Girl in Flowered Hat, 1959 (oil on board)

Fergusson made a series of portraits of young women in flowered headdresses, or hats, during his final Glasgow-based years. The model here is unidentified but possibly a dancer, as according to Martha Arnott, the sitter for a number of other similar portraits, a friend of Margaret Morris's made the hats for them. By this stage Fergusson's work was heavily stylised and had settled into something of a formula relying on the repetition of a stock type of face. The standardisation of his methods and techniques in the latter part of his career contrasts sharply with the variety and experimentation so typical earlier. On his death in 1961 Fergusson left the largest collection of his works in existence to his partner, Margaret Morris (1891-1980). In 1963 she established the JD Fergusson Art Foundation, who subsequently gifted the entire collection, archive and copyright to Perth and Kinross District Council in November 1991.