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拍品专文
‘Mr Hunter’s strongest point is his colour, which is gay and attractive attaining a luscious brilliancy … he is one of those artists in whom style and spontaneity play a large part’
Flowers remained an important element of Hunter’s still life paintings throughout his career. Early on in his career, Hunter examined the work of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and Adolphe Monticelli at Glasgow’s Museum and Art Gallery at Kelvingrove Park and he continued to admire their work. Still Life with Rose, Fruit and Knife, akin to Chardin’s Flowers in a Porcelain Vase, confidently presents us with a simple bouquet of freshly cut flowers in a decorative vase. Although Hunter has added a few more everyday objects to his composition, he too has placed his vase on a carefully arranged table, with the space between us and the arrangement as important as the objects themselves.
As Chardin’s artistic career developed, he simplified his compositions and became increasingly concerned with not what he was painting but how he was painting it. In 1780, Chardin’s friend, the draftsman Charles-Nicolas Cochin remembered him asking, 'Since when does one paint with colour?' 'With what else?' came the astonished reply, 'You should use colour, but paint with your feelings', explained Chardin (J. B-S Chardin, quoted in F.G. Meijer, Dutch & Flemish Still Life Paintings, Zwolle). When compared to his earlier works, Hunter’s still life paintings of this period also strove to re-create subject matter and form. Stylistic experimentation fascinated both artists.
Whilst this carefully composed still life owes a debt to Hunter’s French 19th and 20th Century forerunners, it was his sojourns to the South of France in the late 1920s that also provided Hunter with much inspiration to construct his own individual interpretations of what he saw. The relatively settled periods that he had spent at Saint-Paul-de-Vence, with his studio overlooking the Provençal landscape, had allowed him to experiment with new techniques and the format of his still life compositions: an idiom that remained a major part of his oeuvre throughout his career. Hunter rarely dated his paintings, which makes it difficult to consider them chronologically. However, it seems likely that Still Life with Rose, Fruit and Knife was painted during the summer of 1929 when Hunter’s work from this period took on a more assured and mature style. As displayed in the present work, his compositions are governed by touches of heavy impasto and vibrant colour which imbue them with a certain luminosity. It was a particularly active period of intense experimentation where his work became revitalised by his Mediterranean surroundings. Monticelli also imbued his paintings with the bright sunlight of the Mediterranean. His vase of flowers stands on a sun drenched ledge with half of the bouquet silhouetted by the darkness of the room behind it. A strong sense of volume has been achieved by the touches of vibrant colour in heavy impasto throughout the canvas, so that the vase of flowers bathe in a warm Mediterranean glow.
With its thick painterly surface, the objects within Still Life with Rose, Fruit and Knife, are constructed with bold, fluid brushstrokes and like his fellow Scottish Colourists, Hunter’s love of vivid colour is particularly evident in the roses, with their warm palette of reds and pinks. Each form in the composition has been unashamedly de-lineated using a thick black outline, a technique used by the Post-Impressionists to emphasise physical mass and bright colour. This is particularly pronounced where the rose petals meet the cool blue backdrop to flatten form and smooth perspective, so that the overall composition skilfully blends together into a sinuous whole. As Diderot wrote of Chardin in 1763: 'This is unfathomable wizardry. Thick layers of colour are applied one upon the other and seem to melt together. At other times one would say a vapour of light foam has breathed on the canvas … Draw near, and everything flattens out and disappears; step back and all the forms are re-created' (P. Mitchell, European Flower Painters, London, 1973, p. 86).
Still Life with Rose, Fruit and Knife shows Hunter at the height of his powers as a Colourist painter, very aware of his artistic forebears but equally eager to carve out his own way and 'a new individual palette and personality' (quoted in a review from The New York Evening Post of Hunter’s New York exhibition in 1929). As T.J. Honeyman, the artist’s close friend and biographer wrote of Hunter, 'When you read the story of his life in the light of his work it will not be difficult to give a name to his pictures. You will not ask to see ‘a painting’ by Leslie Hunter’ – you simply say, ‘a Leslie Hunter’ – someday it may be a Hunter.’ There is really nothing abstruse or intricate about this, for it is the formula for all art worthy of survival' (T.J. Honeyman, Introducing Leslie Hunter, London, 1937, pp. 213-214).
