Self Portrait

This riveting Self-Portrait by “Billy” Ferguson was executed when the artist was only in his teens. He was born and raised in Reading and ranks among the region’s most successful artists. Ferguson studied and exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and traveled to England, France, and Italy on a Cresson fellowship. While he began as an academic painter, he absorbed European Modernism including Cubism and, most importantly, Surrealism. For his exemplary work in portraiture, he received several letters of introduction from leading Philadelphia art critics, bringing him to the attention of avant-garde modernists in Europe, including Henri Matisse and Camille Pissarro.  His paintings were described in the 1930s in a review in the New York World Telegram,

There is nothing serene about Ferguson’s paintings. They are an explosion of color, of fantastic subject and of line that might almost be called baroque. The whole picture surface is covered with this resplendent color and busy line. The effect is exotic, almost theatrical. But they have far more intimacy and delicacy than one might expect from such a description.