In the summer of 1910, J.D. Fergusson invited Peploe and his new wife, Margaret Mackay, to join him at Royan, a popular bathing resort in the Charente-Marit.mes , on France’s Atlantic coast. It was here that Peploe's son Willy was born, in the same year that the present work was painted.
The paintings created by Peploe in Royan marked a dramatic shift in his practice. Mesmerised by the intense light and its effects on the strong architecture of the town, he painted with non-naturalistic colour and simplifications of form that align him closely with the Fauvism of Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck.
'Peploe seeks to find in his painted surface a direct equivalent to his subject, harnessing the power of light to make colour vibrate; to make permanent the compelling beauty he saw in a model, harbour or promenade’
The present work is marked by bold saturated pools of bright reds and yellows set against cool purples and blues which Peploe has strikingly employed to denote both the outlines of buildings and the shadows they cast. Using this technique, his paintings from this period are particularly close to those of Cezanne and Othon Friesz in form and colour. Although somewhat retaining the light-filled palette of his still lifes from 1905 onwards, where his practice showed traces of Whistler’s famous experimentation with the colour white, here there is a more rigid, distinctive angularity to volume and space. Applying paint direct to the canvas, he uses it accurately and sparingly, allowing areas of primed board to shine through and create a dynamic surface.
‘In his painting and in everything, he tried … to find the essentials by persistent trial. He worked all the t.mes from nature but never imitated it’
Despite the influence of avant-garde French modernism, Peploe demonstrates an expressive fluidity and sensitivity to composition that remains his own; he is no mere imitator, but rather an innovator. Broad, sweeping brushstrokes realise the tactile forms which vibrate across the image, perhaps reflecting the influence of post-Impressionism and Van Gogh, whose major retrospective Peploe is highly likely to have seen at the Galerie Druet in 1909. Significantly, it was after this summer in Royan that Peploe would move to Paris for two years, where he would further develop his artistic practice. The present work is an important, almost experimental marker in this revelatory shift towards a more colourful palette and constructed approach to form.
It is a sign of the present work’s quality that one of its early owners was the linen manufacturer John W. Blyth of Kirkcaldy. He was a major patron of Peploe during his lifet.mes and would eventually acquire eighty-five of his works. Many of the best examples from his collects ion are now in Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery, where he served as Honorary Curator from 1925 until his death in 1962.