Also at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is the last exhibition in a series on the Scottish Colourists, those artists whose post-impressionist work was not highly regarded when it was first exhibited in the 1920s and 1930s, but has more recently become more appreciated for its importance and influence on contemporary art, in part though the activities of such organisations as the Fleming Collection in London, which has one of the best collections of Scottish art outside of the native land.
This last exhibition is on the work of JD Fergusson, the major collection of his and his wife’s works being housed in the Fergusson Gallery, a charming conversion of an old water tower in Perth. His work is colourful and certainly lives up to being one of the Colourists. It is flamboyant and colourful often with rotund dancing naked men and women., possibly a reflection of enjoyable times spent in the south of France. It is more diverse than many of his contemporaries, in particular his sculpture which is little known. He also lived into the 1950′s beyond his main contemporaries. Barry Didcock in the Herald sums up the exhibition: “Fergusson, then, is the Colourist with one foot in modern Scotland. That and the sheer size and energy of many of his canvases make this a fitting and muscular end to what has been a very worthwhile survey”