GEORGE LESLIE HUNTER (SCOTTISH 1877-1931)
FISHING BOATS, LARGO
£17,500
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale: 09 December 2021 | From 18:00
Description
Signed, oil on board
Dimensions
23cm x 36cm (9in x 14in)
Footnote
Exhibited: Glasgow, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 1943
Note: Hunter was born on the Isle of Bute and emigrated to America with his family in 1892. He established himself as an artist in San Francisco before moving to Glasgow in 1906. The city remained the base to which he returned throughout a peripatetic life which included significant amounts of time spent in France. Hunter had his first solo exhibition at Alexander Reid's gallery, La Société des Beaux-Arts in Glasgow in 1913, with the business supporting him for the rest of his career.
By 1918, Hunter was in touch with S. J. Peploe and their work was shown with that of F. C. B. Cadell in The Leicester Galleries, London five years later. They were joined by J. D. Fergusson for a group exhibition at the Galerie Barbazanges, Paris in 1924, for another at The Leicester Galleries the following year and with the addition of Telfer Bear and R. O. Dunlop at the Galeries Georges Petit in the French capital in 1931, shortly before Hunter's death, aged fifty-four.
Between 1919 and 1926, Hunter spent part of each spring and summer in Fife in eastern Scotland, which is bordered by the Firth of Tay, the Firth of Forth and the North Sea. As Bill Smith and Jill Marriner have written 'He came upon an important source of inspiration through his fortuitous discovery of Fife and the possibilities inherent in its colourful landscape and rural architecture...it opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for Hunter. Subsequently he would go to Fife in any season. It was there that he made the break to paint en plein air. The artistic ground he gained as a result marked an important turning point in his development in terms of modern colour.' (Bill Smith and Jill Marriner, Hunter Revisited: The Life and Art of Leslie Hunter, Edinburgh 2012, p. 79)
'Largo' comes from the Gaelic word meaning hillside and is the name of a region in the East Neuk of Fife. It consists of the villages of Upper and Lower Largo and Lundin Links. It was in this area that Hunter painted the present work. Given its intimate scale it was probably made on the spot in direct response to the view before him, of modest fishing boats moored at Lower Largo harbour.
The scene is captured in confident brushstrokes, highlights of bright colour and harmonious tones of pale blue and green. A sense of movement in the sea and the vessels atop it is communicated. The eye is led out to the horizon, past rocks which break the surface of the sea and the modest, summarily-described figures gathered on the harbour wall on a fresh, sunny day.