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
2024 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of Scotland’s greatest artists, John Duncan Fergusson. He was an exceptionally gifted man with an uncompromising vision of what it meant to be an artist: emotional truth was paramount. Free from the constraints of academic tradition or the conventions of bourgeois life, he was a man for whom his work was his manifesto and wide intellectual engagement was the basis for his art.
Born in Leith, Fergusson’s studies took him to Paris in the 1890s where he studied the Impressionists and attended the Académie Colarossi. He exhibited in London in 1905 and settled in Paris in 1907 working in a Fauvist style then later in a more Cubist manner. He had four works exhibited in Post-Impressionist and Futurist Exhibition in London in 1913. His first solo show in Scotland was in 1923 and was followed by an exhibition with the three other Scottish Colourists, Peploe, Cadell and Hunter. The Colourists were very important in furthering the influence of certain aspects of continental Modernism on Scottish Painting.
We have more available works by J.D. Fergusson. Please contact the Gallery if you would like to arrange an appointment to view. Furthermore, should you have any work you would be interested in selling please contact The Gallery.