Still Life with Tulips and Oranges

Samuel John Peploe is now known as one of the ‘Scottish Colourists’, a group of artists working in the early 20th century. The group also included Francis Cadell, J D Fergusson and George Hunter.

Their painting was influenced by earlier Scottish artists but also looked to the work of the French painters Gauguin and Cézanne. Peploe also admired the unrestrained use of vivid, brilliant colour and flat, decorative surface pattern in the work of the ‘Les Fauves’ (The Wild Beasts), particularly Matisse and Derain.

This still life is as much a study in colour as of the group of objects he chose to paint. In 1929 Peploe wrote: “There is so much in mere objects, flowers, leaves, jugs, what not - colours, forms, relations - I can never see mystery coming to an end.”