SAMUEL JOHN PEPLOE R.S.A. (SCOTTISH 1871-1935)
WOODED LANDSCAPE
Oil on canvas
51cm x 71cm (20in x 28in)
Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd, London;Sotheby's Gleneagles, Scottish and Sporting Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours, 28 August 1984, Lot 964
Peploe enjoyed a practice based on working en plein air as well as in a studio. Trees, forests and woods are a mainstay subject of the former strand in his oeuvre and he was drawn to them in locations as varied as Antibes, Cassis, Kirkcudbrightshire and the Scottish Highlands.From the exploration of Sisley and Pissarro in Spring, Comrie of c.1902 (Kirkcaldy Museum & Art Gallery), to the post-impressionism of Landscape at Cassis, 1924 (National Galleries of Scotland) and the looser, broader River of c.1932 (Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums), the expressive potential of trees, their trunks, branches and leaves, whether singular or growing in groups, provided Peploe with an endless variety of form and character with which to connect with nature and to establish a sense of place. The weather on his beloved Iona is too windy to permit the growth of trees.Somewhat ironically, it was the green light reflected into his Queen Street studio in Edinburgh from the trees across the road that prompted Peploe to move studio in 1917 to 54 Shandwick Place. This was to prove his studio of longest standing and he remained there until 1934. Yet it was during the 1920s that his landscape painting developed apace. As Alice Strang has written:“During the 1920s and early 1930s, Peploe found inspiration in the Scottish landscape of Dumfries and Galloway, Perthshire and Inverness-shire. He returned to Kirkcudbright and painted in Douglas Hall and New Abbey as well. Calvine and St Fillans drew him northwards, whilst the final and most northerly places that he painted were Boat of Garten and Rothiemurchus, where he painted his last picture. Peploe’s interest in trees as subject matter became increasingly pronounced.” (Alice Strang et al, S. J. Peploe, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2012, p. 24)Wooded Landscape reveals Peploe’s mastery of oil paint in portraying a sense of natural beauty, embodied by the trees thriving under sunlight, their features, as well as those of the ground and sky, realised in rigorous, unhesitating brushstrokes. The fall of light, through varying degrees of vegetation, and creating dark shadows that heighten the contrast with the brightness elsewhere, results in an inviting scene into which the viewer is encouraged to enter. Such was the regard for Peploe’s landscapes that his work, La forét, a view of trees in Cassis, was acquired for the French national collection in 1931.