Four Scotsmen Walk into an Art Gallery....

France had the Impressionists, Germany had the Expressionists, and Italy had the Futurists, but Scotland -- well, Scotland had the Colourists. Four of them, to be precise, creating quite distinctive, often very exuberant art in the first few decades of the 20th century, and you can see them right now in Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives at The Arc in Winchester. 

We've featured the Colourists on this blog before, but you don't get the chance to see them in southern England that much, and this Winchester show (previously on at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh) places them in context with some of their British and European contemporaries, some of whose work carries quite an impact. All in all, it's a very enjoyable exhibition. 

The Colourists were JD Fergusson, SJ Peploe, FCB Cadell and Leslie Hunter. All influenced by developments in Post-Impressionist French art, and notably by the bold use of colour and line of the Fauvists, they didn't actually exhibit together until the mid-1920s; and it wasn't really until the 1950s that the term Scottish Colourists started to be used. 

We'll show you one picture by each of the four here, to give you a flavour of the style, starting with Cadell's The Boxer, at first sight not perhaps the sort of work that you might have been expecting to be produced in Edinburgh in 1925. 

The sitter was middleweight champion "Basher Willie" Thomson, and the vibrant turquoise background and the scarlet of the chair make the very white body (he's a Scot, remember) really stand out. The peachy colour of the face is emphasised by the framed portrait of a black man in what looks like evening wear in front of a strong orange background. Colour? Oh, yes indeed.

 

Let's turn to Peploe, for some equally sharp colour contrasts, accompanied by some very audacious cropping. The upper two-thirds of this rather cluttered small space is dominated by the white that comes in several tonal variations. A block of very dark blue provides the base and there are splashes of strong colours around the room. An assemblage of objects: a bowler hat, a chair, a fan on the table, a Japanese print. 

There's a real semi-abstract quality to this work, also painted in Edinburgh -- in 1915! 

We maybe don't get to see anything quite as arresting from Fergusson, now perhaps the most famous of the Colourists, in this Winchester show. But a 1907 Self-Portrait stands out for its bold black outlines and off-centre composition, even if the predominant overall colour is rather drab. 

Let's turn to Hunter for more colour, then, with a vase of flowers and bowl of fruit that of course reminded us of Cezanne, but the tablecloth, wallpaper and thickly painted door give it a claustrophobic and cluttered feel. The paint seems almost to ooze out of the picture. 

One of the things that strikes you about the four Colourists is just how much more daring their output seems to have been than many of their British contemporaries, but that wasn't immediately recognised at the start of the 20th century. We're told how Roger Fry, responsible for bringing Post-Impressionism to London just before World War I, put the spotlight in his groundbreaking 1912 exhibition on his own Bloomsbury Group, rather than the cutting-edge Scots. 

We get to see some Parrot Tulips by Duncan Grant and a View of the Pond at Charleston by Vanessa Bell, and they're perfectly fine paintings, but they don't exactly stop you in your tracks. Rather more exciting, though, are Augustus John's depiction of his muse and mistress Dorelia McNeill reclining by The Blue Pool with a yellow book and the angular viewpoint in Spencer Gore's music-hall scene of Inez and Taki playing their lyre guitars.  

And let's show you some more pictures that left an impression on us, starting with someone from a previous generation of Scottish artists, Arthur Melville, who was associated with The Glasgow Boys. Melville might be seen as an early Colourist; look at the vibrancy of the water and fruit in this watercolour of the Orange Market, Peurto de los Pasajes from the early 1890s. And, we learn, Melville advised both Fergusson and Cadell to leave Scotland for France.

And then there's this: apparently so exotic, but actually much closer to home. 

The colouring makes this mountain view look like it might be somewhere in Latin America, or maybe even the South Pacific, but the dark threatening clouds that the summit is almost piercing are perhaps a bit of a giveaway. It was painted in 1913 by the short-lived Welshman James Dickson Innes, a friend of Augustus John, and depicts Arenig Fawr in Snowdonia. Innes considered it his sacred mountain, and there's a definite feeling of the extraordinary to this image. It's part of the Tate collection, but we don't recollect seeing it before.

When Fry snubbed the Scots back in 1912, Peploe and Fergusson staged their own show in London; they called themselves the Rhythm Group, and four of the artists were women.  

We'll end with one of them, because it's quite stunning. Ethel Wright, the painter, had become radicalised by her support for the women's suffrage movement, and though it might not be immediately obvious, this bravura portrait with soft tones and hues in shades of blues, greens, pink and beige is of the militant suffragette Una Dugdale, leaning on an elegant chair draped with a silk shawl in front of rather startling wallpaper.

Dugdale endured arrest, hunger strike and force-feeding, and in 1912 she caused a major scandal when she refused to "promise to obey" her husband -- a fellow political campaigner -- as part of her marriage vows. Just part of quite a swathe of art and history to discover in this exhibition. 

Practicalities

Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives is on at The Arc in Winchester until September 16. It's open from 0930 to 1700 Monday to Saturday and from 1100 to 1700 on Sunday. Full-price entry is a very reasonable £5.45. We spent about 75 minutes in this exhibition; it's the first time we've been to this venue and we have to admit we found the space a bit cramped and some of the wall captions very awkwardly placed. The Arc is on Jewry St, no more than five minutes walk from Winchester railway station; fast trains from London Waterloo run to Winchester every half-hour on weekdays, taking just under an hour.   

Images

FCB Cadell (1883-1937), The Boxer, c. 1925, Private collection

SJ Peploe (1871-1935), Interior with a Japanese Print, c. 1915, University of Hull Art Collection

JD Fergusson (1874-1961), Self-Portrait, 1907, The Fergusson Gallery, Perth. © Courtesy of Culture Perth & Kinross Museums & Galleries; Image: Perth & Kinross Council
Leslie Hunter (1877-1931), Peonies in a Chinese Vase, c. 1928, Fleming Collection
Arthur Melville (1855-1904), Orange Market, Puerto de los Pasajes, 1892, Fleming Collection
James Dickson Innes (1887-1914), Arenig, North Wales, 1913, Tate

Ethel Wright (c. 1866-1939), The Music Room, Portrait of Una Dugdale, c. 1912, Private collection