The Garden, 1915 (stone)

This relief, appropriately titled for the setting that inspired it, was carved during one of Fergusson's annual trips to Edinburgh, to visit his family during the First World War. Of his mother's spacious garden there Fergusson said, 'it's the place that makes me do it. Seeing things against the foliage'. This warm red sandstone carving conveys a joyful hedonism, with voluptuous nudes emerging and simultaneously blending with the lively surrounding of foliage. Fergusson's treatment hints at an underlying sense of the mysterious power of Woman, echoing the pro-occupations of his painted pre-war nudes.