Arts
A few Scottish painters
Jo Grimond
This article is not a review of Scottish Painting. It is about a few painters of the late 19th and of the 20th century. William McTaggart is a sentimental Painter — ghost-like children on sunny seas. I like a certain amount of sentiment. McTaggart's sentiment is easy on the eye, decorative on the wall. McTaggart's spring days are indeed spring-like, his skies luminous, his waves salty, unlike the dead landscapes, the artificial flowers of too many pre-Raphaelites. The vision seems his °Iwn, the land- or seascapes are genuine out- door experiences. A successor to McTag- gart was Gemmell Hutchison. At first sight I found him a rather boring painter but I Would now much like to own one of his pic-
tures.
Next on my list is Arthur Melville, the most stylish of Scottish painters. All the Pictures of his that I have seen have Panache. They are usually highly evocative or dramatic: scenes in North Africa played out by sheikhs and slaves and spies in hot sun and Mediterranean shade: great sweeps of white, cascades of orange. Even in such
homely scenes as 'Skating on Duddingston Loch', the woman, the girl, the dog, are heraldic. To me Melville is the first of the Scottish Colourists, though that description is usually applied to Peploe, Leslie Hunter, Cade11 and Fergusson.
Peploe I find an irresistible painter. Often I have thought that 1 had seen enough of his still-lifes — the apples, oranges, roses, tulips, the vases and bowls on the same table in the same squarish set- ting. Then at some gallery or auction I have seen another, been drawn towards it, notic- ed how it stands out from its neighbours. Peploe is alleged to have painted still-lifes in at least three styles. I can faintly discern this. There are the pictures built up of more jewel-like notes of colour and there are the clear pure colours against Cezanne-like backcloths. All to me have the same quali- ties. They are cheerful. They make one want to look at them. Though colour — colour pushed sometimes almost to the point of vulgarity — is their essence, they are tight- ly drawn and sometimes abstract in layout. Few artists fill a frame better than Peploe. Peploe has been accused of only being able to paint one subject. This is not true. He painted street scenes and boats and por- traits. 1 own an excellent drawing by him of a woman's head. His portraits with their Franz HaIs geniality 1 find less attractive but one would rather have been painted by him than by most academicians.
Leslie Hunter I cannot help comparing, to his disadvantage, with Peploe. There is in his still-lifes the same liveliness of colour but often either some laxity in design which makes them seem falling apart, or a certain heaviness in the backcloth (Peploe himself seems to me occasionally to have had dif- ficulty with cloth, making it clumsy). However, Hunter's houseboats on Loch Lomond are brilliant. Here the light and shade are as good as anything Peploe achieved.
Fergusson seems to me an artist of wider range. He could paint the evening pro- menade in Princes Street Gardens entirely in blues and greys, a more impressionist pic- ture than the impressionists ever achieved. He could be more subtle than the others and more brash. 1 have not seen one for some time but I remember being repulsed by his nudes with bull necks and flat flesh. They may however become very fashionable. His most striking pictures are of firework displays and brightly lit resorts, very decorative and unlike anything that I know of in English or French art.
Such CadeIls as 1 have seen are painted on larger planes with rather deeper colours
than Peploe and Hunter. They are less abstract than Peploe, often a human form or a chair is the centre of what otherwise - might be thought of as an interior. I possess one Venetian scene which I value highly.
Two names should be added to the Col- ourists. First Anne Rice — a woman from Canada or the USA who painted with Fergusson in France. She too has the clear colours, the living light which makes their pictures glow. And then Crawhall, who makes one laugh and painted camels and rabbits and Glasgow cabs, more natural than Landseer. The Scottish Colourists seldom had the patina of genius which the French achieved. Their pictures are sometimes stiff. Very often they contain a corner which jars or an object which is ungainly. But they are more than merely derivative. Most art anyway is partly derivative. They never painted pictures as ugly as the dancing girls by Renoir in the National Gallery. If they were repetitive, were not many great religious painters repetitive and how many ballet dancers did Degas paint? These painters are a pleasure to the eye and to the intellect. The Scots are not good at being grand, they simply become long-winded. Their much under- rated painters can be simple, direct and humane. They have more life and blood than their English contemporaries.
After the Colourists and the Glasgow Boys who preceded them, the pursuit of colour seems to me to have deflected Scot- tish painters from drawing and design. Anne Redpath's pictures, attractive as they are, lack bone. But at least two minor geniuses have come and gone. Joan Eardley's paintings fall into two groups, one done in the slums of Glasgow, the other on the sea shore. She abandoned the pure colours of Peploe for chalky blues and brick reds. Her paintings are in the 'un- finished' modern style. Paint drips — children's hands appear without arms. But unlike some of the Scots she is not afraid of the human body: in a very different and harder style her children are as human as Renoir's. And she passes that test of all art, she has the ability to make you see things again. A back yard, a blue jug and some washing, how common but, through her eyes, how original. She could also draw if necessary. I have a drawing of an old Vene- tian woman mending nets, beautifully seen.
Twenty years ago you could buy water- colour landscapes by William Gillies for £30, flowing across the canvas in line and colour. Dr Lillie bought 600 pictures by Gillies and regretted none of them. I much enjoyed clambering over his grand pianos in search of them. He used to say that Gillies was lyrical like music. So perhaps he is. He is also extremely decorative, especially in his oil still-lifes.
The Colourists are said to have been painterly painters. I am not sure what that means. But certainly they all give the im- pression of having enjoyed painting and lik- ing paint. I do not know whether much of a tradition can be found in Scottish painting but I am sure Raeburn liked paint and it is nice to think of Peploe working in Rae- burn's old studio tackling the same prob- lems of light and shade and laying on his paint with generous strokes. The Scots painters have been lucky in their patrons, especially Aitken Dott, the Scottish Gallery — though old Dott took a scunner at Peploe's change of style. If you can't get to Edinburgh wander into the Fine Art Society or the Mercury Gallery. The Fine Art in particular is splendidly loyal to the North and graces Edinburgh and Glasgow as well as London.
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