This year 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.
We pay tribute to the artist and his legacy, by presenting a group of Fergusson’s paintings, drawings and sculpture. The core collection of drawings are previously unseen works which are typically economical, direct and true to the moment; free from affectation – they are the exercise of the artist’s instinct and overriding interest in form, character and joie de vivre. There are several bronze sculptures and a rare group of hand-painted plaster studies.
