SIR Jackie Stewart is selling a painting by the Scottish Colourist J D Fergusson because he has run out of space on his walls.
The motor racing legend is putting the work, Dinard, The Town, up for auction at Christie's in London, where it is expected to fetch between £120,000 and £180,000.
Former British Formula 1 driver Sir Jackie, 74, one of the greatest racing drivers of all time, is known as a passionate art collector but has decided to part with the Fergusson "to create wall space".
He said he had recently purchased another painting, also by a Scottish artist, that will hang in the space it previously occupied.
He said: "I enjoy Scottish art and I buy and I sell whenever there's no wall space. I'm fairly well-walled, if you know what I mean.
"I have enjoyed art since the mid-1960s. The trouble is, you see something else you want to buy, and then you think 'where am I going to put it?'
"I'm not an art dealer – art dealers would of course put them into stock, because these things hold well and in fact increase in value, but in any house that's not really practical.
"I'm not a business – I just buy for pleasure.
"I live in Buckinghamshire but I've got a lot of my paintings in Switzerland as well."
Fergusson, who was born in Leith in 1874, was a prominent member of the Scottish Colourists movement along with Samuel Peploe and others. An art expert at Christie's described Dinard, The Town, which was painted in 1930, as "an expansive visual feast".
Sir Jackie, who says he may have inherited his love of art from his mother Jeannie, who studied at Glasgow School of Art, described the oil-on-canvas as "very nice". He added: "It is a very good painting, as the price would suggest, and I've had it for a good many years, but it is in one particular place and I just saw this other painting, the same size actually, and it just fits in perfectly, so I bought that one and I'm selling this one.
"You can't keep everything. There's no wall space for everything. That's one of the joys about painting – you buy something, and then you move on a little bit and see something else."
For security reasons, Sir Jackie declined to name the artwork that is replacing the Fergusson.
He added, though: "I tend to focus on Scottish art. Any of the four Scottish Colourists, whether it's Cadell, Fergusson, Hunter or Peploe, are all masters.
"They have become of global interest. When I started collecting in the mid-1960s, they weren't seen as they are today.
"The old masters took years to be recognised, but, maybe thanks to the internet, the Colourists are now up there with some of the best of British and Scottish artists.
"The Glasgow School of Art was another of the reasons for that.
"My mother went there. She was the daughter of a farmer, and she went to Glasgow Art School.
"Maybe that's where I get my interest from."
John Duncan Fergusson settled in Paris in 1929 but he and his partner Margaret Morris escaped just before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1939 they moved to Glasgow, where they remained for the rest of their lives.
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