Fergusson painting may fetch £250,000

A PAINTING by the Scottish colourist John Duncan Fergusson, featuring dressmakers visiting a Paris hat shop, is expected to fetch up to £250,000 at auction this month.

At the Milliner’s Paris depicts some of the dressmaking assistants the Edinburgh artist met at the infamous Cafe d’Harcourt in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank in Paris.

They would gather after work and mingle with students from the nearby Sorbonne University.

It was a favourite haunt of Fergusson’s when he lived and worked in Paris before the First World War, and was based in a studio in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs.

The painting is one of the highlights of the sale of Colourists to be held at Bonhams in Edinburgh on 31 August, and could sell for between £180,000 and £250,000.