Still Life with Jug and Grapes
- Artist: Samuel John Peploe (Artists)
- Date: 1920 - 1925
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Museum: The Courtauld Gallery
- Collection record: The Courtauld Gallery website
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About this artwork
This is the "Still Life with Jug and Grapes" by Samuel John Peploe. The piece hails from the 1920s, a time when Peploe was at the forefront of the Scottish Colourists, a group that brought a vibrant, almost daring, French Impressionist sensibility to Scottish art. He draws heavily from the palette and compositional clarity of Cézanne and the bold use of colour that Matisse pioneered, but he twists those influences into something unmistakably his own.
Notice how the jug, rendered in a warm ochre, anchors the canvas with its simple, almost sculptural form. The cluster of grapes, rendered in varying shades of green and purple, pops off the background with a luster that feels almost sculptural itself. Peploe doesn’t merely paint fruit; he deconstructs the fruit into geometric planes and lets colour dictate the mood. The canvas feels both balanced and dynamic; the straight lines of the jug contrast with the soft, rounded clusters of grapes, creating a subtle tension that keeps the eye moving across the surface.
All of this is executed in oil on canvas, allowing the pigments to build depth and texture. The result is a work that feels both rooted in early twentieth‑century experimentation and fresh in its reinterpretation of colour and structure.
See it in person
Still Life with Jug and Grapes hangs in The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House, London. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
