Last week I posted on the Preston History Facebook group a request for information about a watercolour painting of Penwortham Old Bridge by the 19th-century Preston artist John Ferguson. The request did not yield much about the painting, but thanks to a follow-up post by Martin Read (see below), we discovered a great deal about Ferguson and the contemporary art scene in Preston.
Following a suggestion from Martin, I contacted Lindsey McCormick, fine art curator at The Harris. The search for information about the Penwortham Old Bridge painting again drew a blank, but Lindsey did provide some more useful information about Ferguson.
In her email to me, she gently pointed out that I had missed the five Harris oil paintings on the Art UK website. In fact, the reason I did not find them is that Ferguson is wrongly named ‘James’ not ‘John’ on the website. So a search for ‘John Ferguson’ gives no results. The reason they are there but no Ferguson watercolours is that when Art UK started it did not accept all types of artworks, including watercolours.
Also, one of those oil paintings is given the title ‘Avenham Park’ and the date 1852. This must be a mistake since Avenham Park did not open until 1861 and the view shows Avenham before the park was laid out.
When watercolours were later accepted, a hundred watercolours and sketches by Edwin Beattie were added to the Art UK site, but not the Fergusons.
However, that situation might change, as Lindsey explained: ‘We are still working behind the scenes getting our stored collections back into the Harris and in order. When this is completed, I’ll hopefully have some time to work on getting more of our collection online.’
It would be good to have online all the Harris’s topographic artworks recording Preston and its surroundings, and there are many more in addition to the Fergusons. They would also form a wonderful exhibition at the Harris, which I’m sure would prove immensely popular. We’ll keep you posted.
In response to Peter Smith’s “Search for John Ferguson” I dug out my A-Level Art project from 1977 in which I did a bit of research on both Edwin Beattie and John Ferguson. I spent many hours on the marble staircase of the HMAG [Harris Museum and Art Gallery] studying their paintings and talking with the wonderful Stephen Sartin who was kind enough to share some of his knowledge with me about these local artists. What follows is based on these conversations and my own observations. If anyone can add to or correct errors, I’d be most appreciative as I see this as continued collaboration to benefit all of us rather than a definitive document.
John Ferguson was born in the Fishwick area of Preston, a part of the town which produced several local artists. The date of his birth is uncertain but was probably in the first decade of the 19thc. The Fergusons were an old Preston family but as far as one knows, not necessarily artists, at least not professionally. His name first appears on a prospectus advertising the Preston Society of Arts, September 1834. (see photograph) This suggests he must have been well established as a painter by this date. The earliest available trades directory has him living at 8, Spring Vale in Oxford St in 1841 where he is listed as a portrait and landscape artist. Ferguson’s early works (landscapes in oil) seem to have been influenced by a cult of picturesque painters and even perhaps Anthony Devis, another Preston artist. His landscapes and portraits also show traces of the Reverend John Clay (1796 – 1858) who was Chaplain of Preston House of Correction and although not listed as such, was an established artist, being the first president of the Preston Society of Art. He in turn was influenced by the heavy Romanticism of Samuel Palmer’s pre-Shoreham period. There are relatively few know watercolours by John Ferguson (compared with Edwin Beattie or the prolific Herdman family in Liverpool). I have only seen twenty-two in the HMAG and according to Mr Sartin these came directly from Ferguson’s descendants
Many of his paintings are long views of Church St, Fishergate and important or interesting buildings on or near these main roads for example Patten House, Parish Church, Town Hall, Old Bank, Addison’s, The Shambles and Market Place. He is said to have executed these paintings for the railway crowds who passed through the town which was the main stopping point en route from London to Scotland in the 1840’s and 50’s. This would explain why he chose the main streets: these people would only see those parts of the town and therefore would only want a picture of places they had been. Unlike Edwin Beattie he was not purposely recording the town for posterity. The railway theory maybe also supports the fact that there are so few of his paintings in Preston. I am sure that Ferguson (along with other artists) saw the tourists as a chance to earn extra money to subsidise his “serious” work by producing these pleasing townscapes. The majority, but by no means all, of these watercolours appear to have been fairly rapidly executed often being rather sketchy, especially the figures, with at times, quite sparse use of paint: they surely do not reflect fairly, the talents of an established artist.
