Samuel J. PeploeLe Cap, Cassis

PROVENANCE

Willy Peploe (the artist's eldest son).  Thence by descent to the current owner.

Levevre Gallery label verso, no. 5776.

The work is a rare landscape painting of the beautiful village of Cassis on the Provencal coast executed just before the First World War.

As usual, Fergusson had invited Peploe to paint with him during the summer months and had decided to go the south coast of France near to Collioure where the Fauvists had painted almost a decade before. This was Peploe's first trip to the Mediterranean and his first exposure to the brilliant light that had inspired his French forebears. Together with the extraordinary Cubistic nature of the town, the coast with deep fjords known as calanques, pine-clad mountains to the North as well as one of the most picturesque harbours, it was to prove a very productive stay for Peploe.

Working on similarly sized wooden panels, he produced approximately a dozen works of the town and environs, all executed en plein air, something he had not done since his early trips to the Western Isles. Here his palette became ever bolder and divorced from factual reality.

The vertiginous castle of Cassis sits on its limestone massif, towering over the village below, blazing as it is in rich yellows and purples of a hot afternoon summer sun. Later in 1913 he returned with his family to Scotland, but his summer in Cassis would become his greatest exploration into the Fauvist palette, a colour scheme that he would introduce into all aspects of his work throughout the rest of his career.