The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives

Discover the groundbreaking exhibition in partnership with the Fleming Collection, which for the first time showcases the Scottish Colourists in the context of their European contemporaries, interrogating how this international generation of radical painters forged a new language of colour in the early 20th century.

The Scottish Colourists — SJ Peploe, JD Fergusson, GL Hunter, and FCB Cadell — are widely recognised as pioneers of early 20th-century Scottish art. Often exhibited as a quartet, their work will now be shown in the company of key figures such as Matisse and Derain, as well as the Bloomsbury Group’s Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. The exhibition also explores a possible ‘Celtic’ influence through the works of Welsh artists Augustus John and John Dickson Innes, and Ireland’s Roderic O’Connor.

Join us on a journey through the avant-garde movement as conventions are challenged around who should be considered the leading radical painters from 1905 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. This exploration culminates in the formation of the Scottish Colourists as a distinct group in the 1920s and 30s, highlighting the influence of French colour and Scottish light on their work as painters of landscape, still life and interiors.