Sometimes you just don't like a painting, no matter how "great" it is. It just isn't doing it for you. That's how one Scottish woman felt in the early 1960s, when her husband came home with a painting of roses. This was no surprise gift: the woman explicitly requested a painting of roses, and here it was. Blue background, pink petals, green leaves. You can see why her husband thought it would do the trick. But the woman, unimpressed, presumably muttered the Scottish word for "meh," and ordered the painting into a spare room.
Let this be a lesson to those who are easily dismissive of gifts. The BBC reports that the painting in question was recently identified as "Pink Roses," an original oil work by one of Scotland's most influential artists, Samuel Peploe.
McTear's Auctioneers in Glasgow identified the Peploe, which it values at £300,000, and plans to auction later this month. The price the obedient husband originally paid? "Not significant enough to remember," according to the unnamed seller, who is the couple's son.
In a bit of dramatic timing, the auction that marks Peploe's insignificance in one household falls a week before a major retrospective of the painter's legacy begins not even 50 miles away. "SJ Peploe," an exhibit launching Nov. 3 at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, explores the painter's legacy as leader of the modernist Scottish Colorist movement. In the exuberant blurb on the museum's site, no superlatives are spared in describing Peploe's work, in particular his still lifes: "roses, tulips and coffee pots, placed in an infinite variety of combinations and lovingly painted in his studio."
What do you think of the family that panned the Peploe getting the profits, readers? Is there any fairness in love and mistaken art finds?
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