Details

Object type

painting

Title

Villefranche

Artist/Maker

Leslie Hunter maker

Culture/School

Scottish Colourists

Place Associated

France, French Riviera, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Alpes-Maritimes, Villefranche-sur-Mer (place made)

Date

1928

Materials

oil on canvas

Dimensions

457 x 562 x 20 mm

Description

Villefranche by Scottish Colourist painter George Leslie Hunter (1877–1931) shows the picturesque tree-lined harbour of Villefranche-sur-Mer, with its white sailing boats, red-roofed white-washed villas and framing purple hills. Hunter had travelled to Provence in early spring 1927. He found a base in the medieval hillside village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence where he rented a small studio attached to the hotel La Colombe d’Or. The proprietor Paul Roux was an amateur artist and sometimes accepted paintings as payment. Here Hunter found he could paint landscapes and still lifes. Hunter wrote to his friend the Dundee cabinetmaker and collector Matthew Justice in the summer of 1927: ‘I like this country very much and am sorry I did not come here six years ago in place of going to Fife. I feel six months here was worth six years there. […] This is a painter’s country’ (NLS). However, there are few paintings from this period as Hunter spent more time sketching, trying to understand the new landscape, its architecture and ambience. Whereas he produced over 100 drawings, there were few paintings for the planned winter exhibition in Glasgow, which had to be postponed, McNeill Reid showing a small selection of Hunter’s drawings instead, which were not well received.

In the French Riviera Hunter began experimenting with pure colour and bold strong line to express form and the effects of light, inspired by the brilliant blue sky, glassy sea and sunshine and influenced by French artists, notably Henri Matisse who was based close by in Nice and André Dunoyer de Segonzac at St Tropez. His brushwork is confident and free. This change of direction was not appreciated back home. He returned to the south of France in 1928. He wrote to McNeill Reid on 18 August 1928: ‘I am working in a thin fashion and see my way to get the luminous nature of the country here’ (Honeyman Papers, National Library of Scotland). He produced a number of important oils that summer, of which Villefranche is one, but the pressure to produce oils for an exhibition at Reid & Lefevre gallery in London in May 1928, a show which had to be cancelled, had an impact on his mental health. However, it was exhibited in Paris in 1931 at the hugely successful Les Peintres Ecossais' (The Scottish Painters) at the Galerie Georges Petit, a show organised by fellow Scottish Colourist John Duncan Fergusson (1874–1961) and London-based art dealers Reid & Lefèvre. Sadly Hunter died later that year from blood poisoning after a gall bladder operation at Claremont Nursing Home in Glasgow on 7 December 1931, aged only 54.

This painting was purchased from Reid in Glasgow by the donors’ great grandfather William (‘Pad’) Douglas Russell, a well-known GP in the city. Amongst his patients was art dealer Dr Tom Honeyman, later Director of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. He had helped Hunter establish his reputation and supported him when he had a breakdown in France in 1929. Honeyman encouraged Russell to buy Villefranche with money he had at the time of his retirement. The painting travelled over to Edinburgh after the donors’ great grandparents were bombed out of their home in the West End of Glasgow. It then passed to the donors’ grandparents and was proudly displayed in their home until their grandfather’s death in the 1980s when it was inherited by the donors’ mother. Following their mother’s wishes, at her death the painting was gifted to Glasgow Museums because of the Honeyman connection and because Hunter was born on the west coast of Scotland (Rothesay, Bute) and had made Glasgow his home after his return from France in 1929.

Credit Line/Donor

Gifted by the Estate of Judith Reid Dean, 2023

ID Number

3799

Location

In storage