John Duncan Fergusson, R.B.A.

Gordon MacPherson, Glasgow;
E N Marshall, Glasgow;
Christie's Glasgow, 1 October 1981, lot 113;
Sotheby's, Hopetoun House, 27 March 1984, lot 530;
Ewan Mundy Fine Art, Glasgow, 2000;
Private Collection

The canvas is unlined. There is a small repair to the reverse of the canvas, to the lower right. Under UV light, there is a small spot of retouching to correspond with the smaller repair. There is also a darker area of treated canvas on the reverse to the upper centre corresponding to the green to the left of the figure, however on close inspection this does not appear to correspond to anything under UV on the recto. In general the work appears to be in good order. It is framed in a gilt composition frame, and ready to hang.
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Fergusson had visited Cap d’Antibes as early as 1913, but it became a more permanent home during the early 1920s. This was due in part to the generosity of his good friend George Davison, an eccentric philanthropist who owned a home at Juan-les-Pins. In the early 1920s, Davison allowed Fergusson’s partner Margaret Morris to run her dance summer schools from the house, allowing the couple to be fully immersed in the warmth of Antibes.

Throughout their lives, both Morris and Fergusson were health fanatics – they were vegetarian and in the many photographs of the couple one can see the pride they have in their physique and their ease within the natural world. They believed strongly in the link between the physical and spiritual with an emphasis on a return to nature. This celebration of the human form manifested itself in their work - Morris through her dance and Fergusson through painting. In Antibes, Morris’ dancers provided plentiful models to be painted by both Fergusson and Morris, and indeed many sketches and paintings in Cap d’Antibes by Fergusson were of Morris herself.  The works are exuberant, evidence of an artist inspired by the pure, saturated colours of the south and the freedom of a life style unthinkable in Edinburgh or even Paris. He could portray young women in nature, exposed and unencumbered by the restraints of society or dress, without recourse to the more acceptable allegorical nudes often found in art.

Bather, Cap d’Antibes, exhibits the Mediterranean joie de vivre that nurtured the confident explosion of colour in the latter half of the artist’s career. Each element of this work speaks to a lifestyle lived in the heat of the outdoors; the nude subject exemplifying the freedom of dance. The manner in which Fergusson broke down this subject matter was no doubt informed by the work of the Fauves, with whom the artist associated during his time in Paris in the pre-war years. Works by Matisse and Derain had reinvented the nude human form, rendering organic forms in rich, pure pigment. Considered very progressive in its day and probably his most important painting, Fergusson’s vision of arcadia was crystalized in the monumental Les Eus, c.1913 (Huntarian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow) which shows a group of women naked, dancing joyously, almost bacchanalian within a wooded glen. It was this vision of the nude within nature which Fergusson developed and returned to throughout his career. 

The present work is constructed with sharp, angular brushstrokes that form vibrating fields of pigment, a technique which owes much to the post-impressionists; greens, browns, blues and pinks are employed to describe the textural qualities of the tree bark, water and rock forms. In doing so, Fergusson achieves a distinct rhythm between forms, creating a natural frame in the arching branch that bisects the canvas.

Indeed, a sense of rhythm was integral to Fergusson’s treatment of the nude. The literary critic John Middleton Murry noted that for Fergusson, rhythm ‘was the essential quality in a painting or sculpture.’ (Kirsten Simister, Living Paint, J.D. Fergusson 1871-1961, Mainstream Publishing, 2001, p.48). In 1911, Fergusson worked with Murry to produce a publication which sought to explore this idea. The cover that Fergusson designed for the inaugural edition of Rhythm magazine encapsulates his vision: a nude sitter beside an arching branch in his signature style. The present work sees this aim realised in full colour and scale. 

It is surprising that Fergusson was the only colourist to fully focus on the nude. Perhaps his lack of formal training led to a more daring, experimental oeuvre. Bather, Cap d’Antibes displays how in the nude, the artist found an unmatched union of colour and form, driving his artistic output for the remainder of his career.