Boats in Port

Between 1904 and 1907 Peploe and his friend John Duncan Fergusson frequently travelled together to the coast of France, struck by its beauty and the brilliance of the Mediterranean light. According to Fergusson, these were ‘happy painting holidays. We worked all day, drawing and painting everything. And we thoroughly enjoyed French food and wine’. Fergusson greatly respected Peploe’s integrity, he recalled, ‘In his painting and in everything, he tried … to find the essentials by persistent trial. He worked all the time from nature but never imitated it’ (J.D Fergusson, ‘Memories of Peploe’ quoted in P. Long (ed.) The Scottish Colourists, 1900-1930, Edinburgh, 2000, p. 151.)

The pair went first to Brittany, then to the coastal towns and resorts of Dieppe, Étaples and Le Touquet Paris-Plage. Peploe would take small canvas-board panels so that he could easily paint outdoors, following in the footsteps of many other French painters, notably Courbet, Boudin and Monet, who also frequented these coastal regions and whose work he would have been familiar with from his time studying in Paris.

Although Peploe was a successful student, winning a silver medal at the Académie Colarossi, his exposure to Parisian society and wider European art was to prove a source of enduring inspiration and education. It was in Paris that he first saw the work of Frans Hals and Manet, both of whose fluid handling of paint was to prove influential on his work throughout his career. Fergusson later recalled how, ‘Peploe and I had both been to Paris where we were both impressed with the Impressionists whose works we saw in the Salle Caillebotte in the Luxembourg and Durand-Ruel's gallery. Manet and Monet were the painters who fixed our direction - in Peploe's case Manet especially’ (J.D. Fergusson, quoted in ibid, p. 149).

Partly following Fergusson’s example, in 1910 Peploe moved to Paris, the unrivalled artistic centre of the world, where he lived for two years. This proved to be a revelatory experience for the artist, ushering in a period of intensive experimentation that would transform his painterly style and shape his artistic imagination for decades to come. Immersing himself in some of the most cutting edge movements of the French avant-garde of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from the expressive brushwork of Vincent van Gogh, to the colour theories of the Fauves and the revolutionary cubist aesthetic of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Peploe turned away from the sombre still lifes which had dominated his formative years, and instead began to embrace a more colourful palette and constructed approach to form in his work.

This revelatory change in the artist’s work can be seen to striking effect in Boats in Port, circa 1910-12. Believed to be either Cassis or Royan, Peploe’s painting successfully captures the energy and the activity of his bustling Mediterranean port. Delineated by saturated bold swathes of colour, with bright reds and oranges, set against vivid blues, with visceral sweeping brushstrokes, which he has used sparingly, to reveal areas of primed board, the influence of Matisse, Derain and the Fauve artists is clear to see here. The expressionistic nature of his loose and rapid brushstrokes, paired with the brilliance of his palette highlight Peploe's mastery of tone and the strength of his draughtsmanship.