WHEN, in 1963, the newly established Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, Cumbria, staged a survey of 20th-century Scottish artists—including recently acquired works by Joan Eardley, Elizabeth Blackadder, Ian McKenzie Smith, Anne Redpath and Alistair Park—it acknowledged their debt to the Scottish Colourists and borrowed some paintings by this older generation to include in the show. The Colourists had enjoyed success and international recognition during their lifetimes, but interest in their work had waned and the curator, Helen Kapp, took a lead in drawing attention to their contribution to British Modernism.
It would take several decades for the significance of this group of four to be widely re-evaluated, after which their popularity has continued to grow; in 2011, Peploe’s Still Life with Coffee Pot (1905) smashed auction records for a Scottish painting when it sold at Christie’s for nearly £1 million.
Outside Scotland, holdings of the Scottish Colourists remain minimal, however, and their paintings are seldom on public view. So it comes as a welcome opportunity to be able to visit two exhibitions in England devoted to the development and impact of their work.
At the Lightbox in Woking, Michael Regan, working with Guy Peploe of the Scottish Gallery, has curated a comprehensive introduction to the oeuvre of this mould-breaking quartet— Samuel John Peploe (1871–1935), John Duncan Fergusson (1874– 1961), George Leslie Hunter (1877–1931) and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883–1937).
Denne historien er fra November 27, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 27, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
