A woman in a Paris café

Celebrating 150 years of the Scottish artist JD Fergusson

JD Fergusson: Girl Seated In Profile

There is a woman I see every day but I do not know her name.

She sits in a cafe, poised, somewhat stiff, her hands in her lap, her eyes cast down. She is dressed formally, with an elaborate hat and a voluminous dress.

The woman is the subject of a pencil sketch made by JD Fergusson in a Parisian cafe around 1907. A decade ago I bought this sketch, Girl Seated In Profile, from The Scottish Gallery on Dundas Street, and it now hangs in a gold-coloured frame in the hall of my Edinburgh flat

JD Fergusson, c 1910

Fergusson made thousands of such sketches in notebooks he carried with him at all times. He offered this advice to fellow artists:

“Always carry a small, cheap sketchbook, a very soft pencil, and make quick, rough sketches of of anything around you; never correct a sketch, just make another; don’t try to to make a good drawing; you won’t - or by accident, you may! Just keep at it, you are training you eye to see and your hand to respond.”

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Fergusson’s birth and The Scottish Gallery used this as an excuse for one of their irregular Fergusson exhibitions, which has just closed..

Heaven knows how many of these sketchbooks the gallery’s director, Guy Peploe, has squirrelled away. His grandfather, SJ Peploe, was a close friend of Fergusson and the two were the standout artists in the group that came to be known as The Scottish Colourists.

I hope there is a huge stash because I absolutely love these sketches and take every opportunity to see them when they come up for sale or exhibition.

Why do I like them so much? Three reasons, I think.