Villa Gotte Plage

Villa Gotte Plage is the pictorial incarnation of the Provençal ideal, brought to life in a scene of vibrant green undergrowth and sun-bleached pastel tones. The loose brushstrokes add a sense of immediacy and vibrancy to the vegetation in the foreground, before opening onto the figures rendered in soft fleshy tones, evoking the heat of a balmy afternoon on the South coast of France. The composition is reminiscent of Cézanne in its recognition of geometry in nature, but realised in John Duncan Fergusson’s unique manner.

Fergusson first explored the French Riviera with S.J. Peploe in Cassis following the demolition of his Paris studio in 1913, before settling in a small villa at Cap d'Antibes. Like the Fauves, he was excited by the intense clarity of light and reflected 'the place has given me quite a new start, a different feeling altogether about painting, or rather it has given me what I've been trying to make out of nothing - the colour, the shapes, everything I was developing by sheer sweat and labour is here' (K. Simister, Living Paint, J. D. Fergusson 1874-1961, Edinburgh, 2001, p. 56).

During the war years Fergusson left for London, but he returned to the French Riviera in 1921. During that winter, his friend George Davison purchased and renovated a derelict château at Cap d'Antibes on his recommendation. In 1923 Margaret Morris, a dancer and Fergusson's partner, held the first of many summer schools in the grounds of the château. Fergusson taught painting, design and sculpture at the school, and it was during this inaugural summer that Fergusson completed the present work.