Clotilde Peploe (1915-1997)

Clotilde (Cloclo) Peploe was born in 1915, the daughter of Christopher Brewster, an American born in Austria, and Elizabeth von Hildebrand, also a painter born in Florence.

During the 1930's Clotilde and her mother spent long months painting together in southern Italy, and later in Corfu and on mainland Greece.  At the same time she became romantically attached to Willy Peploe, son of the Scottish artist, S.J. Peploe, whom she married in Athens in November 1939.

During the war and post-war period the Peploes lived in Cyprus, Kenya, then Florence, before settling in London in 1948, where Willy began working as an art dealer and subsequently became director of Lefevre Gallery. It was not until the mid-50's that Clotilde slowly returned to painting, mostly in remote Mediterranean locations such as Ponza, Crete, the Cyclades or Calabria.

Throughout these years she remained strangely reluctant to exhibit or part with her work except to close friends - although she was finally persuaded to do so on four occasions in London at the New Grafton Gallery in 1971, 1973, 1978 and 1982.