There is evidence to suggest that (like Beattie) he “re-produced” certain views, for instance on the original of Half-Way House (see photo) on close inspection it can clearly be seen that there are extra horses legs pencilled in. This may be due to tracing through from a master copy then just altering the legs for variety, equally so he might just have changed his mind without rubbing out the unwanted legs! Other examples of some sort of copying or tracing can be seen in different versions of the Old Bank and Market Place looking north (see photo). He may also have been using a camera lucida to project images, a technique that had been used by artists for several centuries. Another emerging method of recording/reproducing at this time is photography, the view of the Market Place may well be based on a very similar photograph considered to be one of the earliest taken of Preston. It is known from the Preston Guardian of the 1840’s that daguerreotypes of Preston Grammar School and pupils were made so Ferguson more than likely had access to, if not directly produced photographic images. Mr Sartin, Assistant Director of Fine Arts at HMAG says, “One cannot overestimate the impact of this astonishing invention, on artists local and national,” and goes on to suggest this influence may be seen in Ferguson’s painting of the Grey Horse (Addison’s) 1849, in which the perspective distortion approximates to the lens of early photographic equipment or camera obscura.
In addition to subsidising their income, Ferguson, along with other local artists such as Henry Pritt, Gwatkin Hill and William Physick were encouraged to paint views of the town by a revival of interest in local historical matters, articles on which appeared in the Preston Guardian of the time. Ferguson’s watercolours, it is thought, were sold on the premises of Messrs. Worthington’s Stationers who in 1857 published Hardwick’s History of Preston (which contains many engravings) so the interest in local views and history ties up well in support of this argument.
It is of interest to note that very few of Ferguson’s works are dated and as most were contemporary views, it may have been that he did not see the need to. However, it is essential we are not fooled into thinking he was accurately recording Preston in the 1840’s and 50’s. Patten House had already been demolished 1835 (it is just possible he could have recorded it) however Beattie’s also undated carbon copy was clearly based on Ferguson’s version. In common with other artists he made use of lithographs from earlier times, two obvious examples being the Parish Church from Stoneygate and another view of the Parish Church from an 1829 engraving by William Orme This was also another favourite of Edwin Beattie’s! (see photos).
Ferguson’s approach to portraying the town was (like EB’s) very romanticised and picturesque being quite unlike the true grim reality which was Victorian Preston. His works are simple and not overburdened with unnecessary detail, yet everything worthwhile is suggested. The essence of the style seems to be, I think, as with the later Impressionists, not an almost photographic copy of detail (as we see to some extent in Bentham and C E Shaw later in the century) but an effective and pleasing glimpse of the scene. Most of his paintings, especially the better ones are noted for their wide palette and rich, warm colours. To add to this nostalgic charm, his works often included a stage coach (notably missing from Beattie’s copies!). This was maybe a kind of harking back to more genteel days before the troubles of the Industrial Revolution. In some ways it could almost be said the inclusion of a stage coach was his trademark!
Despite the fact that he painted mainly brick buildings, unlike with Beattie, there is usually no overall red effect in many of Ferguson’s works. This is probably due to him often painting long main street scene some which would naturally include a range of colours. There is also evidence of a great deal of pencil work especially around windows, which in fairness works to good effect.
Ferguson’s contribution to the recording of Victorian Preston fills a gap between the engravings of the 18th and early 19thc and the works of, among others, Edwin Beattie, Charles Edward Shaw and Robert Bentham. In common with Beattie, in my opinion, apart from their sheer charm, the historical value of his watercolours lies in capturing everyday scenes that would soon change or disappear due to redevelopment.
