The Scottish Colourists

At the turn of the twentieth century the Scottish Colourists - Samuel Peploe, John Duncan Fergusson, F.C.B. Cadell and Leslie Hunter - developed a modern style of painting that drew initially on Impressionism.

These artists all spent a period in France, where they encountered the work of Monet and his contemporaries. However it was Manet’s early still lifes which made the greatest impact, influencing a whole series of still lifes that Peploe and Fergusson produced around 1903-5.

Later their interests shifted to Matisse and Cézanne; Fergusson’s A Puff of Smoke Near Milngavie, for example, bears comparison with Cézanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire.