Still life: apples and jar

Samuel Peploe is the most acclaimed of the ‘Scottish colourists’, a group of painters that were influenced by the French Fauvist’s wild colour and loose brushwork. Living in Paris before the First World War, Peploe also looked to the work of Paul Cézanne and his radical reconception of the still-life genre, as he explored progressive ideas about painting.

For Peploe, like Cézanne, the execution of the perfect still life was an obsession that dominated his career. It was both an aesthetic and intellectual exercise, with each element carefully considered before brush and paint were ever applied to the canvas. With its characteristic strong colour and assured handling, 'Still life: apples and jar' demonstrates Peploe’s fascination with the genre. ‘There is so much in mere objects, flowers, leaves, jugs, what not – colours, forms, relation – I can never see the mystery coming to an end,’ he said.