John Duncan Fergusson 1874-1961

On Juan Plage depicts Fergusson’s beautiful and athletic partner Margaret (Meg) Morris, against a background of a lush Mediterranean paradise with the trappings of an elegant modern holiday; beach-huts, sun-shades and a sail-boat. It is likely that the present picture was based upon sketches made in 1922 when Fergusson and Meg were staying at the Villa Grotte at Juan-les-Pins as the guests of Fergusson's patron and friend George Davison, the eccentric retired businessman who made his fortune as a manager for Kodak. The exact location of the painting may have been the private beach owned by Davidson at his idyllic Chateau des Enfants at Antibes which became Fergusson and Meg's summer retreat for many years. Fergusson had found the house for Davidson when he was seeking a place in the sun in 1920. The chateau had been little more than a ruin among the woods that lined the coast at Antibes, built sixty years earlier by King Leopold of Belgium but not completed. Davidson made the chateau into a beautiful haven where Fergusson and Meg found respite from the bustle of Paris, spending their time swimming in the azure ocean from the rocks and painting among the trees. Meg described the beaches around Davidson's home thus; ‘The Cap d’Antibes runs nearly two miles out to the sea. The chateau woods ran to a bay facing due south, with cliffs of jagged rocks about twelve feet high, and water about fifteen feet deep. Lovely for diving… everyone bathed off the rocks and afterwards sun-bathed in the woods or on the rocks. When they got too hot, they dived into the sea again’ (Margaret Morris, The Art of J. D. Fergusson; A Biased Biography, 1974, p. 150). Meg noted that 'there, Fergus did many sketches which later became pictures.' (ibid Morris, p.148)

In 1922 Davidson encouraged Meg to hold her annual summer school in the grounds of the chateau at Antibes and even had a path cleared down to the sea so that the dancers would be able to practice on the beach and swim in the sea. Whilst Meg and her dancers performed, Fergusson painted in the sunlight and this was a period of great artistic activity for him; 'Fergus was literally painting every minute he was not sleeping or eating. He never got up very early, but started work around 10 o'clock. He would stop for a plate of porridge with a pint of milk and then paint till the light went... He got through an amazing amount of work because he just refused to go anywhere or see anybody, even real friends.' (ibid Morris, p.148)

'The latter half of Fergusson’s painting career was dominated by his exuberant images of bathers and nudes, which for many hold an enduring appeal. Their vibrant colour and mood of exoticism and sensuality convey his immense love of life and capacity to appreciate its simplest pleasures.’ (Kirsten Simister, Living Paint; J. D. Fergusson 1874-1961, 2001, p. 110) In these paintings rather than inhabiting the landscape, Fergusson incorporated the organic curves and angles of the female form into the rhythms of the trees and the ocean beyond. Like a primordial goddess of nature she symbolises the undulating symphonies of nature, of fertility and of organic growth. Fergusson’s philosophy was based upon his understanding of the writings of Henri-Bergson, whose principal of elan-vital (feminine life-force) became influential around the time that Fergusson arrived in Paris 1907 when he published Creative Evolution. The English literary critic John Middleton Murry, who met Fergusson in Paris in 1910, explained the importance Fergusson placed upon the central idea of Bergsonism; ‘One word was recurrent in all our strange discussions – the word “rhythm”… For Fergusson it (rhythm) was the essential quality in a painting or sculpture; and since it was at that moment that the Russian Ballet first came to Western Europe for a season at the Chatelet, dancing was obviously linked, by rhythm, with the plastic arts. From that, it was but a short step to the position that rhythm was the distinctive element in all the arts, and that the real purpose of ‘this modern movement’ – a phrase frequent on Fergusson’s lips – was to reassert the pre-eminence of rhythm.’ (ibid Simister, p. 48)