The Scottish Colourists Series: JD Fergusson
The Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art, Edinburgh
7
December 2013 – 15 June 2014
By CHRISTIANA SPENS
Though
perhaps not as well known as Ireland for producing swathes of young artists and
rebels intent on leaving the country in search of adventure and success,
Scotland has a similar tradition of inspiring departure. The Scottish
Colourists, a group of painters who left their Scottish homes and families in
the early twentieth century, to find inspiration mainly in France, are some of
the most notable of this sprawling group. The Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art in Edinburgh is hosting a series of retrospectives of the
Colourists, and the work of J. D. Fergusson (1874 – 1961) is exhibited there
until the summer, following retrospectives of Cadell, Hunter and Peploe.
One
of the most adventurous of his group of émigrés, J. D. Fergusson was born in
Leith, not far from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and probably
more famous for being the setting of Trainspotting than for its artistic community,
past or present. Since Fergusson’s retrospective opens in December, one of the
bleakest months, merely the experience of walking to the exhibition in such
weather helps explain the artist’s attraction to colour and flamboyance that
these paintings are testament to. There is nothing like a childhood and
adolescence of seemingly impenetrable greyness to inspire escape, and a
persistent, life-long desire for something more colourful. Combined with the steely
determination that enduring years of such weather gives rise to, the sustained
dedication of the Scottish Colourists, and Fergusson especially, makes
sense.
“To go to Paris was the natural thing for the
Scot… It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the modern Scot that the Scottish
Celt when in France was among his own people, the French Celts. French culture
was founded by the Celts and… if Scotland or Celtic Scotland could make a ‘new
alliance’ with France, not a political union like the ‘Auld Alliance’ but
cultural, it would perhaps put Scotland back on to the track of her culture,
and see the Scots do something Scottish instead of imitating the English or
rather second-rate British.”[i]
Moving
to Paris in 1907, Fergusson absorbed that French culture and innovative styles
of painting there, which revolved around a love of light and its colourful
effects. Perhaps more so than the other Scottish painters in Paris, he
assimilated into life and art there, and came to be known as the more bohemian
of the émigrés, as well as the most vivacious, considered as, “the leader of
the English-speaking artistic community.”[ii]
Rather than simply becoming French, however, Fergusson’s move to Paris was
ultimately a way of being Scottish, and understanding his Scottish identity.
Perhaps one cannot appreciate the subtleties and possibilities of a grey and
blue palette, without immersing into the giddy colours of the ‘other Celts’.
Certainly for Fergusson, living in France not only realized dreams of colour
and light, but led to a fuller understanding of Scotland, and its subtler
palette.
The
exhibition of over 100 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, viewed all
together express a real vitality and sense of victory, that this exploration
and adventure were successful and productive. Though some of the images of
coffee-houses and nocturnal celebrations may now seem overly familiar, given
the popularity of those subjects with their French contemporaries, to see them
in the context of Edinburgh, and Fergusson’s early paintings of Scotland, is to
glimpse the wider narrative and depth of the scenes shown. It is also to see
that the attraction of Paris, and of travel, for Fergusson, was not simply
about colour, or exploring techniques used by French artists; it was about
people. His canvases painted in Paris are full of lively figures – dressmakers,
dancers, artists, and drunks – milling around coffee houses and bars –
reclining on park benches, or kneeled on exotic carpets – amid flowers and a
city enchanting and alive. These paintings express love and enchantment through
colour and light, not simply with it. These glamorous women and beautiful
dancers, these relaxed, sunlit bodies, required some traveling to find.
Compared
to the rugged hills of Scotland and the gloomy Forth, where any people seem to
vanish in the presence of such a domineering nature, or the shipyards of
Glasgow, where ships sink slowly, (Damaged Destroyer, 1918), Paris gave Fergusson crowds
of new faces, fashions and bodies, which are celebrated in so many of his
works. In Les Eus (1910
– 13), an impressive, well-constructed and vivacious painting, Fergusson
depicts nude couples dancing in a frame of green foliage, probably inspired by
Les Ballet Russes and other dance in Paris at the time, and of course by his
wife, Margaret Morris (1891 – 1980), a dancer and choreographer originally from
London, whose original techniques and ideas about ballet, and the dancers who
attended her summer schools, became inspirational to Fergusson. Paintings such
as Etude de Rhythm, Seated Nude, and Bathers, The Parasol, continue to show his fascination
with the female form, as well as the influence of Matisse and Picasso, and his
Parisian contemporaries.
The
presence of dance and fashion in his paintings is perhaps what gives Fergusson’s
work an adventurous, daring quality that the other Scottish Colourists do not
exhibit so obviously, and it is these scenes – these dances captured in paint
and light – that linger. Fergusson was a Scot and a Colourist, but he was also
in love with dance, and a dancer, and it was this aspect of his life in Paris
that remains most intriguing and original. The exhibition reveals these
aspects, subtly pointing out moments of success and innovation in Fergusson’s
painting, and downplaying criticisms of repetition or blandness, or even, too
much colour. In showing careful portraits alongside carnal dances, and
reminding us of his landscapes and shipyards, as well as his well-known
Parisian café scenes, the exhibition hints at a more complex painter, and a
more interesting body of work, than is often assumed.
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