The Red Coat

Francis Cadell was the most stylish of the Scottish Colourists. His best-known pictures show elegant Edinburgh New Town drawing rooms, a woman in a large hat, a mirror, a vase of flowers, painted in flat, confident planes of bold colour against pale walls. He also painted the white sands and green sea of the island of Iona, which he first visited in 1912. Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell was born in Edinburgh in 1883 and went to Paris at 16 to study at the Académie Julian, where the work of Matisse and the Fauves made a strong impression. Success came slowly, and for years he sold mainly privately, supported by the Glasgow dealer Alexander Reid. He died in Edinburgh in 1937. His reputation has grown steadily since, and he now ranks among the leading Scottish painters of the 20th century. 30 Regent Terrace is one of his Edinburgh interiors, and Carnations and Cassis show his still lifes and his work in the south of France.