A Picture of a Celt

John Duncan Fergusson was fiercely proud of his Perthshire ancestry. He placed great importance on it, increasingly seeing this ‘Celtic spirit’ as the main source that fuelled his creativity. Both his parents were Perthshire Ferguson’s, although his father’s
name was spelt with one ‘s’ and his mother with a double ‘s’. Around 1900 Fergusson consciously adopted the double ‘s’ spelling of his name, as he felt this reflected more closely the meaning, ‘Son of Fergus’. Already exploring his Celtic origins, this made reference to the legendary Irish King, Fergus Mòr Mac Earca (Fergus the Great) who was reportedly the founder of Scotland.
As well as his artistic legacy, there is much evidence of his interest in Scotland and his Highland heritage in his vast archive, which is now held in The Fergusson Gallery collection.
In the 1950s, Fergusson began to look back on his life and make notes about his career, with the intention of writing an autobiography. Although this project was never realised, his handwritten notes frequently make reference to his early career, memories of the Highlands, Druids and Gaelic.
Fergusson’s notes also detail many childhood memories, including holidays in Perthshire. In 1960, he wrote ‘Chapter from an Autobiography’ which appeared in the Saltire Review. In it, he gave the following account, about a childhood experience in Perth.
When I was a small boy, I was standing on the North Inch of Perth watching the movement of the water. I looked away for a moment and saw a very dark man ‘loping’ along towards me - yes, loping is the word for his action. He came directly towards me and said ‘Hullo! My little dark-eyed stranger - you’ll never stay here - you’ll roam!’ and passed on, loped away and left me watching the movement of the water. The movement of water has fascinated me all my life, partly because an uncle who lived in the Highlands pointed out that the appearance of the surface was greatly affected by the fish feeding. He was a famous angler in his district and had lived by a river all his life and loved it.
In the same article, he goes on to explain how he felt that his creativity, whether written or visual, stems from an ancient, metaphysical past:
…my training hasn’t been in writing, it has been in painting and I can only write as I paint: impressions and material used in the attempt to express
what I feel today come, not necessarily from what I have seen or felt today (as I do not gauge time by the clock or calendar) but may go much further back than the North Inch of Perth

Exhibition starts December 7 2013 at the Fergusson Gallery, Perth