John Duncan Fergusson R.B.A. (1874-1961)
The Green Bird: Anne Estelle Rice
Oil on board
Signed and inscribed and dated verso
14 1/2 x 15 ins
c.1907
SOLD
Provenance
With Duncan R. Miller Fine Arts
Private collection, UK
Exhibited
Salon d'Automne, Paris
Baillie Gallery, London, 1908
Reid and Lefevre Gallery, London
John Duncan Fergusson exhibition, Duncan R. Miller Fine Arts, July 1990, no.12
The Scottish Colourists Series: JD Fergusson, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, December 2013 - June 2014
This work is a smaller and more informal version of a painting now in Glasgow Art Gallery. The sitter was Anne Estelle Rice, an accomplished painter in her own right and Fergusson's constant companion in Paris at the time. Katherine Mansfield later said of her "You know she is an exceptional woman - so gay, so abundant- in full flower just now and really beautiful to watch". She had been sent to Paris to cover theatre, ballet, opera and race meetings for a magazine owned by Rodman Wanamaker of the Philadelphia Department Store. Her brief was to provide illustrations for the reviews which her friend and companion, Elizabeth Dryden, had been commissioned to write.