Samuel John Peploe RSA

(British, 1871-1935)

Red Rose, 1931 46.2 x 40.7 cm. (18 3/16 x 16 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
The Collection of The Earl of Sandwich
The Collection of Howard Bliss
With Alex Reid & Lefevre Ltd., London
With Gillian Jason Gallery, London
With The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
Private Collection, Australia
Amnesty International

Exhibited
London, Alex Reid & Lefevre Ltd., Paintings by S.J. Peploe, May 1948, cat.no.59

The proceeds of sale of this work will support the work of Amnesty International, a global movement of more than 10 million people in over 150 countries and territories who campaign to end abuses of human rights.

This double-sided canvas encapsulates Peploe's style during this period. While the perspective remains relatively flat, objects are not confined to rigid borders and become less defined. As a result, the painting has a heightened sense of freedom, enhanced by the looser and more broken brushwork. Nevertheless, a clear interest in composition prevails. It demonstrates how Peploe continued to experiment with technique even when he had achieved the fully formed style of his early 1920's still lifes.

Stanley Cursiter summarises the work from Peploe's latter period beautifully when he wrote "his work has a richness and fullness due in great measure to an increased acceptance of the muted harmonies of quieter and more broken colour. There is no longer the slightest suggestion that the colour was searched for and accentuated for its own sake, but rather that the whole surface was a web of some rich material in which notes of colour emerge and take shape." (S. Cursiter, Peploe: An intimate memoir of an artist and his work, Thomas Nelson, London, 1947).