In the early 1900s Paris was the epicentre of the art world, attracting international artists including Picasso, Modigliani and Matisse. Among the painters were two Scots, J D Fergusson and J S Peploe, two of the four Scottish Colourists. Over a decade, they painted the ‘city of light’ which they came to know so well.
Although both men travelled regularly to the capital from the mid-1890s and passed through every year from 1904 to 1907 en route to Normandy, when it came to taking up permanent residence, Fergusson was the trail blazer. In 1907 he settled in a studio at 15 Boulevard Edgar Quinet, in Montparnasse, in the Bohemian heartland. Thereafter he exhibited at the Salon D’Automne between 1907-1912, when he left for Antibes. He was followed to Paris in the late Summer of 1910 by Peploe, who rented a studio at 278 Boulevard Raspail, not returning to Edinburgh until the summer of 1912.
The Rive Gauche became their hunting ground for subject matter, from the promenaders in the Luxembourg Gardens, to the habitués of the cafés, concerts and cabarets. Café Harcourt on the Boulevard St Michel became a favourite haunt, along with Boudet’s concert hall, the Mayol music hall in Rue de L’Echequier, the theatre Gaîté Montparnasse and of course the Cirque Medrano on Boulevard Rochechouart.
Making all these places their home, both men would sketch quickly in oils in preparation for larger works. Yet they also produced a number of small, exuberant paintings on board and panel, which were never worked up and which can now command six figure sums.
Despite the endless entertainment and stimulating artistic company and opportunities in Paris, by 1913, Fergusson was looking for something new, "I had grown tired of the north of France; I wanted more sun, more colour; I wanted to go south." It became a place to which he and his partner, the dancer Margaret Morris, returned again and again for long, luxurious summers. Together they held strong views on the importance of leading a healthy outdoor lifestyle in a warm, sunny environment.
It is curious, however, that in the past thirty years only some forty of these smaller works have come to auction. With another sixteen in public collections making a total of 56, it seems that in the combined ten years that they were there, the two men painted less than 60 such works, or perhaps just three each a year. So where are the missing pictures? Clearly a good number must be in private collections and it is possible that some were destroyed by the artists as unworthy or almost certainly in Fergusson’s case, when at his most impoverished, painted over with new work.
But surely that can’t be the case with so many? So where are these missing Parisian masterpieces by two of modern art’s greatest sons?