North Berwick

North Berwick from 1903 depicts the East Lothian coastal town on the Firth of Forth — a subject from Peploe's home territory as a Scottish painter, in contrast to the remote Hebridean islands he was also visiting. North Berwick's beach, with its distinctive volcanic rock formations and views across to the Bass Rock, was a familiar landscape for Edinburgh painters, and Peploe's treatment of it in 1903 places his developing Colourist sensibility in dialogue with a local subject well-known to his audience. The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art holds this alongside his more exotic island subjects from the same year.

Peploe renders the North Berwick coast with a directness and tonal boldness that distinguishes his work from his Hague School-influenced Scottish contemporaries. His handling of the beach and sea uses broad, simplified passages of color. The volcanic rock formations are treated with particular attention — their dark mass providing compositional structure against the lighter sky and sea.