2024 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Duncan Fergusson in Leith, near Edinburgh. He is arguably best known as one of the four ‘Scottish Colourists’, along with F. C. B. Cadell, G. L. Hunter and S. J. Peploe, who are revered as the masters of modern Scottish art.
SCOTTISH PAINTINGS & SCULPTURE
A Scottish Colourist at 150: John Duncan Fergusson
13 May 2024
Nick Curnow
Watch | A Scottish Colourist at 150
Join specialists Nick Curnow and Alice Strang as they discuss the life and works of the Scottish Colourist John Duncan Fergusson, marking the 150th anniversary of the artist's birth.
Fergusson has the most international reputation of the group, not least due to key periods spent living in Paris before World War One and during the 1930s, as well as in London between 1914 and 1929. He had three solo exhibitions in America during the 1920s.
Fergusson was the only sculptor amongst the Colourists and made and exhibited sculptures for over 35 years. His practice also embraced the performing arts, with designs for costumes and theatre sets for the productions of his eventual wife, the dance pioneer Margaret Morris. As the longest-lived of the quartet, Fergusson also played an important role in the Scottish art world after World War Two, from a base in Glasgow.
TORSE DE FEMME (TORSO OF A WOMAN) 1918 (CAST 1991)
Torse de Femme embodies key themes in Fergusson’s sculptural practice, namely the appreciation of an idealised, cropped female form and a sleek modernism, based on curves and planes, with particular attention paid to the breasts, bottom and the base of the spine. It pays testament to the sculptors with whose work he would have been familiar in pre-war Paris, such as Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Archipenko and Jacob Epstein. Its angularity also speaks to Vorticism, whose members Wyndham Lewis, Christopher Nevinson and Edward Wadsworth Fergusson knew through the Margaret Morris Club that Morris ran alongside her dance school and theatre in London.
Numbered 10/10, bronze with green patina
£6,000 - £8,000 + fees
Fergusson has a special significance for Lyon & Turnbull, not least because his first studio was at 16 Picardy Place in Edinburgh, four minutes’ walk from our New Town saleroom. Furthermore, our Associate Director, Alice Strang, curated the 2013-14 National Galleries of Scotland touring retrospective of his work and edited the accompanying publication. Lyon & Turnbull celebrated this milestone year with a touring exhibition of Fergusson’s paintings and sculpture, in partnership with the Fleming Collection and held in our London and Glasgow galleries this Spring. Culture Perth & Kinross, the custodians of the single most important public collection of Fergusson’s work, has also recently opened a new space dedicated to his achievements and those of Morris, in Perth Art Gallery.
ROSE IN THE HAIR, 1908
Rose in the Hair of 1908 is a tour de force example of how Fergusson’s practice flourished in the context of the very birth of modern art, following his move from Edinburgh to Paris. Indeed, his reputation is based on the seven years he spent in the French capital between 1907 and 1913, where he occupied a unique position amongst British artists within the avant-garde art scene.
Signed, titled, inscribed and dated verso, oil on board
£100,000 - £150,000
We are delighted to continue the celebration of this remarkable artist by offering the following group of works on paper, including drawings, watercolours and one of Fergusson’s sketchbooks, to the market; selected paintings and sculptures follow in the Evening Sale.
BOULEVARD EDGAR QUINET
Boulevard Edgar Quinet comes from of a series of vibrant Parisian street scenes which Fergusson began shortly after arriving in the French capital. His excitement about his new surroundings is clear, as he revelled in the depiction of the city’s architecture and citizens. His brushwork became bolder and his palette brighter in deftly captured scenes of daily life.
Signed, inscribed and dated ‘Paris 1909’ verso, oil on board
£40,000 - £60,000 + fees
Fergusson was an inveterate sketcher and skilled draughtsman. He gained immense pleasure from drawing café clientele, Morris’s pupils and other subjects, indoors and en plein air. As seen in the following lots, his sitters ranged from female nudes and dancers, to beautiful women captured wearing attractive hats and socialising. The addition of watercolour brought colour and brushstrokes into play, whilst the fully realised The Plage and Cliffs, Pourville brings a touch of Art Deco to a cliffside scene.
THE PLAGE AND CLIFFS, POURVILLE
The entry for this work in the 1961 exhibition catalogue states that it is 'signed, dated and inscribed on reverse 'J. D. Fergusson 1926 "The plage and cliffs'". An inscription to label verso also suggests a date of 1926.
Charcoal and watercolour
£4,000 - £6,000 + fees
We are grateful to Amy Waugh, Culture Perth & Kinross, for her help with our research.
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