Hewlett and Duncan Macmillan, F. C. B. Cadell: The Life and Works of a Scottish Colourist 1883-1937, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2011, repr.col. p.36, fig.26 (as ‘Girl in White Dress and Hat - Sunlight Trees’)
Footnote
Jean Among Trees is a tender and elegant portrait of the Scottish Colourist F. C. B. Cadell’s younger sister, Jean Dunlop Cadell (1884-1967), who became a celebrated actress. Born just one year apart, the siblings enjoyed a close, life-long relationship, with Cadell becoming a father figure to Jean’s only child, John, following the early death of her husband.
On the advice of the artist Arthur Melville, Cadell (known in the family as ‘Bunty’) moved to Paris in 1898, at the age of fifteen, to commence his artistic training. He was accompanied by Jean and their mother, Mary Hamilton Boileau, whilst their father, also named Francis, and younger brother Arthur remained in Edinburgh. Jean sat for her brother from an early age and in a letter to their father of 2 March 1900, Mary explained ‘He did a rough watercolour of Jean yesterday afternoon, and took it to show [Alphonse Mucha], who criticised it most favourably, and B. came home in great spirits.’ (F. C. B. Cadell Papers, National Galleries of Scotland Archive, GMA AL/15/1/31). Further correspondence reveals that Jean took French and German lessons whilst living in Paris. The family also lived together in Germany between 1906 and 1908, during which time Cadell studied at the Academie der Bildenden Künste in Munich.
Jean Among Trees was painted whilst she and Cadell were staying at Dalserf, in the Scottish Lowlands. Jean is depicted standing under dappled sunlight, in a full-length summer dress and matching hat. Cadell’s bravura brushwork describes the picturesque scene, with points of details, such as those representing his sister’s facial features, giving way to expressive swathes in the foreground.
As their great-niece, Selina Cadell, has recalled, Jean showed tremendous courage and independence by embarking on a career as an actor. Her parents did not believe it was a suitable pursuit for their daughter, but did permit her to appear in the then fashionable tableaux vivants. Family legend has it that she was approached after one such performance by the impresario George Alexander of London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, but did not follow up his offer of a job until her parents had died (Mary in 1907 and Francis in 1909). Cadell lent her the train fare to the English capital, she knocked on the theatre’s Stage Door and as a result worked there for two years. She is also believed to have travelled as a foot passenger, by herself, on a Russian cargo ship to Los Angeles in the 1930s, in order to meet W. C. Fields and suggest that she play Mrs Micawber in his forthcoming film of David Copperfield (1935); she got the part. She is, however, perhaps best known for her roles in the comedies made by Ealing Studios in London after the Second World War, most famously playing Mrs Campbell in Whisky Galore (1949).
Cadell painted the present work in 1912, the year in which he was a co-founder of the Society of Eight exhibiting society, alongside John Lavery amongst others. Their friendship can be seen in the shared sympathetic approach to a beautiful female model seen in Jean Among Trees. The Society was underwritten by Cadell’s Edinburgh Academy school friend, Patrick Ford, who was one of his most important patrons and collectors. It has remained in Ford’s family to this day. Cadell went on to serve in the First Word War and to emerge in the 1920s as one of Scotland’s most important artists of the twentieth century. On his death in 1937, Jean and her son were the main beneficiaries of his will and Jean did much to secure his artistic legacy.
We are grateful to the director and actor Selina Cadell, the artist and sitter’s great-niece, for her help with our research into this painting.