While most celebrated for his still life pictures, Peploe’s figurative work can be seen as an important and informative chapter within his artistic career. Heavily inspired by French Impressionists and Dutch Old Masters including Manet, Rembrandt and Hals, the artist’s early paintings consisted of a dark, restricted colour palette painted with loose and minimal brushstrokes. The development of colour began in 1905, when Peploe moved to 32 York Place in Edinburgh. This large and bright new studio space influenced Peploe almost immediately, and he began painting on both a larger scale and employing lighter colours into his work. Taking influence from Whistler’s series of works Symphony in White, Peploe’s own ‘white period’ of painting allowed the artist to experiment further with colours and the figure as form. During this time, he created a series of interior scenes featuring female sitters using lush impasto paint primarily in whites, pinks and greys. Rather than acting as a formal portrait that captured the personality of the sitter, these works focussed primarily upon the shapes formed amongst the wider composition. Later influence from the Fauvist movement saw Peploe turn to a thinner application of paint with an intense injection of colour, securing the artist’s name in the Scottish Colourist group alongside J.D. Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter and F.C.B. Cadell.

In the present work Model Resting, an unidentified model poses serenely on a chair, dominating the canvas. As with Peploe’s earlier figurative studies, her representation can be seen as secondary to the composition and colours used. Features are merely suggested with limited, soft line and layers of colour, including rosy-pink cheeks and lips and shadows of light blue, which are echoed across the sitter’s dress. She, like the objects surrounding her are outlined with defined gestural brushstrokes, something which Peploe employed more heavily after his return from Paris in 1912. While many of Peploe’s figures are painted in a state of repose, this use of line suggests that the artist has carefully deliberated the composition of the painting at each stage: working and re-working the scene in a similar vein to his pure still life scenes. The exact execution date of Model Resting is unknown though the same dress appears in the artist’s 1923 oil, Girl in White.