A virtual exhibition to mark the 150th anniversary of Scottish colourist Samuel Peploe’s birth has been launched in Fife – with thanks due to a famous local linen magnate.
ONFife, Fife’s Cultural Trust, say Peploe’s pieces – with their vibrant paintwork and luminous settings – provide the perfect pick-me-up for the dark days of winter and these travel-restricted times.
With 46 of the artist’s paintings, Kirkcaldy Art Gallery currently has the biggest group of Peploes outside National Galleries Scotland, thanks principally to the superb collection of Kirkcaldy linen manufacturer J W Blyth, the maternal grandfather of journalist and broadcaster Michael Portillo.
A significant part of the Blyth Collection was bought by Kirkcaldy Town Council in the 1963, and ONFife hopes the new exhibition – launched on Wednesday – will open Peploe’s enduring appeal to another generation of art lovers across the UK.
Someone who has lived with the paintings all his life is the artist’s grandson, Guy Peploe, who is a director at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh.
Although he was born many years after Samuel Peploe’s death, Guy was acutely aware of his grandfather’s achievements growing up.
“By all accounts, Peploe was a very private, shy family man so to have known him as a grandson would have been very special,” he said.
“This said, all artists have to have a steely core of self-belief, just to be able to face the studio every day.
“Kirkcaldy has a wonderful holding of his work and my favourite is Palm Trees, Antibes.
“What better an image to contemplate in the current dark days of winter and restriction? It emanates heat, light –a different place and time, sure – but also the sense of possibility and beauty in prospect.”
For Michael Portillo, a visit to his grandfather’s art-filled home in Kirkcaldy was one of the great excitements of his childhood.
He recalled: “There were paintings everywhere. Art was John Blyth’s passion.
“There were more Peploes than works by the other Colourists and the landscapes featured either the cold blue light of Scotland or the fierce brightness of Royan and Cassis.
“Each of the Colourists gave my grandfather enormous pleasure. He would steal home from the factory to spend his lunch hour contemplating his most recent purchase.
“Writing in the catalogue of Peploe’s memorial exhibition in 1936, he wrote that Peploe’s pictures are ‘the ardent outpourings of a great heart and a great mind – to live with them is a sheer delight’.”
Exhibition curator Lesley Lettice said the display offers inspiration in our present circumstances.
“We are all living under tight travel restrictions and are probably walking the same few routes for our daily exercise, seeing the same views and landmarks and perhaps feeling a bit underwhelmed by the familiar,” she added.
“Peploe often painted the same landscape over and over again, from different angles, at different times of day. Those small changes in colour, light and composition never failed to delight him.
“His work can inspire us take pleasure in the little things and try to look at them with new eyes each day.”
Anyone can now explore the exhibition via http://bit.ly/2NmbIYd.
