| George Leslie Hunter | |
|---|---|
The Beach, Largo, at Low Tide, date unknown, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums |
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| Born | 7 August 1877 Rothesay, Isle of Bute |
| Died | 6 December 1931 Glasgow, Scotland |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Field | Painter |
| Movement | Impressionism |
| Patrons | T.J. Honeyman, Alexander Reid |
George Leslie Hunter (7 August 1877 – 6 December 1931), commonly just called Leslie Hunter, was a self-taught Scottish painter and one of the artists of the Scottish Colourists school of painting.[1][2] He spent much of his early life in California, USA, but returned later to Scotland and traveled widely in Europe, especially in the South of France. Hunter painted a variety of still-lifes, landscapes and portraits in his life, and his paintings are critically acclaimed for their treatment of light and the effects of light.[3] They were highly popular during his lifetime and have continued to command high prices since his death, and remain among the most popular in Scotland.[3]
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Hunter was born in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute in 1877 but, when he was 13, his family emigrated to California.[4] There he lacked exposure to the sort of art that influenced his contemporaries in the Scottish Colourists movement, such as John Duncan Fergusson or Samuel John Peploe, and began making a living primarily as a magazine illustrator.[1] In 1902, Hunter became part of a group of artists that included Maynard Dixon and Arthur Putnam. They desired independence from the hierarchies of the establishment art world and, together, they formed the California Society of Arts as an alternative to the conservative San Francisco Art Association.[5]
In 1904, Hunter made a visit to Paris where he was inspired by the numerous artistic attractions there to take up oil painting.[6][7] When he returned to San Francisco in 1905, he began preparing for his first solo exhibition, which was to be held the following year. However, Hunter's early work was destroyed in the fire that followed the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he returned to Scotland shortly afterwards, settling in Glasgow.[8] Initially he continued to make his living there primarily as an illustrator. What painting he did was dominated by still-lifes on black backgrounds, influenced by the Dutch style.[7]
Hunter only began to achieve fame after a trip to Étaples in northern France in 1914. Here, inspired by French art and the local landscape, he began to develop the style and ability that would later identify him as a colourist.[9] However, the onset of the First World War forced him to return to Scotland, where his work became noticed by Alexander Reid of Reid & Lefevre.[6][7] In 1915, Hunter held his first one-man exhibition with Reid in Glasgow.[10] Hunter's work at this stage of his career focused primarily on still-lifes, inspired by Chardin, Kalf and Manet.[6] During the 1920s, Hunter began to be associated with a group of three other artists: John Duncan Fergusson, F. C. B. Cadell, and Samuel Peploe. The four of them became known as the Scottish Colourists, although the term was not used until 1948, by which time only Fergusson was still alive.[3]
In 1922, Hunter began to make a series of trips to mainland Europe, where he visited Paris, Venice, Florence and the Riviera. Fergusson accompanied him on a number of these visits.[4] Hunter's visits abroad produced a large number of paintings and his style changed noticeably in this period of European travel as he began using dabs of colour placed instinctively to portray underlying form.[11]
When Hunter returned from his first series of trips abroad, in 1922, he settled in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland and, between 1924 and 1927, he remained in Scotland, dividing his time between Fife and Glasgow.[11] His paintings from this period include a number inspired by views of Loch Lomond, and these landscapes increasingly took inspiration from the work of Cézanne to create colourful and atmospheric compositions.[1][10][11] In 1925, Hunter's work was displayed at an exhibition in Leicester Square in London, along with works by Peploe, Cadell and Fergusson. Walter Sickert, in his introduction to the exhibition, wrote that "Hunter uses the refractory ... to inspired ends on normal and traditional lines".[12]
Hunter traveled again to the South of France on a number of occasions between 1927 and 1929, and based himself at St Paul de Vence. He sent paintings back to Reid to be exhibited in Glasgow and London, but he spent a great deal of time sketching and his output of finished oil paintings was low. One exhibition in London had to be postponed due to a lack of paintings.[11] The France trips culminated in 1929 with a critically acclaimed exhibition at the Feragil Galleries in New York.[13]
However, shortly after returning to the French Riviera in 1929, Hunter suffered a severe breakdown, forcing his sister to bring him home to Scotland in September. He recovered, and began to paint a number of portraits of his friends, including one of Dr Tom Honeyman, the Director of the Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum from 1939 until 1954.[11][14] Honeyman, at the time an art dealer, had assisted Hunter in developing his career, and painting the portrait may have been a gesture of thanks.[15]
In 1930 he embarked upon a series of drawings and watercolours of Hyde Park, which were due to be exhibited in London. Hunter hoped to move to the city permanently, as he found it livelier than Glasgow and the art market was more secure.[1][13] However, his health deteriorated and he began to suffer badly from stomach pains.[13] He died in Glasgow in 1931, aged 54, following an unsuccessful operation.[1][4] A member of Glasgow Art Club, work by Hunter was included in the club's Memorial Exhibition of 1935, in memory of those of its members who had died since the First World War.[16]
Hunter's paintings were popular with critics during his lifetime, and he had successful exhibitions in Glasgow, London and New York.[7] Shortly before his death, the Glasgow Herald commented that while Hunter was already "well known as a painter of landscape and still-life," his move to portrait painting would "cause a good deal of interest and discussion."[17]
Many years after his death, solo exhibitions of Hunter's paintings were still held and, in 1953, the display of a selection of watercolours and paintings in Glasgow attracted numerous visitors. The art critic of the Glasgow Herald described the "varied and uneven genius" of the painter, and praised one painting as having been executed with "such a freedom and economy of touch one cannot well see how any amount of extra thought or technical application could have bettered it."[18]
Paintings by Hunter have gone on to sell for large sums in the early 21st century, with one painting described as the "star lot" in a Bonhams auction in June 2010 selling for £144,000.[19] Another painting was sold in June 2010 for £78,000. Nick Curnow, head of pictures at Lyon & Turnbull, said of it "This is a very special painting, so typical of Hunter."[20]
Hunter focused for much of his life on landscapes and on still-lifes, working in both pen and ink and oil on canvas. His still-lifes of fruit are particularly distinctive, but he also painted a variety of landscapes, especially of Scotland and France. In his earlier paintings, Hunter was influenced by Cézanne to produce domestic landscapes. Later, however, in common with the other members of the Scottish colourists movement, he was heavily influenced by contemporary French artists like Monet and Matisse, and his paintings began to make bolder and more energetic use of colour.[1]
Hunter particularly strove to capture in his paintings the effects of light, and would repeatedly paint the same objects or locations under a range of lighting conditions.[14] His brush style was influenced by the French avant garde and, especially in his later work, is described by art critics as '"open and free" and "energetic".[15][21]