14 November 2023
Alice Strang
Still Life with Tulips is a remarkable painting by Samuel John Peploe, in which he brought to bear the Edwardian sophistication of the work with which he made his professional name in turn-of-the-century Edinburgh, the lessons he learnt at the heart of the Parisian art world before World War One and the progress he made during the conflict from which he emerged as a Scottish master of modern art.
In an image of striking design, which remains as arresting now as when it was painted, Peploe set up his still-life arrangement in front of a sheer black background. This shows the silhouettes and bright colours of the cloth-covered table, glass vase and tulips to the greatest possible effect.
He had used this approach in a celebrated series of still lifes painted in the early 1900s, such as Coffee and Liqueur (Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, acc.no.35.586), Peonies (National Galleries of Scotland, acc.no. GMA 1946) and Still Life (Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, acc.no.CAC4/1964), in which Peploe paid his respects to Dutch Old Masters such as Frans Hals and to Eduoard Manet. Paintings such as these proved extremely popular when included in solo and group exhibitions in Edinburgh and London of the period, establishing Peploe as an artist of note and accomplishment.
Encouraged by his friend and fellow Scottish Colourist, John Duncan Fergusson, Peploe spent two key years in Paris from 1910 until 1912. He was welcomed into Fergusson’s avant-garde Anglo-American circle of friends, the Rhythmists, and immersed himself in the very latest developments in French painting, experienced at first hand. Such was the pace of his development that he was elected a sociétaire of the cutting-edge Salon d’Automne in recognition of his contribution to the modern movement. His paintings became bolder in technique, colour and design, their progressive nature quite unlike anything that had been created, or seen, in the Edinburgh art world to which he returned two years later.
Declared medically unfit for service during World War One, Peploe used the period for continuing experimentation, when canvas and paints could be sourced. Rich colour, spatial compression and a strong structure became the foundation of his still lifes, with furrowed brushstrokes and pronounced outlines coming to the fore. In 1917, he moved studio to 54 Shandwick Place in Edinburgh, where he was to remain until 1934. The following year, his election as an Associate member of the Royal Scottish Academy secured his place within the Scottish art establishment.
As Alice Strang has written
‘The still lifes which Peploe painted during the period between approximately 1918 and 1923 are the works for which he is best known…Peploe changed his technique, adopting an absorbent gesso ground and reducing the amount of medium in his paint. He pushed his use of colour to the extreme and obsessively arranged objects – such as blue-and-white Chinese porcelain vases, filled initially with tulips and then usually with roses; fans; books; fruit in a variety of dishes…to create finely balanced compositions.’
(Alice Strang et al, S. J. Peploe, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2012, p.23)
Still Life with Tulips dates from this exceptional immediate post-war period, before Peploe settled into the rose still lifes which he painted, exhibited and sold in great numbers during the 1920s. During this period he worked particularly closely with his other fellow Scottish Colourist, F. C. B. Cadell and the two shared an interest in a style which was to become known as ‘Art Deco’ following the Exposition international des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes held in Paris in 1925.
At this point, tulips were Peploe’s preferred flower, often bought from stalls on nearby Princes Street. His enjoyment of their strongly-coloured stems, leaves and heads comes to the fore in their balletic presentation here. Their reaching, curving and swooning qualities, in all directions, is played out in the very frontal plane of the image to the right and in an effusion of movement from the vase. The simplified forms of the boldly-coloured petals play against the black and white planes in front of which they are positioned.
Throughout, Peploe plays with notions of the space beyond the canvas, with just the angled corner of the table included, whilst the cropped fan, red tulip above it and emerging tulips to the right allude to a continuation of the narrative beyond the viewer’s gaze. The realisation not only of the translucency of the water in the vase and the stems within it, but also its reflection of the space within which the artist was working, is a tour de force passage.
Given the brilliance of his tulip still lifes, it is little surprise that his painting, Tulips, of 1923, was acquired for the British national collection in 1927 (Tate, acc.no. NO4224), the year in which Peploe attained the rank of full Member of the Royal Scottish Academy. His appointment was announced in the Glasgow Herald, which described him as ‘an artist of the new movement, Mr Peploe is outstanding in Scotland, and his work has received recognition in London and abroad as well as at home.’ (10 February 1927) Indeed, Peploe’s legacy is primarily based on his mastery of the still life genre, of which Still Life with Tulips is an exceptional example.
