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Lot Essay
Although Fergusson had visited France as early as 1895, it was from the turn of the century that he began to spend significant periods of time there, often in the company of S.J. Peploe, with whom he embarked on sketching holidays along the north coast at Deauville, Le Touquet, Dieppe and Étaples. In Paris later in the decade he immersed himself into the café world of absinthe-fuelled gaiety. He adored the French capital and its people, its modern approach to art and the freedom of its Bohemian underworld. During the 1880s Paris was already the undisputed world capital of art and attracted many British artists to study in its famous atelier system. Unlike his predecessors, however, Fergusson had very little contact with the art schools, as he found the teaching too academic. Of far greater importance was the atmosphere and lifestyle that Paris offered and which contrasted so markedly to that which existed in both Edinburgh and London (see K. Simister, Living Paint: J.D. Fergusson 1874-1961, Edinburgh, 2001, p. 22).
Fergusson finally settled in Paris in 1907, at Boulevard Edgar Quinet with a retainer to produce illustrations of café life for an American magazine. He became a habitué of the Montparnasse and Montmatre areas in particular and often spent his afternoons and evenings at the Pre-Catalan Restaurant, the Closerie des Lilas and the Café d'Harcourt. His circle of friends included the writers John Middleton Murray and Katherine Mansfield, and he mixed freely with some of the greatest French avant-garde artists of the day such as Matisse, Derain, Delauney and Dunoyer de Segonzac. Their common interest in exploring and developing the properties of colour, volume and line to depict how they felt about what they saw, was a driving force. Café society was central to their camaraderie; it was the meeting place of the Parisian intelligentsia. Few British artists were to witness so directly the explosive creative energies of the art scene in pre-war Paris. Fergusson was ideally placed to take full advantage of the opportunity. In tune with the vitality of Paris, and its avant-garde artists, he showed assimilation of the advances made by the masters of French Impressionism of a generation earlier. In his 'Memories of Peploe', published in the Scottish Art Review, 1962, Fergusson recalled that 'Before we met, Peploe and I had both been to Paris ... we were both very much impressed with the Impressionists, whose work we saw in the Salle Caillebotte in the Luxembourg and in Durand Ruel's gallery Manet and Monet were the painters who fixed our direction'.
Fergusson described the energy and attraction of the hours spent in the cafés of Paris; 'Further down the Boul Miche was the wonderful Café d'Harcourt, where they had a lively Hungarian band ... for me the greatest attraction was the girl frequenters. They were chiefly girls employed by dressmakers and milliners and wore the things they were working at, mostly too extreme from a practical point of view, but with that touch of daring that made them very helpful - they were a great help to me...we always came down to the d'Harcourt after dinner to make sketches of these charming girls, who were quite pleased to be drawn and didn't become self-conscious or take frozen poses' ('Memoires of Peploe' in Scottish Art Review, 1962, vol. 8, no. 3). We can assume that the women depicted in the present work, with their glossy plumage and large hats overflowing with blooms of claret-coloured flowers, are two of the obliging milliners.
The elegance and energetic joie de vivre of Paris at this time are captured in the shimmering refractions of tone and flashes of deep colour in the present work. There are echoes of Manet's sophisticated depictions of women, but this is no mere pastiche. Fergusson had taken the glamorous spirit of Manet's milliners and models from The Café Concert, 1878 (The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) and Un Bar aux Folies Bergère, 1882 (Courtauld Gallery, London), but has expressed the modernity of his vision of Parisian fashion in the expressive brush strokes and bold colouring.
Fergusson finally settled in Paris in 1907, at Boulevard Edgar Quinet with a retainer to produce illustrations of café life for an American magazine. He became a habitué of the Montparnasse and Montmatre areas in particular and often spent his afternoons and evenings at the Pre-Catalan Restaurant, the Closerie des Lilas and the Café d'Harcourt. His circle of friends included the writers John Middleton Murray and Katherine Mansfield, and he mixed freely with some of the greatest French avant-garde artists of the day such as Matisse, Derain, Delauney and Dunoyer de Segonzac. Their common interest in exploring and developing the properties of colour, volume and line to depict how they felt about what they saw, was a driving force. Café society was central to their camaraderie; it was the meeting place of the Parisian intelligentsia. Few British artists were to witness so directly the explosive creative energies of the art scene in pre-war Paris. Fergusson was ideally placed to take full advantage of the opportunity. In tune with the vitality of Paris, and its avant-garde artists, he showed assimilation of the advances made by the masters of French Impressionism of a generation earlier. In his 'Memories of Peploe', published in the Scottish Art Review, 1962, Fergusson recalled that 'Before we met, Peploe and I had both been to Paris ... we were both very much impressed with the Impressionists, whose work we saw in the Salle Caillebotte in the Luxembourg and in Durand Ruel's gallery Manet and Monet were the painters who fixed our direction'.
Fergusson described the energy and attraction of the hours spent in the cafés of Paris; 'Further down the Boul Miche was the wonderful Café d'Harcourt, where they had a lively Hungarian band ... for me the greatest attraction was the girl frequenters. They were chiefly girls employed by dressmakers and milliners and wore the things they were working at, mostly too extreme from a practical point of view, but with that touch of daring that made them very helpful - they were a great help to me...we always came down to the d'Harcourt after dinner to make sketches of these charming girls, who were quite pleased to be drawn and didn't become self-conscious or take frozen poses' ('Memoires of Peploe' in Scottish Art Review, 1962, vol. 8, no. 3). We can assume that the women depicted in the present work, with their glossy plumage and large hats overflowing with blooms of claret-coloured flowers, are two of the obliging milliners.
The elegance and energetic joie de vivre of Paris at this time are captured in the shimmering refractions of tone and flashes of deep colour in the present work. There are echoes of Manet's sophisticated depictions of women, but this is no mere pastiche. Fergusson had taken the glamorous spirit of Manet's milliners and models from The Café Concert, 1878 (The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) and Un Bar aux Folies Bergère, 1882 (Courtauld Gallery, London), but has expressed the modernity of his vision of Parisian fashion in the expressive brush strokes and bold colouring.