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J.D. Fergusson did not consider himself a landscape painter, indeed professional accomplishments and acknowledgements were infra dignitatem. In his maturity as a painter the outdoors became a space in which issues of design were reconciled and themes were developed. Les Eus and Rhythm are set in versions of Eden, outdoor places of health and freedom influenced by German Lebensreform ideas. His series of Scottish landscape paintings made in the early 1920s were a reengagement with his Celtic origins, but were still rigourously composed in Cubist[1]influenced style. His earliest works in oil paint however are of the landscape, chiefly in small scale, made en plein air using a Pochade painting box. He painted these low toned studies in Edinburgh, Fife, on on trips to Islay, and then after 1900 on his many visits to Northern France, sometimes with his friend S.J. Peploe. The exact location of this panel is uncertain from the inscription but is likely to be in the Commune of Gaye in north eastern France, (here misspelled, not entirely untypically by Fergusson as Gaie in his inscription on the verso.) He deploys his favoured creamy oil vehicle, working quickly in an impressionist style incorporating the figure as well as buildings but for colour and space he respects the information in front of him. Guy Peploe
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