Prices rise for Scots works with Peploes to the fore

SCOTTISH artworks have commanded increasing prices over the past 20 years, with other works by Peploe ranking among the most valuable.

The highest price ever paid for a Scottish work of art was for a painted panel from the wife of architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The White Rose and the Red Rose, created in 1902 by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, was bought by an private American collector for 1.7 million in London in 2008.

That was nearly double the highest known price paid for a piece by her celebrated husband.

In terms of paintings, Jack Vettriano's The Singing Butler sold for 744,580 in 2004, then the highest price paid for a Scottish painting.

Before that, the record was held by Peploe. In 2001, his piece The Black Bottle made 520,750 at auction.

That is only marginally more than the 506,000 one buyer was prepared to pay for another Peploe piece Girl in White in December 1998.

Another claim to the highest priced Scottish artwork title comes from Scottish-born Peter Doig. One of his paintings fetched 5.7 million in 2007, but he left Edinburgh as a baby and was raised in the Caribbean and North America.