GEORGE LESLIE HUNTER (SCOTTISH 1877-1931) ◆
APRES LE BAIN (THE BATHERS, JUAN-LES-PINS)
£67,700
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Session | 7th December 2023 at 18:00
Description
Signed, oil on canvas
Dimensions
44cm x 54.5cm (17.5in x 21.5in)
Provenance
Provenance:
Alex. Reid & Lefevre, Glasgow
Pearson & Westergaard Ltd, Glasgow
Ion R. Harrison Esq., Glasgow and by descent to the present owner
Exhibited:
Alex. Reid & Lefevre, Three Scottish Painters: S. J. Peploe, Leslie Hunter, F. C. B. Cadell, London, January 1939, no.2
Glasgow Art Gallery, Leslie Hunter, May 1942, no.72
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, Leslie Hunter 1877-1931, June 1942, no.112
McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, Pictures from a Private Collection, 2- 27 March 1951, no.71
Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scottish Painting, 5 October - 30 November 1961, no.167
Scottish Arts Council Gallery, Glasgow, Three Scottish Colourists: Cadell, Hunter, Peploe, 9 May - 6 June 1970 and tour, no.49
Literature:
T. J. Honeyman, Introducing Leslie Hunter, Faber and Faber Ltd, London,1937, p.148, pl.36 (as 'Juan-les-Pins')
Derek Ogston, Leslie Hunter: Paintings and Drawings of France and Italy, Baillieknowe Publishing, Kelso, 2004, listed p.88 (as 'The Bathers, Juan-les-Pins (Après le Bain)')
Bill Smith and Jill Marriner, Leslie Hunter Revisited: The Life and Art of Leslie Hunter, Atelier Books, Edinburgh, 2012, p.150, fig.132 (as 'Après le Bain (The Bathers, Juan-les-Pins)' and dated 1928)
Footnote
Note: Dated to 1928 by Bill Smith and Jill Marriner (op.cit.)
Between 1927 and 1929 Hunter spent extensive periods in the south of France, principally from a base in St-Paul-de-Vence. He worked in various locations, including Antibes, Cassis, Nice, Saint Tropez and Juan-les-Pins, as featured in Après le Bain (The Bathers, Juan-les-Pins). Hunter enjoyed the region immensely, writing ‘This is an ideal country to loaf in and I wish I could simply loaf around and enjoy the sunshine and the cooking as most of the people around here do.’ (T. J. Honeyman papers, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh ACC97872/25/6/3, quoted by Derek Ogston, op.cit., p. 42)
Whilst there, Hunter created many works on paper, using pen and ink, coloured chalk and pastel; the present painting is a rare example of a fully-realised south of France oil. In a letter of September 1927 to his dealer, Alexander Reid, Hunter wrote from St-Paul: ‘Of course, my paintings are the main thing. I may stay down here another month or two and thereby take your advice to finish everything before returning…I know the coast now between Monte Carlo and Cassis and have made about a hundred drawings in colour…Have worn a straw hat every day since I landed here.’ (quoted in T. J. Honeyman, op.cit., pp.121-22)
In Après le Bain (The Bathers, Juan-les-Pins), Hunter celebrated the bright Mediterranean sunshine which creates a contrast between dazzling warmth and deep shadow, the verdant trees and shrubbery by which sun-baked architecture is accompanied and the leisurely lifestyle in which seabathers stroll together through parks.
The painting was acquired by the Glasgow ship-owner Ion Harrison, who became one of Hunter’s most important patrons and who amassed one of the most significant collections of his work and that of his fellow Scottish Colourists, Cadell and Peploe. In 1950 Harrison recalled: ‘Leslie Hunter was the first of the three whom I got to know personally. He was already a friend of my two partners, the late Mr William McInnes and Mr William McNair and I must have met Hunter through them when I returned to business after the 1914-18 War, in the Autumn of 1919. He was a frequent visitor to the office when he was in Glasgow.’ (Ion Harrison, ‘As I Remember Them’ in T. J. Honeyman, Three Scottish Colourists, Faber and Faber Ltd, London, 1950, p.121).
Harrison continued: ‘Hunter always maintained that he was not painting for today but for fifty years hence and that although his pictures might look garish today in fifty years they would have mellowed and become beautiful in tone. Having lived twenty-five years with several of them I find that Hunter’s prophecy is coming true.’ (op.cit., p.126)