Rare works by Glasgow Girl Chris J. Fergusson and her daughter Nan Fergusson

By Susan Mansfield, 27.09.2022

Chris Fergusson, Salutation Inn, Dumfries, watercolour, 40x33cm. Courtesy the Family of the Artist.

A rare exhibition of work by a mother and daughter in Kirkcudbright brings to light two artists who are less well known than they should be. Chris (Christian) J. Fergusson was one of the Glasgow Girls, the group of artists and designers focussed around Glasgow School of Art at the turn of the twentieth century. Her daughter Nan (Agnes) Fergusson was also an artist, working in a very similar style.

The exhibition, staged by the artists’ family, fills every inch of the Harbour Cottage Gallery in Kirkcudbright. The paintings have been kept by the family, in particular by Jim Henderson, Nan’s son, who was a keen promoter of his mother’s and grandmother’s work. Jim’s death in November 2021 prompted other family members to stage the exhibition as a tribute to him. 

Chris Stark grew up in Dumfries and went to Glasgow School of Art, getting her diploma in 1903. The school was pioneering at the time in aiming to admit equal numbers of men and women, and also in elevating the status of applied arts, encouraging students to get a grounding in both art and craft practices. Included in the show is some of the work Chris made at art school: metalwork napkin rings in the Glasgow style, and an embroidered collar and belt in the Suffragette colours of purple and green.

After several years teaching art in Glasgow, Chris returned to Dumfries to marry lawyer David Fergusson in 1908. Nan, the eldest of their three children, was born two years later. It was in the Dumfriesshire landscape that Chris found her preferred subject, sometimes accompanying David on client visits to paint new aspects of the area. She participated in the burgeoning local art scene and was a founder member of the Dumfries & Galloway Fine Art Society with E. A. Hornel, Charles Oppenheimer, Jessie M. King and E. A. Taylor. 

These landscapes, in watercolour and oil, are a joy to look at. Most of the works are not dated, but it is clear she experimented within her signature style, sometimes including more detail, sometimes less, trying greater and lesser densities of paint. She is a particularly accomplished watercolourist, capturing the quality of evening light in ‘A Calm Evening on the Solway’ or the half-mist of autumn in ‘An Autumn Day near Dumfries’.

Her paintings often feature buildings, rarely people. ‘Salutation Inn, Dumfries’, another watercolour, depicts a vertical patchwork of buildings backing down to the river Nith. ‘Maxwelltown and the Nith in Winter’ is a beautiful study of the town in wintry white and blue tones. However, ‘The Nith Near Lincluden’ exploits the dreamy qualities of watercolour, defining forms in a minimal way, and leaving the rest to colour and light.

A watercolour and an oil of Barcloy Farm near Rockcliffe, done from the same viewpoint, allows a comparison of how she used the two techniques: the oil is warmer, more textured, but the watercolour is more full of light. She was adept at capturing the effects of light, whether illuminating a white gable, flickering through tree branches or turning the ocean turn a rich, luminous blue.

Nan, who studied at Edinburgh College of Art, was also a teacher, latterly, from 1963-71, at George Watson’s Ladies College. She died in 1984. She painted landscapes too, though in a very different style, using flat planes of colour and thick, expressive impasto in her oils. In watercolour, she preferred to outline distinct areas rather than work in layers.

Her stand-out works here are still lifes, in which she combines strong shapes and colours with subtleties of tone. ‘The Blue Bottle’ is worked in subtly shifting shades of blue and green, while ‘The Copper Jug’, is a dramatic balance of dark and light: richly patterned dark cloth, fruit on a pale plate, the strong shape of the jug and a black bottle.

Chris J. Fergusson and Nan Fergusson was presented at the Harbour Cottage Gallery in Kirkcudbright. The exhibition has now ended.