Art reviews: SJ Peploe 150th Anniversary Showcase | Geoffrey Roper | Alison Auldjo

With physical art gallery openings on the horizon, Fife Cultural Trust’s online showcase of work by SJ Peploe is a timely reminder of the gems to be found in our regional art collections, writes Susan Mansfield
Ben More From Iona (detail), by SJ PeploeBen More From Iona (detail), by SJ Peploe
Ben More From Iona (detail), by SJ Peploe

SJ Peploe 150th Anniversary Showcase, ONFife (Fife Cultural Trust) ****

Geoffrey Roper, Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh ****

Alison Auldjo: The Last Giraffe, Union Gallery, Edinburgh ****

Royan, by SJ PeploeRoyan, by SJ Peploe
Royan, by SJ Peploe
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Lockdown has forced many galleries and museums to be resourceful, and OnFife (also known as Fife Cultural Trust), which looks after all the area’s museums, has used the online platform ArtUK to create a celebration for the 150th anniversary of the Scottish Colourist Samuel Peploe.

While ArtUK can cater to the fantasy curator – you can create your own exhibition, bringing in works from all over the country, even the world – OnFife has used the platform to display 38 paintings from their own collection, some of which are currently hanging behind closed doors in Kirkcaldy Art Gallery. Kirkcaldy has the largest collection of Peploes outside the National Galleries of Scotland, many of them gifted to the museum by local linoleum manufacturer John Blyth.

While I missed the commentary one might find in a physical gallery, and some of the pictures seem to have been cropped rather severely by the website, it is always a pleasure to see Peploe. The broad range of works here not only shows the range of subjects he enjoyed tackling but tells us something about how he worked.

There are paintings here of the places we associate with the Colourists, from Kirkcudbright and Iona to the South of France. Palm Trees at Antibes delightfully captures a sense of deep shade, with dark blue Mediterranean sky beyond, and buildings bleached pale by hot sun. There is also a number of very fine still lifes, Peploe classics with strong shapes and colours, and folded cloth with a geometric solidity to it.

Self-portrait, by SJ PeploeSelf-portrait, by SJ Peploe
Self-portrait, by SJ Peploe

Other works are quick oil sketches, and here we begin to get the essence of Peploe at work: a figure on a beach is captured in a few daubs of paint, sails on the water at Royan are laid down with a few swishes of the brush, a landscape from Barra is captured in post-Impressionist brushstrokes but muted Hebridean colours. It’s an important reminder of the gems we can find in our regional art collections, once we are free to explore them again in person.

Edinburgh-based Geoffrey Roper, who died in 2020, looked back beyond the Colourists for inspiration, particularly to Turner and the Romantics. Work from his widely ranging oeuvre is currently on show in a celebration of his life and work at the Open Eye Gallery.

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Roper hailed from Nottingham, and some of his work reflects that city, from the towering architecture of heavy industry to a bustling street scene on election night. However, like Turner, he was drawn to maritime scenes: a tug pulling a steamer, an eerily atmospheric picture of docks at night.

He was keen on high and low perspectives: Sanna Bay from above is near-abstract glittering turquoise; Donkey’s Parade looks down on a more crowded beach, the bathers glimpsed through flocks of circling seabirds. Venice, seen from the level of the lagoon, is almost translucent, shimmering with light.

The Last Giraffe, by Alison AuldjoThe Last Giraffe, by Alison Auldjo
The Last Giraffe, by Alison Auldjo
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Aeronauts seem to have interested him; a man in a hot-air balloon is painted from a viewpoint in which the artist is even higher. But he loved to look up at the sky, too: to get the perspective of Portobello Prom, you would need to lie flat on the sand, looking across crowds and buildings to the acres of cloud beyond.

There are figure studies, and a handful of still lifes (in their handling of light and dark, these do recall the Colourists). At one stage, he favoured a thick impasto, which seemed to rob his work of some its light and airiness. Other works have a fantasy, storybook quality, of towering archways, looming buildings and playful washing lines. And some betray an interest in abstract shapes, from a bridge silhouette which gives way to other bridge silhouettes in the distance, to two striped umbrellas (again seen from above) picked out on a wide flight of steps. The show celebrates him as an artist of great range and variety.

The new body of work by the gallerist and painter Alison Auldjo began to take shape last spring, in the early days of the pandemic. A painting of a giraffe took on an apocalyptic quality, becoming an emblem for a world under threat not only from covid-19 but from climate change, wildfires and environmental destruction. The Last Giraffe, imbued with a quiet, long-suffering dignity, is the centrepiece of her new show.

Auldjo’s paintings of animals are not enslaved to realism, but they capture the essence of a sheep, a hare, the precise way a cow holds itself or a horse lowers its head to crop grass. Her favourite subject is the donkey, perhaps the most used and abused of beasts. Her animals are not metaphors or personifications, they are entirely themselves, but they embody qualities we recognise: maternal pride, playfulness, vulnerability.

Palm Trees, Antibes by SJ PeploePalm Trees, Antibes by SJ Peploe
Palm Trees, Antibes by SJ Peploe

She paints fluidly, combining oils and acrylics. Some pictures are studies, but others are fully worked with finely wrought backgrounds: swans with the curve of a lake behind them and the evening lights of distant dwellings; sheep in a snowy field with the moon in the sky.

While the titles have an element of fun about them (Swan Lake, Dark Horses) these are serious pictures. They are about an animal world on the brink of catastrophe. Hares dance, kangaroos copulate, the last giraffe stands stoically quiet, and a donkey lets out an immense braying laugh, as succinct a comment as I’ve seen on the state of the present world. These animals have little power, but they understand our world better than we do.

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To view the SJ Peploe exhibition, visit http://bit.ly/2NmbIYd; Geoffrey Roper is at www.openeyegallery.co.uk until 27 February; Alison Auldjo is at www.uniongallery.co.uk until until 28 February

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