Flowers remained an important element of Hunter’s still life paintings throughout his career. Early on in his career, Hunter examined the work of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and Adolphe Monticelli at Glasgow’s Museum and Art Gallery at Kelvingrove Park and he continued to admire their work. Still Life with Rose, Fruit and Knife, akin to Chardin’s Flowers in a Porcelain Vase, confidently presents us with a simple bouquet of freshly cut flowers in a decorative vase. Although Hunter has added a few more everyday objects to his composition, he too has placed his vase on a carefully arranged table, with the space between us and the arrangement as important as the objects themselves.
As Chardin’s artistic career developed, he simplified his compositions and became increasingly concerned with not what he was painting but how he was painting it. In 1780, Chardin’s friend, the draftsman Charles-Nicolas Cochin remembered him asking, 'Since when does one paint with colour?' 'With what else?' came the astonished reply, 'You should use colour, but paint with your feelings', explained Chardin (J. B-S Chardin, quoted in F.G. Meijer, Dutch & Flemish Still Life Paintings, Zwolle). When compared to his earlier works, Hunter’s still life paintings of this period also strove to re-create subject matter and form. Stylistic experimentation fascinated both artists.
Whilst this carefully composed still life owes a debt to Hunter’s French 19th and 20th Century forerunners, it was his sojourns to the South of France in the late 1920s that also provided Hunter with much inspiration to construct his own individual interpretations of what he saw. The relatively settled periods that he had spent at Saint-Paul-de-Vence, with his studio overlooking the Provençal landscape, had allowed him to experiment with new techniques and the format of his still life compositions: an idiom that remained a major part of his oeuvre throughout his career. Hunter rarely dated his paintings, which makes it difficult to consider them chronologically. However, it seems likely that Still Life with Rose, Fruit and Knife was painted during the summer of 1929 when Hunter’s work from this period took on a more assured and mature style. As displayed in the present work, his compositions are governed by touches of heavy impasto and vibrant colour which imbue them with a certain luminosity. It was a particularly active period of intense experimentation where his work became revitalised by his Mediterranean surroundings. Monticelli also imbued his paintings with the bright sunlight of the Mediterranean. His vase of flowers stands on a sun drenched ledge with half of the bouquet silhouetted by the darkness of the room behind it. A strong sense of volume has been achieved by the touches of vibrant colour in heavy impasto throughout the canvas, so that the vase of flowers bathe in a warm Mediterranean glow.
With its thick painterly surface, the objects within Still Life with Rose, Fruit and Knife, are constructed with bold, fluid brushstrokes and like his fellow Scottish Colourists, Hunter’s love of vivid colour is particularly evident in the roses, with their warm palette of reds and pinks. Each form in the composition has been unashamedly de-lineated using a thick black outline, a technique used by the Post-Impressionists to emphasise physical mass and bright colour. This is particularly pronounced where the rose petals meet the cool blue backdrop to flatten form and smooth perspective, so that the overall composition skilfully blends together into a sinuous whole. As Diderot wrote of Chardin in 1763: 'This is unfathomable wizardry. Thick layers of colour are applied one upon the other and seem to melt together. At other times one would say a vapour of light foam has breathed on the canvas … Draw near, and everything flattens out and disappears; step back and all the forms are re-created' (P. Mitchell, European Flower Painters, London, 1973, p. 86).
Still Life with Rose, Fruit and Knife shows Hunter at the height of his powers as a Colourist painter, very aware of his artistic forebears but equally eager to carve out his own way and 'a new individual palette and personality' (quoted in a review from The New York Evening Post of Hunter’s New York exhibition in 1929). As T.J. Honeyman, the artist’s close friend and biographer wrote of Hunter, 'When you read the story of his life in the light of his work it will not be difficult to give a name to his pictures. You will not ask to see ‘a painting’ by Leslie Hunter’ – you simply say, ‘a Leslie Hunter’ – someday it may be a Hunter.’ There is really nothing abstruse or intricate about this, for it is the formula for all art worthy of survival' (T.J. Honeyman, Introducing Leslie Hunter, London, 1937, pp. 213-214).