Biography

Henry Ferguson or ‘Vergazon’ was probably the son of William Gouw Ferguson who spent most of his career in the Netherlands after being admitted to the Guild of St Luke in Utrecht in 1648. A migratory artist like William, Henry was one of several Anglo-Dutch artists working in late seventeenth-century London (where he painted backgrounds for Kneller portraits) but later settled in Toulouse. While William specialised in still-lifes of dead game, Henry was best known for his darkly atmospheric capriccio compositions of architectural ruins, often with fragments of monumental sculpture. Other examples are at Ham House near London (from the collection of the Countess of Dysart, a keen patron of Netherlandish art), the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, and the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec at Albi.