FCB Cadell, JD Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter, SJ Peploe, Margaret Morris, Arthur Melville, John Lavery, Eric Robertson, Bessie MacNicol, Robert Brough, Estelle Rice, Augustus John, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert, Harold Gilman, Spencer Gore, Charles Ginner, Andre Derain, James Dickinson Ines, Jessica Dismorr, Vanessa Bell, Ethel Wright, Percy Wyndham Lewis, Lucien Pissarro, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Roderic O’Conor.

The story begins with the friendship between SJ Peploe and JD Fergusson, who met in their mid-twenties, around 1900. They made regular summer visits to France sharing enthusiasms for groundbreaking artists, John Singer Sargent, Edouard Manet, and Claude Monet, as well as American painter, James McNeill Whistler.

Influenced by these bold artistic movements across the channel, JD Fergusson and SJ Peploe began infusing bolder colours into their work. An intense period of experimentation saw Peploe and Fergusson abandon the rules of realistic painting in favour of two-dimensional planes of pure colour.

In October 1910, Roger Fry arranged an exhibition of artwork taking France by storm - works by late, great artists, scarcely seen in England before. In 1912, Fry organised the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition, including revolutionary work by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Fry’s choice of English artists, which included himself, was largely drawn from his inner circle, now known as the Bloomsbury set.

Founded by JD Fergusson, the Rhythm Group was an Anglo-American band of artists and creatives inspired by the Fauve movement. In addition to the two Scots, the principal artists were four women: Anne Estelle Rice, Jessica Dismorr, Georges Banks and Ethel Wright.

The Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition of 1912 included 15 works by Pablo Picasso which effectively plotted the emergence and development of Cubism. Many artists including Fauves would go on to experiment with Cubism which in turn fed into the emergence of Vorticism, as found in this rare work by Scottish Vorticist, Eric Robertson.

During the war, SJ Peploe created a sequence of assured still lifes, JD Fergusson slowed production, and FCB Cadell created hard-edged interiors in powerful colours. Leslie Hunter exhibited his work for the first time just before the war and by 1919 he found his true path as a Colourist.

The Colourists’s 1925 group show at the Leicester Gallery in London proved to be a significant breakthrough that came to define their careers. The following years produced a stream of exhibitions in Paris, London, and Scotland.