Rose in the Hair, 1908 by John Duncan Fergusson, estimate £100,000-150,000 at Lyon & Turnbull.
The firm’s twice-yearly offering of Scottish art includes 17 works by the artist who was born in Leith, near Edinburgh in 1874.
Fergusson has the most international reputation of the group of four artists known as the Scottish Colourists. He lived in Paris before both the First and the Second World Wars, was a Londoner from 1914-29 and had three solo exhibitions in America in the 1930s. He was also the only sculptor among the Colourists, making and exhibiting three-dimensional works in stone and bronze for over 35 years.
The group of works offered in Edinburgh represent a cross section of Fergusson’s output: finished oils from various dates in the first decades of the 20th century, works on paper, including drawings, watercolours and one of Fergusson’s sketchbooks.
Rose in the Hair dates from 1908, the year after Fergusson moved to Paris to experience the crucible of European modern art. Influenced by the undiluted colour and unrefined technique of the Fauves, he traded the controlled, realist technique of Edwardian portraits for bolder, brushstrokes and layered colours.
Three of Fergusson’s frequent sitters have been suggested as the subject for this oil: his lover and fellow artist Anne Estelle Rice, the American writer Elizabeth Dryden or the haute couture business-owner Yvonne de Kerstratt.
Fergusson kept Rose in the Hair all his life and selected it for inclusion in solo exhibitions of his work in 1949 (when it was priced at £100) and 1950. It has a guide of £100,000-150,000.
Montgeron, 1909 by John Duncan Fergusson, estimate £20,000-30,000 at Lyon & Turnbull.
Both Boulevard Edgar Quinet (estimate £40,000-£60,000) and Montgeron (estimate £20,000-30,000), oils measuring 14in x 10.5in (35cm x 27cm), date from 1909, a key year in Fergusson’s career when he exhibited at the Venice Biennale for the first time and moved to a new light and orderly studio, at 83 rue Notre Dame des Champs.
Boulevard Edgar Quinet comes from of a series of vibrant Parisian street scenes painted in the period with Montgeron depicting a commune some 19 kilometres to the south-east of Paris where Fergusson painted during the summer of 1909.
Blonde in the South, 1937 by John Duncan Fergusson, estimate £60,000-80,000 at Lyon & Turnbull.
Among the later works is Blonde in the South (estimate £60,000-80,000), a portrait that is signed, dated and inscribed Paris 28 Nov ’37. The sun-kissed image, infused with the optimism of much of Fergusson’s oeuvre, combines his appreciation of beautiful women with his love of the south of France where he spent many summers until a final visit in 1960.
The Plage and Cliff, Pourville, 1926 by John Duncan Fergusson, estimate £4000-6000 at Lyon & Turnbull.
In the footsteps of Monet, Fergusson painted at the small seaside resort of Pourville-sur-Mer, near Dieppe. Among the most ‘finished’ of the works on paper offered here is a charcoal and watercolour titled The Plage and Cliff, Pourville that is dated 1926. It has an estimate of £4000-6000.
Goat, a bronze by John Duncan Fergusson, estimate £3000-5000 at Lyon & Turnbull.
The two small bronzes offered here are posthumous casts from 1991: the cropped female form Torse de Femme (1918) from an edition of 10 (estimate £6000-8000) and Goat (1921) that was acquired from the artist's widow Margaret Morris (estimate £3000-5000).
