The Scottish Colourist Series: FCB Cadell

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art  (Edinburgh, United Kingdom) launches the first in an annual series of exhibitions devoted to the Scottish Colourists. The Scottish Colourist Series: FCB Cadell is first major retrospective of his work to be held in a public gallery in almost seventy years and brings together almost 80 paintings, from collections across the UK.

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883-1937) is one of the four artists popularly known as The Scottish Colourists, along with S. J. Peploe, J. D. Fergusson and G. L. Hunter. Cadell's work is perhaps the most elegant of the four: he is renowned for his stylish portrayals of Edinburgh New Town interiors and the sophisticated society that occupied them; equally celebrated are his vibrantly coloured, daringly simplified still-lives of the 1920s, and his evocative landscapes of the island of Iona.

Cadell, who was born and grew up in Edinburgh, revelled in the northern light of the Scottish capital, the beauty of its architecture and the elegance of its inhabitants, making them the subject matter of his art.

He developed a palette based on white, cream and black enlivened with highlights of bold colour, and applied with feathery, impressionist brushstrokes. Depictions of his studio and fashionable women within them, reveal an interest in Manet, Whistler, Lavery and Sargent, as can be seen in works such as The White Room, 1915, Interior:130 George St, c.1915 and The Mantelpiece in Summer, c.1914.

Date: until March 18.
Location: Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh. United Kingdom.
Opening hours: from Monday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm.

See some of Cadell's works in the following slideshow: