When Anne Redpath was elected a full member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1952, she became the first woman painter to be admitted to the rank in the institution’s 126-year history. The election marked the moment at which a painter long admired within Edinburgh became a national figure. Her reputation was built on such still lifes as the present, unconventional and colourful compositions that reveal the impact of Matisse upon her work, and in turn her influence on future generations of painters.

The arrangement is set on the high tipped-up plane upon which rest a teapot of pale duck-egg blue; a white-and-pink footed bowl, catching a flat wash of light; a small cup and saucer painted with crimson rosebuds and to the left edge, a vase of colourful garden flowers with a patterned lace sitting at its base. A characteristically cool palette of greys, greens and mauves applied broadly forms the grounding of the work.

Redpath’s father, Thomas Brown Redpath, was a tweed pattern weaver in Galashiels, and she saw a connection between his use of colour and her own. Her remark, ‘I do with a spot of red or yellow in a harmony of grey what my father did in his tweed’ aptly applies to the present work and its colour harmonies. Redpath was fully aware of the revolutionary work of Matisse and Bonnard in France and their liberation of colour and form. She lived in the country through the 1920s following her marriage to the architect James Michie, first living near Calais before they moved to the south of France. While she painted during her time in France, it was limited by family life and raising three sons. She returned to Scotland in 1934 at which point she was able to commit fully to painting, her work revealing the lessons learned from her exposure to post-Impressionism while in France.

Among the painters with whom she formed a loose grouping later called the Edinburgh School, William Gillies, Sir William MacTaggart, John Maxwell and William Crozier, Redpath was the leading practitioner of still life. Gillies preferred the landscape, MacTaggart the figure, Maxwell the symbolist interior, yet they all shared a prevalence for bold colour and in this regard have been considered the heirs of the Scottish Colourists. Comparable still-lifes are held in the Fleming Collection, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, who held a retrospective of her work in 1996, acknowledging her significant contribution to 20th century Scottish art.