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Peploe married Margaret Mackay on April the fifth 1910 at the Morningside Registry Office. They had decided to
move to Paris and would break the journey at Broadway in the Cotswolds. He had written a month before: ‘I see the
train leaves at 10.15. That is the only morning train and the next is 2.00 o’clock which is too late. Shall we need to get
married at 8.00 o’clock in the morning; why not? Before breakfast.’ The move had long been urged by John Duncan
Fergusson, already living in Montparnasse, but the immediate spur was Margaret’spregnancy. They set up home in a tiny
studio apartment at 278 Boulevard Raspail but by August had joined Fergusson and Anne Estelle Rice in Royan in the
Charante. Royan was fashionable resort with a fine Casino on the promenade, beaches and a busy marina. Willy was
born on August 29th. The work Peploe made here can now be seen as thoroughly modernist: the palette is bold and like
the Fauves at Collioure four years before he moves away from naturalism to push colour as a direct, emotional tool no
doubt reflecting the freedom and excitement he felt as his life moved into a new sphere.
The Royan pictures of the harbour and streets of villas behind the front, of the Paris parks, and those made
in Brittany the following summer can be seen together as one of the great engagements made by a British artist
with French modernism. Light is no longer dissolving form and instead a new structure is sought; natural forms are
simplified and non-naturalistic colour preferred. These were the works that would be initially rejected by the dealers and
collectors who had been his patrons but Peploe was not for turning and the balance of his life as a painter looks forward,
never back.
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