13 November 2023
Lyon & Turnbull
George Leslie Hunter, along with his fellow Scottish Colourists F. C. B. Cadell, J. D. Fergusson and S. J. Peploe, enjoyed a studio-based practice enriched by the stimulus of regular travel. The group of Hunter's works presented here reveals his mastery of the still life genre, the sensitivity of his figurative imagery and the inspiration he found in France and Italy.
Born in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, Hunter’s family emigrated to California when he was a teenager. He began his career in San Francisco, but the majority of his early work was destroyed in the earthquake which struck the city in 1906, shortly before its inclusion in what would have been his first solo exhibition.
Later that year, Hunter moved to Glasgow, which was to be his mainstay during a peripatetic life until his death in the city in 1931. Of the other Colourists, Hunter was closest to Peploe, whom he had met by 1918. Five years later, they exhibited with Cadell at the Leicester Galleries, London and the following year, they were joined by Fergusson for exhibitions in Paris and the English capital. They showed together for a final time whilst Hunter was alive, once more in Paris, in 1931.
Peonies in a Blue and White Vase is a sophisticated example of the still lifes with which Hunter established his reputation. Self-taught, but a voracious consumer of art in public and private galleries visited whilst in America and on the Continent, his biographer T. J. Honeyman explained ‘one can surmise the line of his approach and make a fair guess that his heroes, Chardin and Manet competed with the Dutch in his early essays in still-life painting.’ (T. J. Honeyman, Introducing Leslie Hunter, Faber and Faber, London 1937, pp.56-57).
The later Still Life of Fruit and Flowers in a Blue and White Vase shows how first-hand experience of the latest developments in French painting, particularly the work of Henri Matisse, encouraged Hunter to use a brilliance of colour and expressiveness of technique which earned him the sobriquet of ‘Scottish Colourist’. When paintings of its ilk were shown in Alexander Reid’s gallery in Glasgow in 1925, the critic of the Glasgow Herald declared,
‘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.’ (17 December 1925)
Boy with Cockerel and Portrait of Miss Mabel Couper in Evergreen share a fluidity of line by which Hunter’s acute observational skills capture his subjects, the one a shy farmboy tending to an animal, the other a glamorous actress who was then ‘treading the boards’ in Glasgow.
Hunter is known to have visited Italy in 1922 and 1923. Les Environs de Florence is a rare extant example of the paintings he made after visiting the Tuscan city. Such was Hunter’s satisfaction with the series from which it comes, that he showed it with four others in the landmark 1923 Leicester Galleries exhibition he shared with Cadell and Peploe.
Après le Bain (The Bathers, Juan-les-Pins) and Le Port de l’Olivette, Cap d’Antibes reveal Hunter’s love of the south of France, where he spent extended periods during the late 1920s. The brilliant light, warm climate and Mediterranean lifestyle appealed to him personally and professionally. The former painting was acquired by the Glasgow ship-owner Ion Harrison, who created one of the most important collections of works by the Scottish Colourists. He became friends with the artist, of whom he recalled,
‘Hunter made no bones about his own capabilities, for he asserted one day to my astonishment…that there was no artist living at that time who was painting a well as he was.’
(Ion Harrison, ‘As I Remember Them’ in T. J. Honeyman, Three Scottish Colourists: Peploe, Cadell, Hunter, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, London, 1950, p. 126)
