Portland Gallery are delighted to be exhibiting 15 works by the Scottish Colourist J. D. Fergusson this November. Fergusson is considered as one of the most progressive and experimental of the four artists who became known as the ‘Scottish Colourists’. The works in the exhibition date from 1902 to the mid-1930s and mainly comprise of portraits and landscapes and show various stages in Fergusson’s career.

The earliest work in the exhibition is a portrait of Jean Maconochie, on loan from The Fleming Collection. It shows the influence of Manet and Whistler in Fergusson’s work of this period.

Regular trips to France, shortly after the portrait of Jean was executed, changed the direction of Fergusson’s art and two panels executed en plein air in Paris Plage around 1904 display a more fluid application of paint and a lightening of Fergusson’s palette.

Another oil painting, executed whilst Fergusson was travelling alongside S. J. Peploe in Saintonge in 1910, shows another departure for the artist, Fergusson by now was fairly well acquainted with the Fauves and other post-impressionists and was starting to fully absorb their advances.

Fergusson was a great lady’s man, and unlike the other Colourists, painted nudes throughout his life. His greatest muse was his partner Margaret Morris, the famous dancer and choreographer, and the exhibition at Portland Gallery features a stunning painting of Meg in the South of France, ‘Nude and Cliff’, which was exhibited in a ground breaking exhibition in New York that in 1928 which helped establish Fergusson’s name in the United States.

With the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s Fergusson exhibition opening in December, we hope there will be an increased awareness of the importance of this artist, not only in the canon of Modern British Art but in Modernism generally.

Portland Gallery
8 Bennet Street
London SW1A 1RP United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 74931888
art@portlandgallery.com
www.portlandgallery.com

Opening hours
Monday - Friday
From 10am to 6pm

Related images

  1. J. D. Fergusson, Paris Plage
  2. J. D. Fergusson, Looking over Killiecrankie
  3. J. D. Fergusson, Cassis
  4. J. D. Fergusson, Dark Woman
  5. J. D. Fergusson, Nude and Cliff
  6. J. D. Fergusson, Jean Maconochie