Colourist trio’s paintings fetch more than £1m

A SELECTION of paintings by the Scottish Colourists has sold for more than £1 million at auction.

Flowers And Fruit by Edinburgh-born Samuel Peploe sold for £512,800, putting it in the top ten highest-priced Scottish paintings auctioned.

The Artist’s Drawing Room by Francis Cadell fetched £400,800, the second-highest priced Cadell to be sold at auction. John Fergusson’s At The Milliner’s Paris sold for £222,000.

Peploe attended The Trustees Academy, now Edinburgh College of Art, and later studied in Paris, which heavily influenced his techniques. Flowers And Fruit was painted in 1920. It beat the £300,000-£500,000 pre-sale estimate by auctioneers Bonhams in Edinburgh.

Chris Brickley, head of pictures at Bonhams, said of the Peploe painting: “It is a historic sale in Scotland.

“I had hoped it would make that kind of sum but it definitely exceeded all expectations. Peploe’s painting is one of the most iconic pictures in Scot- tish art.”