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at the time of his death in 1962, six of them dominated the walls of his sitting room at Wilby House. Another early favourite was Edwin Alexander (1870–1926), a naturalist who worked exclusively in watercolour and gouache; his charming depictions of birds like Blackbird (page 55) and animals and the gentle landscape of East Lothian might have spoken to Blyth of his own boyhood in Fife and certainly chimed perfectly with his love of nature. There is no dominant theme in the collection; indeed with more than a third of the entire holding being by one artist, S.J. Peploe, the idea of a theme falls away. In this sense Blyth was modernist as a collector, both trusting his own judgment of quality against a shifting canvas of definition and trusting also the painter, with whom he shared values. It is George Proudfoot, who also was a keen collector of Peploe and a close friend of Blyth, who can be credited with confirming Blyth on his epic decision to collect the artist. The two men were of an age and temperamentally similar: Peploe was intensely shy and Blyth respected his natural reticence and unwillingness to represent himself in the public arena. As has been noted, Peploe had begun to exhibit from 1903 with The Scottish Gallery who had considerable success with the early work. The artist’s early influences were the Realists and Symbolists of the late nineteenth century as well as Manet and the Dutch School. His conversion to the way of colour and his own brand of Post- Impressionism at first alienated Peter McOmish Dott when faced with the brilliant fauvist panels he brought back from France in 1912. During the war years, with Peploe established in a studio in Queen Street and making several extended painting trips to the south-west of Scotland (where Jessie M. King and E.A. Taylor, his artist friends from Paris, had settled in Kirkcudbright), The Scottish Gallery began to take work for sale. After the war Peploe began to paint his distinctive, brilliantly coloured rose and tulip still-lifes and both Proudfoot and Alex Reid recognised the arrival of a mature talent with huge commercial potential. Exhibitions followed apace and Peploe accepted a joint contract with the two galleries. The first documented record of a link between the works of Peploe and Blyth the collector is in a letter from Alex Reid to Blyth, dated 8th November 1915. Reid writes: ‘I think you ought to consider the Peploes more seriously than you seem to do.’ There exists a receipt dated 15th November 1915, one week after the letter was written, for a picture called Town in Brittany, bought from Reid’s gallery in Glasgow, for a price of £12. This purchase coincides with the Peploe exhibition at Reid’s gallery in that month. However the first recorded purchase by Blyth of a work by Peploe is in January 1924, for Summer Day, Iona from The Scottish Gallery. There are many possible reasons why Blyth did not begin to collect Peploe’s works in earnest until after 1924. Firstly, we should take into account the rather sharp tone of Reid’s correspondence; Blyth would have been used to this by now. In addition, the fact that Peter McOmish Dott had refused to sell any of Peploe’s work after the artist’s return from Paris in 1911, referring to him as ‘a lost soul’, is quite likely to have discouraged Blyth from taking his work seriously in these early years. Besides, before 1920 Blyth’s interests were in large part restricted to landscape, and to McTaggart in particular. The link between McTaggart’s art and the work of Peploe is often referred to, however, and we can see Blyth’s ‘discovery’ of Peploe as a natural progression (although a man with Blyth’s passion could only be an evangelist and his conversion to Peploe became all-consuming). Stanley Cursiter wrote in his 1947 biography of Peploe: ‘The richness of pigmental content is a quality which they have in common … Peploe had a high regard for McTaggart and one of his greatest regrets was that he never met this fine artist.’ T.J. Honeyman, in his book Three Scottish Colourists, links McTaggart to 10
Peploe in terms of colour: ‘although these two painters may, at first glance seem poles apart, they had the same basic appreciation of colour and of the importance of colour context in their work.’ Blyth’s decision to collect the works of Peploe would have been strengthened by the success of Peploe’s work when it was exhibited alongside that of his fellow scottish Colourists George leslie hunter (1877–1931), francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883– 1937) and John Duncan fergusson (1874–1961) at the leicester Galleries in london in January 1925. Peploe was particularly praised by W.R. sickert in the preface to the exhibition catalogue: Mr Peploe has carried a certain kind of delicious skill to a pitch of virtuosity that might have led to more repetition, and his present orientation has certainly been a kind of rebirth. he has transferred his unit of attention from attenuated and exquisite gradations of tone to no less skilfully related colour. and by relating all his lines with frankness to the 180 degrees of two right angles, he is able to capture and digest a wider field of vision than before. and time, as the poet sings, is an important element in the gathering of roses. his volte-face has been an intellectual progress. and it is probably for this reason that, obviously beautiful as was Mr Peploe’s earlier quality, his present one will establish itself as the more beautiful of the two. 11
Page 1: the taste of JW Blyth
Page 5 and 6: Foreword Michael Portillo I knew my
Page 7 and 8: elevation plan to Wilby house, 1909
Page 9 and 10: Collecting Blyth kept a simple reco
Page 11 and 12: the hawcklymuir factory, Kirkcaldy
Page 13: and Explanatory Notes on the Art of
Page 17 and 18: Blyth’s conversion was certainly
Page 19: Trouville Harbour and Deauville (pa
Page 22 and 23: Most contemporary publications, exh
Page 24 and 25: a warning of what we have escaped i
Page 26 and 27: Vale “No plans were ever made for
Page 28 and 29: catalogue Eugène Boudin was born i
Page 30 and 31: “everything that is painted on th
Page 32 and 33: Wintour was born in Edinburgh and a
Page 34 and 35: Two years senior to his great frien
Page 36 and 37: Paintings by William McTaggart, R.S
Page 38 and 39: there are a number of pictures of R
Page 40 and 41: In July 1947 Blyth bought a picture
Page 42 and 43: “The remarkable place which he ho
Page 44 and 45: “To few men has a more beautiful
Page 46 and 47: Wingate’s first arran subject exh
Page 48 and 49: Wingate’s Farm seems close in spi
Page 50 and 51: Alexander was born in Edinburgh, so
Page 52 and 53: edwin alexander (1870-1926) Moorlan
Page 54 and 55: edwin alexander (1870-1926) Doves a
Page 56 and 57: edwin alexander (1870-1926) Gullane
Page 58 and 59: edwin alexander (1870-1926) Storeho
Page 61 and 62: s.J. Peploe (1871-1935) The Lobster
Page 64 and 65:
Peploe is strongly associated with
Page 66 and 67:
Comrie is a village on the River ea
Page 68 and 69:
s.J. Peploe (1871-1935) Paris Plage
Page 70 and 71:
s.J. Peploe (1871-1935) Royan, 1910
Page 72 and 73:
Peploe began to visit the south-wes
Page 74 and 75:
fergusson held his first one-man-sh
Page 76 and 77:
Blyth bought three hunters the othe
Page 78 and 79:
Grant first visited Cassis in 1927
Page 80 and 81:
Lily McDougall was born in Glasgow
Page 82:
Walter Richard Sickert was born in
Page 85 and 86:
Walter Richard sickert (1860-1942)
Page 87 and 88:
ernest stephen lumsden (1883-1948)
Page 89 and 90:
James McBey (1883-1959) Venice Gran
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