John Duncan Fergusson 1874-1961

During his time there in the early years of the twentieth century, Fergusson developed a deep fascination for the French capital and its people, its modern approach to art and the freedom of its Bohemian underworld; 'Well, I was in Paris, without money or rich relations... but repeatedly encouraged by what someone has called "le bon air de Paris, qui semble contenir les effleuves amoureuses et les emanations intellectuelles". Life was as it should be and I was very happy. The Dôme, so to speak, round the corner; l'Avenue quite near; the concert Ronge not far away - I was very much interested in music; the Luxembourg Gardens to sketch in; Colarossi's class if I wanted to work from the model. In short, everything a young painter could want...' (Jean Geddes and Margaret Morris, Cafe Drawings in Edwardian Paris from the Sketch-Books of J D Fergusson, 1974, p. 8). He finally settled in Paris in 1907 at Boulevard Edgar Quinet with a retainer to produce illustrations of café life for an American magazine. It is likely that the present drawing depicting customers, waiters and entertainers at a fashionable Parisian restaurant, was made at this time. The complexity of the image, the monochrome nature and high degree of finish, suggest that it was intended for the publication.

Fergusson was 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 Harcourt. His circle of friends included the artists Bertha Case, Jo Davidson, Anne Estelle Rice, the poet Roffy and the mathematician and aviator La Torrie and the writers John Middleton Murray and Katherine Mansfield. He mixed freely with some of the greatest French avante-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. Fergusson produced a group of watercolours including The Paris Cafe (sold Sotheby's, Hopetoun House, 24 April 2006, lot 141),pencil sketches (examples sold Sotheby's, Hopetoun House, 24 April 2006, lots 136-140). Fergusson also paintd a number of contemporary oils of similar subjects, including In the Café d'Harcourt c.1908 (Sotheby's, Gleneagles, 30 August 2006, 1027), La Terrasse, Café d'Harcourt c.1908 (private collection) Créme de Menthe, Café Harcourt (Sotheby's, Gleneagles, 30 August 2000, lot 1285).

The present watercolour is more unusual than the watercolours and paintings made at the Café d'Harcourt as it depicts a more sophisticated world of tuxedos, champagne and chandeliers. The elegant women with their enormous plumed hats are conspicuous in many of these watercolours, as is their moustached and balding companion but the present work also captures the characters of an elegant dandy raising a toast, a laughing female entertainer and a black minstrel waiting his turn. Fergusson's pictures of café society satirise the over-fed or over-dressed denizens of the various cafes and restaurants he frequented and depict similar subject to those which fascinated Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen around the same time.

The energetic fluid line of Fergusson's drawings and watercolours of the period around 1906-1909 was a reaction to the varied modernist art to which Fergusson had been exposed in Paris which greatly inspired his approach to art at this time. 'Something new had started and I was very much intrigued. But there was no language for it that made sense in Edinburgh or London - an expression like 'the logic of line' meant something in Paris that it couldn't mean in Edinburgh.' (Margaret Morris, The Art of J. D. Fergusson; A Biased Biography, 1974, p. 45)