Studio: international art (87.1924)

S. J. PEPLOE, A.R.S.A.

Painting," includes Peploe, with a little
group of others, as providing a link between
French and English Post-Impressionism.
It may be surprising to many that an artist
having held such a fine reputation should
make such a notable change in his work
as is at present evident in comparison with
that which genuinely inspired the above
remarks. But what Peploe has done is from
personal conviction. He is an individualist
who has climbed the steeper heights, and,
with a surer foothold, is still climbing.
He may be associated with a school of
modern painters in Scotland,buthebelongs
to none. Many there are who follow in his
footsteps or where he has led, which may
give rise to the school idea ; but so far, like
new members of a theatrical company, the
part they play is but one of “ walking on.”
Peploe’s thorough grasp of technique is at
once to him a personal grammar and a
language which he uses clearly and with
a simple sincerity of purpose, expressing
with it the life, volume colour and
form arrangements with a simplicity
born of experience which is always de-
corative and arresting. They may appear
startling to those satisfied with the many
grey and brown contents of swept gilt

(t STILL LIFE.” BYS.J.
PEPLOE, A.R.S.A.

frames, whose only artistic value is
their revealing on close inspection the
names of some alleged masters. One has
but to think of the pictures used as adorn-
ments in almost any present-day house-
hold, and find if they can discover one with
any decorative completeness or fitness.
The illustrations, too, appearing from time
to time of the works of art found in the
Luxor tomb must surely be a revelation to
many art masters, that the results of our
system of art education are indeed poor
in comparison. The most remarkable
period of what one might name the evolu-
tion of Peploe was, perhaps, most notice-
able in Paris about 1910. His change to
more emphatic design and brighter colour
was not, however, of mushroom growth,
but had been slowly and surely evolved
in his own mind at a time when he
was exhibiting little, if at all, but working
steadily on to achieve the song that the
new spirit of art within him was singing.
His attractive sketching grounds were then
amidst the various districts of France.
Those who may have seen many of his
landscapes expressing his uncommon
visionary aspects of Cassis and Paris-Plage,
will always remember them as remarkable
successes in colour and design, recalling as
they do, his sunlit days spent in those fas-
cinating haunts. A few, perhaps slight,
drawings by him of that period may be
found in the fascinating monthly magazine
“ Rhythm,” first published in the summer
of 1911, and terminating its rhythmic
character in 1913. Now settled in Edin-
burgh, he is principally concerned with
figure and still-life painting, until the siren
call of early autumn entices him to the
ever alluring Isle of Iona. Of the ac-
companying illustrations, I leave them
to speak for themselves, and would but
recall a letter of Lafcadio Hearn's, who, in
writing to a friend about an artist, says :
“ What is his duty in the external order of
things to art and to ethics i Is it not to
extract the gold from the ore—the rubies
and the emeralds from the rubble i I think
it is. What I would pray you to do is to put
a lily in the mouth of hell. Then the petals
of the lily will change into pure light, like
those of the lotus of Amida Buddha.” I
think some of Peploe's still-lifes would have
satisfied him. a o a a

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