John Duncan Fergusson

Sur la Plage was executed in 1910 when John Duncan Fergusson was painting in Royan on the Atlantic coast with Samuel John Peploe and Anne Estelle Rice. This wonderfully comic image depicts a larger-than-life male bather striding past two elegant female bathers who are chatting and clearly find his presence rather amusing. This work perfectly captures Fergusson's vivacity and the enthusiasm with which he lived life but as Roger Billcliffe mentions in his book, The Scottish Colourists, "despite his outward gaiety and bonhomie, Fergusson was a deeply serious man." (p.33). In the catalogue introduction to his 1905 exhibition at The Ballie Gallery, Fergusson was keen to outline his artistic manifesto, highlighting his key interest in the work and theory of both the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists. He stated his intention of 'trying for truth, for reality; through light. That to the realist in painting, light is the mystery; for form and colour which are the painter's only means of representing life, exist only on account of light.'

Fergusson continues to state that 'the painter having found the beauty of nature, ceases to be interested in the traditional beauty, the beauty of art. Art being purely a matter of emotion, sincerity in art consists of one being faithful to one's emotions'. These ideas, whilst referring to his body of work as a whole, are interesting in relation to the techniques used in Sur la Plage. In his choice of subject matter, the artist conveys a sense of truth and reality rather than simply the beauty of his subject. The colour scheme is uncomplicated and the heavy black ink applied with single confident strokes invests in this work precisely the immediacy and pure emotion that Fergusson sought to achieve.

A preliminary sketch for Sur la Plage is also included in this sale (Lot 174).