George Leslie Hunter was the only one of the Scottish Colourists who was not associated with Edinburgh, and who had no formal art training. Diverse and experimental, Hunter was always looking outwards and learning from his contemporaries; resulting in an impressive oeuvre which teaches us not just about Scottish life at the beginning of the twentieth century, but also of the intellectual and cultural interchange of artists across Europe.
"Everyone must choose his own way, and mine will be the way of colour" - George Leslie Hunter
Early Years
He was born on 7 August 1877, in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, the son of William Hunter, a Pharmacist, and his wife Jeannie. The family moved to California, a place where Leslie Hunter would spend a lot of his youth even staying on in San Francisco after his parents returned to Scotland in 1899. Largely self-taught, Hunter earned a precarious living in the city as an independent book and newspaper illustrator. As San Francisco was not a thriving artistic centre Hunter and a group of young artists based in the city travelled to Paris in the early 1900s, to experience the latest developments in European painting.
After a brief trip to Scotland Hunter returned to California at some point in 1905 and was offered a solo show at a gallery in San Francisco in 1906. This exhibition would presumably have showcased much of the work either painted in or inspired by his trip to Paris. Tragically, San Francisco was hit by a devastating earthquake the night before the exhibition was supposed to have opened, destroying the gallery and all of Hunter’s works in it.
This devastating loss of works may have inspired the dismayed artist to return permanently to Scotland, to live with his mother in Glasgow. Much of the artist’s work from this period was inspired by Dutch old masters, seen particularly in his lush still lives set against dark backgrounds. A contemporary critic noted of the artist ‘he has three or four examples of still life that are superlatively strong… they show a mastery of form and colour that takes one back to the triumphs of the Dutchmen.’
His work caught the attention of Alexander Reid of Reid and Lefevre Gallery, this was a crucial factor in launching Hunter’s career. Reid gave Hunter his first solo exhibition in 1916 at his gallery in Glasgow. The exhibition was a critical success and importantly, the association with Reid introduced Hunter to an influential group of patrons who were to support him for the next fifteen years.
A Continental Influence
This newfound financial security allowed Hunter to visit Europe. His trips to Italy, via Paris, in 1922 and 1923, mirrored the other Colourists’ visits to France in the preceding two decades. Hunter was looking for inspiration and suggestions of continental influence can be seen in his bolder and more experimental use of colour in the still life and landscape paintings of the mid 1920s.
In the early stages of his career, until the end of WW1, while the other three Colourists were regularly in Paris and creating some of their most innovative pictures, Hunter remained focussed on the work of seventeenth century Dutch masters, as well as the paintings of Chardin and Manet. He was committed to painting still-life compositions of flowers, fruit and glassware against dark backgrounds, and during his early visits to Paris, viewed Post-impressionist painting by artists such as Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse with horror.
In a telling note written to himself, Hunter encapsulates the direction his art was to follow in the second half of the 1920s...
"Seek harmony not contrast. Go from light to dark, not from dark to light. Your work is never light enough. The eye seeks refreshment in painting. Give it joy not mourning. Give everything a distinct outline. Avoid over finish – an impression is not so robust but that its first inspiration will be lost if we try to strengthen everything with detail."
Of all the Colourists Hunter was most various in his style, working in a broad range of media including oil, watercolour and ink. He exhibited with the other Colourists in the 1920s, but his reclusive tendencies and persistent mental and physical illnesses meant that he was somewhat remote from the group, and the wider artistic community. In all Hunter had an erratic and haphazard career marked by periods of utter penury.
After the War, however, Hunter developed a deeper understanding of Cezanne’s radical approach to painting and began exploring the same principles in his own work, moving away from naturalistic depictions and using different approaches to demonstrate the ‘weight’ of an object. From 1919, he experimented with his still-life paintings, creating balanced compositions with textural surfaces, and pale background colours highlighting the vibrancy and freshness of the fruit. Despite using cool colours alongside contrasting bold shades, he masterfully balances them into a coherent, harmonious artwork. Specific items appear repeatedly in these paintings.
By 1923-25, in paintings he was experimenting with different compositions, focussing on a darker background, with distinctively patterned curtains and a panelled door adding interest and texture to the backdrop and allowing him to create pattern across the entire surface of the painting. This allowed him to combine his developments inspired by Cezanne’s view of form with the flattened, design principles demonstrated by Matisse into his own vision and style of still-life painting.
Hunter was never satisfied with a particular style or approach for long and was always looking ahead, claiming "I cannot go back. It is impossible for an artist to retrace his steps. He must go forward." So he continued to develop his style, writing to Reid in 1928, "I am working in a thin fashion." This was a completely new approach for Hunter, which he developed following a period of working mostly on drawings. He used this thinned paint technique, with areas of exposed canvas, to create expressive still-life and landscape compositions, including Still-Life of Mixed Flowers (Sold for £22,500). For the most part, Hunter’s experiments in creating his own style and approach from the principles of European Post-Impressionist art were extremely successful creating lively, vibrant paintings. However, he did sometimes struggle to finish works and to negotiate a successful composition, this was not helped by recurring health problems and his unfortunate habit of attempting to ‘improve’ paintings after a night on the town.
During this period of committed artistic development in the 1920s, Hunter also exhibited for the first time with the artists now known as the Scottish Colourists, Peploe, Cadell and Fergusson: in Paris in 1924, London in 1925 and finally in 1931, again in Paris.
This charming still-life has an important provenance, having come from La Colombe d’Or. It is now a top-quality hotel and restaurant destination in Provence, where guests and visitors can enjoy its significant collection of twentieth-century art as they dine and relax. Yet in the late 1920s when Hunter frequented it, La Colombe d’Or was a humble inn, where an artist could rent a room and studio with board, for a reasonable price and including the relative luxury of regular hot water. These pleasant surroundings, home comforts and regular meals were exactly what the notoriously erratic Hunter needed to feel steady and allow himself to focus on the great inspiration he was finding in the South of France, a place of glorious vistas and sun-soaked days.
The proprietor of this institution was Paul Roux and with a particular interest in art and as an amateur painter himself, he often accepted paintings in lieu of payment from his artistic guests and residents. Many of these then struggling artists went on to be significant players in the story of twentieth century art – Picasso, Braque, Miro, Matisse and Alexander Calder, creating the basis of the art collection as it remains now. We can only imagine that Hunter handed this painting over on a similar basis, as we know the management of money was not his strong suit when faced with great artistic inspiration.
Hunter lived an erratic life, plagued by tragedy and struggle. He battled with physical and mental illness throughout his life and in a very bittersweet set of circumstances died relatively young, just as he felt his career was taking off, following the purchase of one of his paintings by the French State for their national collection. When informed of the sale, he reportedly claimed,
"I have been kicking at the door so long, and at last it is beginning to open."
Yet despite all of these setbacks his paintings remained full of joy, life and most importantly, colour.
