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THE HUNTER BLAIR COLOURIST COLLECTION The Hunter Blair collection of Scottish Colourists was built up over a period of eighteen years by Sir James Hunter Blair in collaboration with his youngest son, Jamie. Theirs was an unlikely partnership. Sir James, born in 1889, was of slight build with a neat little moustache. Shy, canny, and clever, with degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge, he enjoyed nothing more than a cerebral hand of bridge. Jamie, on the other hand, was a large, warm man, educated, like his father, at Eton and Oxford, but who concealed his cleverness beneath a thick layer of bonhomie. "LOYAL", boomed out in his rich, bass voice, was his catchword with which he acclaimed pretty girls, noteworth buildings, a fine drive of pheasants - in fact anything that took his fancy. For almost twenty years - until Sir James's death in 1985 - father and son lived in close proximity on the ancestral estate in South Ayrshire: Jamie presiding over the family seat, Blairquhan Castle, a Tudor-gothic confection of towers, turrets and battlements, designed by William Burn in 1820, and Sir James, a widower, residing modestly in Milton, the plain Victorian dower house on the edge of the park. Their differing outlooks on life may have led to a certain amount of tension when it came to the running of the estate, however, when Sir James had the idea of adding Colourists to his already fine collection of 18th and 19th Century Scottish paintings, a happy common ground was established. Jamie recalled their shared interests with affection, telling a neighbour, 'It created a real bond between us'. The Hunter Blairs, like one or two other astute collectors in Ayrshire, were drawn to the classic modernity of Fergusson, Peploe, Hunter and Cadell, who have since been accepted as one of the most radical alliances of early 20th Century British art. Drawn to the artistic ferment of Paris in the years before the First World War, they absorbed the lessons of Cezanne, the Fauves, the Ballets Russes and Cubism, positioning themselves alongside the leaders of the international avant-garde. A dazzling Fergusson in the collection, The Band Stand and Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh (lot 178), dated 1900, reveals the artist's youthful debt to Sisley and Pissarro. Whilst Peploe's Cassis (lot 167), circa 1913, is suffused with the colour and planar composition of Cezanne. Such innovation led one London critic in 1912 to hail Peploe as the unsung Post Impressionist representing 'a branch that is so fresh and alive'. The core of the collection, however, is the outstanding group of Cadells with examples from every period of his oeuvre. Rarities include a Venetian painting from his visit of 1910 (lot 175), which launched Cadell on a period of intense experimentation. Nude - Reflections (lot 171), circa 1912, represents the summation of this highly personal style. It is one of Cadell's finest swagger interiors worthy of Whistler whom he once described as 'the most exquisite of the moderns.' Wartime in the trenches transformed Cadell's post-war canon. Studio Interior II (lot 164), painted in the 1920s, confirms his constructivist tendencies with its geometry and controlled colour. On Sir James's death, Jamie created a gallery in the basement of Blairquhan as a memorial to his father. Bathed in light and beautifully ordered, the space was in sharp contrast to the adjacent rooms. Friends and tourists alike would trot down the gloomy passageway with Jamie's exhortation ringing in their ears, 'Turn left before the stuffed moose head and you'll find some jolly loyal Scottish pictures.' Jamie, who died in 2004, never said a truer word. James Knox Managing Director of The Art Newspaper

Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A. (1871-1935)

The Harbour, Cassis

Details

Samuel John Peploe, R.S.A. (1871-1935)
The Harbour, Cassis
signed 'Peploe' (lower left)
oil on panel
13 x 16 in. (33 x 40.6 cm.)
Painted circa 1913.

Provenance

The Conservative Club, Glasgow.
with Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, September 1974, where purchased by the present owner.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Samuel John Peploe spent his first summer in Cassis in 1911. In 1913, the year the present work was painted, Fergusson eventually persuaded Peploe to return. Fergusson recollects,'I told S.J. (Peploe), but he didn't think it was a good idea - too hot for young Bill (Peploe's son who was born in 1910). I was so sorry, but decided to go without him. One day in the boulevard Raspail, S.J. saw on the pavement near his door a paper with the word 'Cassis' on it. He decided to take the risk' (G. Peploe, S. J. Peploe 1871-1935, Edinburgh, 2000, p. 50-51).

The brilliant light that had so inspired Matisse and Derain eight years before helped Peploe to use colour at a Fauvist pitch and encapsulate the very same simplicity and unspoilt image of Cassis. In The Harbour, Cassis, Peploe uses shadows made up of green, turquoise, grey and orange. The stone of the breakwater and harbour wall are white and shadowed with green. The depth of the diagonal of the wall is a deep ultramarine blue. Presenting these atypical colour tones, 'he is constructing a new language with which he can move his viewer by revealing the potential drama in the very ordinariness of his subjects' (ibid. p. 52). Peploe's works of this period were a great success. This is indicative of the Baillie Gallery's representation of Cassis works in their March 1914 show. More than half the works were of Cassis.

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