The Gallery of Modern Art has a strong collection of the four artists now known as the Scottish Colourists: S.J. Peploe, J.D. Fergusson, G.L. Hunter and F.C.B. Cadell. This was not a defined group, and the collective label was essentially a marketing device thought up by a dealer in the 1940s when three of the artists were already dead. But the Colourist label has become a popular and convenient way to describe four artists of the same generation, who brought a new sense of vitality and freshness to Scottish art in the early twentieth century. Cadell is arguably the least well known of the four, and although his work is sometimes written off as being glassy and superficial, his best works are beautifully painted with seductive, creamy surfaces rendered in a distinctive and accomplished manner.

Cadell was born in Edinburgh and he spent most of his career in the Scottish capital. His artistic talent was recognised and encouraged by his family who supported his studies abroad, first in Paris and later in Munich. The style of his early works is a fairly polite fusion of British and continental influences, although his landscapes and interiors are handled with fluid brushwork and lively colours. Manet and, in particular, Whistler were important for him as he gradually developed a more flamboyant and vigorous approach. From 1909, when he established his first studio, his art centred on the genteel society of Edinburgh’s fashionable New Town and he depicted a succession of stylishly dressed women in high-ceilinged rooms in which the cold northern light reflects off pale skin, polished floors and marble mantelpieces.

Cadell served in the army during the First World War and, after his return, his style changed to become harder and more austere. The forms in his work flattened into decorative patterns that seem to fan out across the picture surface. There is a bold, angular rhythm to works such as the Portrait of a Lady in Black that seems to belong firmly to the jazz age of the 1920s. In this magnificent work Cadell returns to one of his favourite subjects, a woman leaning against a mantelpiece. The original inspiration was a work by Whistler, Symphony in White No.2: The Little White Girl, 1864 (Tate) which Cadell had known and admired when it was shown in Edinburgh some twenty years earlier. His model was Miss Bethia Hamilton Don-Wauchope, a society figure and neighbour of Cadell who posed for the artist over a period of some fifteen years. The framing of the composition brings us up close but there is no sense of intimacy here and the lady in her striking black dress and overpowering hat looks past us, her expression suggesting at best a form of polite ennui. The cool colour scheme of lilac, black and cream is broken only by her crimson lipstick and golden earrings. Edinburgh has long been famous for the cool reserve of its well-heeled inhabitants, qualities that are captured brilliantly by Cadell in this supremely elegant work.

This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.