Martagon Lilies
Like his fellow Colourists Cadell (1885-1937), Fergusson (1874- 1961) and Hunter (1877-1931), Peploe found Scottish life rather drab and colourless, writing in 1908 'it is terrible to be an artist and live in Edinburgh'. They reacted against the low key, muted colours of their predecessors whose dour genre scenes, mists and stags dominated Scottish painting in the nineteenth century. Inspired by their travels in the Mediterranean, and the colourful work of Matisse (1869-1954) and the Fauves in Europe, the Scottish Colourists (a term not coined until c.1948) adopted a bright and lively palette. This was more extreme and decorative than that of their contemporaries, the Bloomsbury and Camden Town painters. Peploe himself studied at Edinburgh School of Art and the Academie Julian in Paris. In 1910 he moved to Paris where he fell under the influence of Cubism and, later, the colour and vivacity of the Russian ballet. In his early work he favoured heavy black outlines to achieve a two-dimensional effect, but abandoned this technique around 1920. He painted portraits only occasionally, preferring to concentrate on landscape, flowers or still life.
