THE ODD COUPLE
Celebrated Colourist Samuel Peploe looked like a bank manager but his enduring fascination with his doppelganger, the hellraiser Vincent van Gogh, shines through in the Scot’s finest work, says
Colourist Samuel John Peploe had a fascination with his doppelganger Vincent van Gogh, and his works prove it
He looked more like a bank manager than his bank-managing father. Blending into the mists of his native Edinburgh, his appearance was anything but remarkable. Under his short hair, rimless spectacles and well-used pipe was a stiff-collared white shirt, neutral tie, and a grey three-piece suit. There was nothing arty, nor bohemian, about him. And yet the shadowy figure of Samuel John Peploe would emerge from this monochrome shell to become one of the greatest Colourists of all time, and his vivid works would go on to inspire many generations of artistic minds.
Born in Scotland’s capital 150 years ago in 1871, Peploe did not revel in the sparkling reputation that one might expect of an artistic genius. ‘His manner was a little aloof,’ says a Glasgow art dealer who knew him. ‘He had a particular horror of arty people, or any form of pretentiousness.’
That said, one man who knows better than to accept this sober exterior – and who grew up surrounded by Peploe’s works – is his grandson Guy, who describes his late grandfather as ‘shy, to the point of appearing austere to the outside world, but a warm family man full of surprises’.
Among those surprises were his scores of eye-popping works, notably his still life pieces, to which he dedicated most of his career. Best-sellers such as The Coffee Pot (1905) with its boldly shining silver; the luscious Red and Pink Roses (1924); and the colour-rich Still Life With Tulips (1919) which sold for £992,750 at Christie’s auction house in 2018 – a record for any Colourist’s work – are among the most revered.
The art of still life was far from fashionable at the time, but Peploe saw great artistic potential in such quotidian pieces, stating in 1929 that ‘there is so much in mere objects, flowers, leaves, jugs, what not – colours, forms, relation – I can never see mystery coming to an end’.
Peploe was, of course, one of the famed ‘Scottish Colourists’, alongside his peers Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, John Duncan Fergusson, and George Leslie Hunter, and there is much discussion about the sources of his inspiration. Some believe that Peploe’s poking brushstrokes owed much to those of Vincent van Gogh – a thought ably illustrated by the spontaneity of such fluid Peploes as Ile de Brehat (1911), Interior with Japanese Print (1919) and
the wonderful Girl in White (early 1920s).
The Scot, after rejecting several other vocations including becoming a soldier, minister, indigo planter and farmer, was a constant experimenter who flirted with varying styles over his 64-year art career. He had unwavering faith in his natural talent and ability to absorb others’ techniques. Experts frequently cite Matisse, Cezanne and Manet as being Peploe’s greatest influencers, but only occasionally do they mention Van Gogh.
Peploe didn’t just borrow artistic techniques; it also applied his use of colour. In the same way that the colours of Provence inspired Van Gogh, Peploe’s brushstrokes seemed to respond with extra spirit to France’s ‘stir of life’ and ‘gay vibrancy’ after he studied there at Académie Julian between 1891 and 1894. Art historian Professor Frances Fowle of Edinburgh
Art College also believes it was ‘highly probable’ that the Dutch master’s retrospective of fifty works (18 years after his death) caught Peploe’s attention when he visited Eugène Druet’s Paris gallery in November 1909.
‘From this date onwards,’ says Fowle, ‘his work underwent a dramatic transformation as he began to experiment with Van Gogh’s vivid but essentially naturalistic palette and expressive brushstrokes.’
Among Peploe’s works, she highlights the particular significance of his oil sketch Royan, Charente Inférieure, completed while on the west coast of France, which features ‘stabbing
“
Peploe’s work was transformed as he began to experiment with Van Gogh’s vivid palette
brushstrokes’ and a ‘vivid palette suggesting an awareness of Van Gogh’.
Fowle is not alone in her observations, as Dundee-born author and Van Gogh expert Ken Wilkie agrees. ‘Peploe’s palette, application of paint and flattening of form in several of his Tulip works undoubtedly owe a debt to the famous Dutch artist, as well as to the famous Dutch flower,’ says Wilkie, who has written two books on Van Gogh.
Wilkie also points out that Peploe was so interested in Dutch art that he travelled to Holland in 1895 and copied classic works by Rembrandt and Frans Hals before earning his place as a famed Scottish Colourist.
Contrary to popular belief, Peploe and Van Gogh’s connection doesn’t begin and end on canvas. Although they never met – Van Gogh was 18 when Peploe was born in 1871 – there was a strong human connection between the
two artists, established through mutual friend and fellow Scot Alexander Reid, who worked as an art dealer in Paris. Before promoting Peploe’s work at his gallery La Société des Beaux-Arts in Glasgow, Reid was Van Gogh’s housemate in Montmartre’s Rue Lepic. As Peploe and Reid walked the streets of Paris together, Reid spoke at length about Van Gogh’s artistic abilities while Peploe listened.
Strangely, Reid looked just like Van Gogh. A close friend of theirs once wrote: ‘They might have been twins. I have often hesitated, until I got close, as to which of them I was meeting.’ Another noted that ‘Reid and Van Gogh were both rather weedy little men with pinched features, red hair, beard and blue eyes’, while Professor Fowle has written a book on Reid entitled ‘Van Gogh’s Twin’.
Indeed, Reid and Van Gogh were so similar that the latter’s 1887 painting of Reid was mistaken as a self-portrait. Despite Reid’s son correcting the subject’s identity in a 1920s catalogue, it hung as a Van Gogh selfie in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum until 1978. It was only when Wilkie pointed out the error during an interview with the BBC that the caption was swiftly changed.
When Peploe was not in France or travelling to the Scottish islands to paint, he was an Edinburgher through and through, and lived the last third of his life in a flat on India Street with his wife Margaret and their three children. His family provided much-needed stability as he moved studios like a cat on a hot tin roof from Shandwick Place and Devon Place through York Place and Queen Street (twice) to Castle Street.
Unlike Van Gogh, Peploe sold several works in his time but life was never easy for him. The majority of his wealth came only after his death in 1935. The worries he faced about paying his son’s Edinburgh Academy school fees might have seemed rather more manageable after banking that hefty pay cheque.
Contrary to popular belief, Peploe and van Gogh’s connection doesn’t begin and end on canvas