Fergusson, J. D.

Fergusson, J. D. ( John Duncan Fergusson) (1874–1961). Scottish painter (mainly of landscapes and figure subjects) and occasional sculptor, one of the Scottish Colourists who introduced Post-Impressionism to their country. He was born at Leith and began to study medicine in Edinburgh, but he gave this up for art. Apart from a brief period of study at the Académie Colarossi (and possibly at the Académie Julian) in Paris he had no formal training. From about 1895 he made regular visits to Paris and he lived there 1907–14. His early work was Whistlerian and he then came under the influence of Manet, but by 1907 he had adopted the bold palette of Fauvism and became the most uncompromising adherent to the style among British artists (Blue Beads, Tate Gallery, London, 1910). From 1911 to 1913 he was art editor of Rhythm, a short-lived avant-garde journal (originally a quarterly, then a monthly), founded by the writers John Middleton Murry and Michael Sadleir. The cover design featured a boldly stylized nude adapted by Fergusson from his painting Rhythm (University of Stirling, 1911), and the Anglo-American artists in Fergusson's circle in Paris are sometimes called the Rhythm Group. In 1914 the war brought him back to Britain; he lived in London, 1914–29, in Paris, 1929–40, and finally in Glasgow, 1940–61. Soon after his arrival in Glasgow he founded the New Art Club to provide better exhibiting facilities for the city's progressive artists, and out of it grew the New Scottish Group (1942), of which Fergusson was first president. At this time he was also editor of the periodical Scottish Art and Letters, and he wrote a book entitled Modern Scottish Painting (1943). There is a museum of his work in Perth—the Fergusson Gallery, opened in 1992—and there are examples of his work in numerous other British public collections. He was married to the dancer Margaret Morris (1891–1980), who wrote The Art of J. D. Fergusson: A Biased Biography (1974).