George Leslie Hunter

(British, 1877-1931)

Anemones in a Yellow Vase 46.5 x 37.4 cm. (18 1/4 x 14 3/4 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
With Alex. Reid, Glasgow.
With The Fine Art Society, London, June 1966, no.3090.

In early 1925 Hunter travelled to Paris with his friend William McInnes where they visited an exhibition of paintings by Matisse. Hunter was so impressed by the boldness of colour and composition, that he persuaded McInnes to buy a painting (now in the collection of Glasgow Museums). It was still life of anemones on a table top and there are certainly other similarities with this Hunter still life.

The Glasgow Art dealer Alexander Reid felt that Hunter was "a more powerful colourist than Matisse and equally refined" (T. J. Honeyman, Introducing Leslie Hunter, 1937, p. 133). In 1925, Alex Reid Gallery held a critically-acclaimed exhibition of Hunter's work.

Hunter had moved into a new studio on West George Street in Glasgow which gave him a renewed zest for painting. Writing to a friend Hunter commented 'I have just got moved into a new studio - a large one on the same floor and which I have 'had up' in nice arrangement of French grey to blue. Entering into it is like a new lease of life.' (Bill Smith and Jill Marriner, Hunter Revisited: The Life and Art of Leslie Hunter, 2012, p. 122) The trip to Paris and the new studio combined to motivate Hunter to paint some of his best and most realised still life compositions.