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Lot Essay
Throughout Peploe's life he was driven by the ambition to paint the still life, not as is often wrongly believed in a decorative sense, but as an intellectual exercise combining the analytical and scientific process of pictorial composition.
In his biography, Stanley Cursiter emphasises the requirement to fully appreciate the extent to which a form of engineering is applied to the production of the still life. 'The mathematical anology must not be overstressed, but in the building up of a pictorial design there is an element of engineering which takes account of stresses and strains set up by the relation of lines and planes, and a sense of direction which have to be balanced and counteracted in the search for equilibrium which is the pictorial ideal'.
In a letter of 1929, Peploe wrote 'There is so much in mere objects, flowers, leaves, jugs, what not - colours, forms, relations - I can never see mystery coming to an end'. His still lifes of the early 20s which many consider to be his most successful period often only include these simple props of Pink roses, Red Apples and Oriental ceramics painted in a soft light, but are the culmination of all Peploe had previously achieved. The Juxtaposition of simple objects and fruit, balance in perfect colour harmony with small areas of colour or patterned backdrops and are an orchestration not only of colour, but of pattern and form.
Walter Sickert in an introduction to a catalogue for an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1925, wrote with great commendation of this new direction in Peploe's work. Mr Peploe had carried on a certain kind of delicious skill to a pitch of virtuosity that might have led to mere repetition, and his present orientation has certainly been a kind of rebirth. He has transferred his unit of attention from attenuated and exquisite graduation of tome to no less skilfully related colour. An by relating all his lines with frankness to 180 degrees of two right angles he is able to capture and digest a wider field of vision than befire. And time, as the poet sings, is an important element in the gathering of roses, And it is probably for this reason that obviously beautiful as was Mr Peploe's earlier work, his present one will establish itself as the more beautiful of the two.
In his biography, Stanley Cursiter emphasises the requirement to fully appreciate the extent to which a form of engineering is applied to the production of the still life. 'The mathematical anology must not be overstressed, but in the building up of a pictorial design there is an element of engineering which takes account of stresses and strains set up by the relation of lines and planes, and a sense of direction which have to be balanced and counteracted in the search for equilibrium which is the pictorial ideal'.
In a letter of 1929, Peploe wrote 'There is so much in mere objects, flowers, leaves, jugs, what not - colours, forms, relations - I can never see mystery coming to an end'. His still lifes of the early 20s which many consider to be his most successful period often only include these simple props of Pink roses, Red Apples and Oriental ceramics painted in a soft light, but are the culmination of all Peploe had previously achieved. The Juxtaposition of simple objects and fruit, balance in perfect colour harmony with small areas of colour or patterned backdrops and are an orchestration not only of colour, but of pattern and form.
Walter Sickert in an introduction to a catalogue for an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1925, wrote with great commendation of this new direction in Peploe's work. Mr Peploe had carried on a certain kind of delicious skill to a pitch of virtuosity that might have led to mere repetition, and his present orientation has certainly been a kind of rebirth. He has transferred his unit of attention from attenuated and exquisite graduation of tome to no less skilfully related colour. An by relating all his lines with frankness to 180 degrees of two right angles he is able to capture and digest a wider field of vision than befire. And time, as the poet sings, is an important element in the gathering of roses, And it is probably for this reason that obviously beautiful as was Mr Peploe's earlier work, his present one will establish itself as the more beautiful of the two.