Lot 158
Estimate: £15,000 - £20,000
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale | Lots 103-196 | Thursday 05 December from 6pm
Hand-coloured plaster
19cm (h) x 9cm (w) x 7cm (d) (7.5in x 3.5in x 2.75in)
Acquired from the Artist and thence by descent to the present owner
John Duncan Fergusson is the only one of the four artists known as the Scottish Colourists – along with F. C. B. Cadell, G. L. Hunter and S. J. Peploe – to have worked in three dimensions. Indeed, he made sculpture over some 50 years, with his first created in Paris in 1908 and the last thought to date from about 1955. As Alice Strang has explained: ‘Experiments in terracotta in 1909 and clay in 1913, led to direct carving in stone outdoors during World War One. Carving wood and plaster, which he sometimes cast and coloured, followed. Works were cast in brass and bronze as funds permitted.’ (Alice Strang et al, J. D. Fergusson, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 2013, p.21). The importance of this aspect of Fergusson’s oeuvre is clear in the inclusion of sculptures in many of his exhibitions between 1912 and 1948.
Seated Figure and Standing Nude show how Fergusson brought many of the artistic aims explored in his paintings and works in paper to fruition ‘in the round’. Both focus on the female form, celebrating sensuality, fecundity and physical confidence. Particular attention is paid to the breasts, bottom and the base of the spine. They also reveal Fergusson’s particular blending of voluptuousness with a simplification and clarity of form, that emphasises the point at which parts of the body join and which creates a sense of flow towards and outwards from those points of contact.
It is no surprise that Fergusson’s most productive period of sculpture making were the years approximately 1918 to 1922, when he was based in London and when – as Sheila McGregor has pointed out – there was a parallel development in Margaret Morris Movement, the system of choreography devised by his future wife. Morris and her pupils, whether sitting as models or in motion during lessons, rehearsals and performances, provided a rich source of inspiration for Fergusson.
Standing Figure is an example of the painted plaster casts that Fergusson exhibited with the explanation that they could be cast in a foundry on purchase. The cropped female form is a key theme in his sculptural practice, presumed to reference fragmentary classical sculptures as well as contributing to his concept of a universal rather than personal embodiment of female physicality. Seated Figure has a sense of majestic stillness, albeit on an intimate scale. It embodies Fergusson’s interest in non-Western sculpture and his Parisian sketchbooks contain many drawings made of Cambodian and Indian sculpture which he studied in the Trocadéro Museum. It was cast in a numbered edition of nine plus one artist’s proof, with permission from the John Duncan Fergusson Art Foundation, in 2013.
The most significant holding of Fergusson’s sculpture is held by Culture Perth & Kinross, which is the centre of excellence for his and Morris’s work. Other important examples are held in public collections including the Tate, The Hunterian (University of Glasgow), Government Art Collection and the National Galleries of Scotland.