FCB Cadell: The Blue Fan

The Blue Fan is a gun-tufted rug created in celebration of Dovecot’s 2025 exhibition: The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives.  It is an interpretation of Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell’s 1922 painting, The Blue Fan (National Galleries Scotland).

Cadell was a member of the Scottish Colourists, a group of artists in the early 20th century whose bold use of colour was inspired by the Modernist art movements coming out of France.  The group of four, which also included John Duncan Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter, and Samuel John Peploe would later become one of the most celebrated in Scottish art history.  The Blue Fan is characteristic of Cadell’s work after the First World War.  He used bright, vivid colours in a colour-blocking technique that disregard shadows and shading.  It portrays a still-life of a fan, a bowl, and pitcher on a table, with a red chair and china bowl in the background.

The rug was created by Dovecot’s current apprentice, Sophie McCaffrey as part of a three-year weaving and tufting apprenticeship at Dovecot Studios.  In order to replicate Cadell’s vibrant colours, McCaffrey completed a close study of the original painting, and blended yarns together, much like Cadell would blend his oil paint.