Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell RSA RSW (British, 1883-1937)


'The Model – Peggy Macrae' signed and dated 'F.C.B. Cadell 1911.' (lower left)oil on canvas76.5 x 63.6 cm. (30 x 25 in.)
|Provenance C.E. (Ted) Stewart, Cadell's school friend, patron, agent and executor. Ted, a lawyer, became secretary of the Society of Eight on its formation in 1912. The Stewart family lived at Shambellie, Dumfriesshire.Thence by family descentThe present picture displays just how far Cadell's painting had developed on the Venice trip in 1910. While he would become known for creating a new 'sub-genre' in British art, featuring women more as fashion plate/motifs within a decorative room setting, here he depicts his subject with spontaneous vigour and gusto. Peggy, the sitter, responds and we sense her spirit and character leap from the canvas. The elegant attire, gilt highlights and neutral décor are merely incidental to Peggy herself as the subject.Edinburgh model Peggy Macrae sat for many of Peploe's best figure compositions from 1905, most notably A Girl in White (for many years the most expensive Scottish painting ever sold on the open market). She then modelled for Cadell circa 1911-1914, appearing in works such as The Model, Peggy in White, Creme de Menthe and Peggy in Black and Pink. Stanley Cursiter recalled her thus:"he had a new model...a charming, witty and attractive girl, who had the rare gift of complete grace which made her every movement interesting; she dropped naturally into poses which were balanced and harmonious and, better still, she immediately impersonated the figure she was asked to represent. She selected the artists for whom she sat with some discrimiation. One or two of the leading portrait painters persuaded her to pose for the costumes and accessories of their fashionable sitters-which she invariably did better than the originals. A few popular portraits owed their success more to the elegant model than the lady shown wearing the dress. One or two artists established reputations by painting Peggie (sic), spurred on by her helpful criticism and by tilting a hat or an eyelid at just the angle Peggie wore it. She is Eloquence and History in the two figures on the base of the Pittendrigh MacGillivray's monument of Gladstone in St Andrew Square, and, as she said, "everybody but the dog" in one of Charles Mackie's Venetian pictures. Peggie MacRae fitted perfectly into the new pale grey polished black and white sofa of Peploe's new setting, and she was the original of many of the figure pictures in pink, grey, and black, and the pale pictures in muted whites, that he painted at this time." (S Cursiter, Peploe, London, 1947, p. 17