Portrait of a Gallery - The Scottish Gallery

The Scottish Colourists
Today, for many, Peploe, Fergusson, Hunter
and Cadell, known as The Colourists, represent
the greatest achievements in Scottish painting.
Their work can be properly seen in a European
context and they were the first Scottish
painters to see themselves as modern.
Today a tradition of belle peinture persists
in Scottish painting, some of it without
the rigour and ambition still so powerfully
apparent in the best work of the Colourists.
Perhaps more importantly their example:
dedicated, single-minded and outwith the
establishment, helped succeeding generations
make their way in a new atomized art world,
full of possibility. The Scottish Gallery was
home to the ideas, exhibitions and the lives
of The Scottish Colourists. So important are
they to our business that we have created a
dedicated area within our website in which to
house their work.
SJ Peploe had several exhibitions in 1912,
but not in Edinburgh. Peploe seemed to Peter
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Dott a lost cause, his new work was too
radical for the dealer to accept and his one
man show was cancelled. In a letter from
Margaret Peploe to Stanley Cursiter she
wrote: ‘Mr Dott was still somewhat concerned
about Sam’s “changes”. He was afraid about
the influence life in Paris, “French Art”, might
have on him and on his art. He wrote me a
very kind letter, full of advice: my husband
was an Artist, one of the few: “There was a
responsibility, a duty,” he made me feel
both very keenly. Poor Mr Dott. I’m afraid
there was another shock coming to him.’
However, the shock mustn’t have been too
great for the gallery as Peploe went on to
have successful shows with us throughout
the 20s and early 30s ending with a Memorial
show in 1936.
The Scottish Gallery is going to bring
together many of these rejected ‘modern’
paintings for the first time in a special
centenary exhibition in 2012.