Painting by Scottish Colourist Samuel John Peploe sells for more than £381,000 at auction

A painting by Scottish Colourist Samuel John Peploe which once hung in his patron’s drawing room has sold for more than £381,000 at auction.

Roses In A Green Jug went under the hammer in the Scottish art sale at Bonhams in Edinburgh. It sold for £381,400 including buyer’s premium, above the estimate of £250,000-£350,000.

‘Peploe’s Roses in a Green Jug is a masterful execution of composition and colour, taking inspiration from Paul Cézanne and French Post-Impressionism, while maintaining the artist’s distinctive individual style,’ May Matthews, Managing Director of Bonhams Scotland said.

‘Peploe’s still lifes were meticulously planned and executed, creating the dialogue between object and space for which he and his fellow Colourists were renowned. 

‘The work has a remarkable provenance, having once hung in the drawing room of Croft House owned by Ion R. Harrison, a notable patron of the Scottish Colourists.’

Peploe once famously characterised his career as a search for the perfect still life, painstakingly setting up compositions featuring the same elements in different combinations. 

Strongly influenced by his time in Paris studying the work of Post-Impressionist masters from 1910-1912, Peploe returned to Scotland with an experimental flair which he brought to his still lifes.

He explored the relationships between form and space, colour and tone, naturalism and design, and in Roses in a Green Jug, he came ever closer to reaching his goal.

First encountering Peploe’s work at an exhibition in Glasgow in the 1920s, Major Ion R. Harrison, a Scottish shipping magnate, was captivated by his still life masterpieces.

He remarked: ‘They really startled me for, to my eyes, they were so ultra-modern.The formal way in which the [flowers] were painted, and their brilliant colour against equally strong draperies, were at the time beyond my comprehension.’ 

Harrison soon became a close friend and patron of Peploe and the Scottish Colourists, a relationship he maintained throughout his life as he built a remarkable collection of master works.

Amongst his most treasured pieces in his collection was Roses in a Green Jug. The painting hung pride of place in the drawing room of the Harrisons’ home, Croft House in Helensburgh, and can be seen hung in the background of Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell’s Portrait of Mrs Ion R. Harrison of 1932.

‘Peploe became a distinctive figure in the florists and greengrocers, searching for the right bloom or specimen for his work: tulips in spring, roses in summer, fruit and vegetables during the winter months,’ Matthew Sturgis, writing for Bonhams Magazine, said. 

‘To the market-traders of the neighbourhood he was an enigma, rejecting an orange for its form, or an apple on account of its colour, and remaining unmoved by their claims as to its ripeness or flavour.’

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