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J.D. Fergusson (1874 – 1961) was a painter of exceptional talents, always true to his artisitic ideals and with an uncompromising vision of what it meant to be an artist. He had an energetic and engaging presence as detailed by one who knew him, “Fergus was both glamorous and benevolent, more like a distinguished actor than a painter.” (Eileen Cassavetti, quoted by The Fergusson Gallery in J.D. Fergusson: Hats and Headgear, Perth, 2013)
He showed with The Scottish Gallery in 1923 exhibiting his ‘Highland’ works completed the year before as well as some sculpture work – a practise he was most naturally talented in but never made a more significant part of his portfolio, thus only a handful of three-dimensional work exists. The December 2013 exhibition featured a fantastic selection from across the artist’s ouvre from the charming character sketches Fergusson practised throughout his career to the opulent oil paintings – including two of the aforementioned ‘Highland’ works – he is most famous for as one of the four Scottish Colourists.
[Fergusson] is a poet with an acute sense for the discipline of form. He has an instinct for the rhythm which makes sense out of a picture just as it informs the shape and meaning of a dance. His pictures and his sculptures seem to move with a musical rhythm. Robins Millar, Glasgow Evening Citizen, May 5th 1948
Born in Leith in Edinburgh, J.D. Fergusson’s studies took him to Paris in the 1890s where he attended the Académie Colarossi and made broad connections in avant-garde life. He exhibited in London in 1905 and finally settled in Paris in 1907 where he experimented with Fauvist and Cubist styles, became a Sociétaire of the Salon d’Automne and acquaintance of many of the leading figures in the movement, including Picasso and Braque. He had four works exhibited in Post-Impressionist and Futurist Exhibition in London, 1913. He lived between France and Britain, eventually settling in Glasgow with his life partner and the pioneering dancer Margaret Morris.
Everyone in Scotland should refuse to have anything to do with black or dirty and dingy colour, and insist on clean colours in everything. I remember when I was young any colour was considered a sign of vulgarity. Greys and blacks were the only colours for people of taste and refinement. Good pictures had to be black, grey, brown or drab. Well! Let’s forget it, and insist on things in Scotland being of colour that makes for and associates itself with light, hopefulness, health and happiness. J.D. Fergusson, Modern Scottish Painting, 1943
J. D. Fergusson & The Scottish Gallery
J.D. Fergusson exhibited with The Scottish Gallery in 1923. The exhibition included both small-scale sculpture he had produced over the preceding few years and his Highland series of oil paintings, which represented the artist’s engagement with his native landscape and culture. Twenty years before, he had been one of the purchasers of work from his friend S.J. Peploe’s first exhibition with The Gallery, but in the intervening years he had looked to London and then Paris for his commercial and spiritual existence. It would only be after his second flight from the continent, in the face of WWII, that Scotland would take the central place in his work and thoughts. Fergusson was a paragon of the bohemian life and one of the major contributors to British modernism – uncompromising, Modernist and brilliant. A Memorial exhibition was held for Fergusson at The Scottish Gallery in 1961, and numerous exhibitions have been held since.
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