William Scott, R.A.

Acquired by the present owner's family from the 1958 Pittsburgh International Exhibition

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, The 1958 Pittsburgh Bicentennial International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, 5 December 1958 - 8 February 1959, cat. no.395.

The canvas is in good original condition. The paint surface is in good overall condition. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. Held in a simple wooden rectilinear frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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The present work is registered with the William Scott Archive as no.1516.
Sarah Whitfield is currently preparing the Catalogue Raisonne of works in oil by William Scott.  The William Scott Foundation would like to hear from owners of any work by the artist so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue or in future projected catalogues.  Please write to Sarah Whitfield c/o Sotheby's, 20th Century British Art Department, 34-35 New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA.

'...economy developed into a grand manner.' (N.Lynton, William Scott, Thames & Hudson, London, 2004, p.302)  

The present painting belongs to a group of works which mark a significant period in Scott's career, both in terms of his work as a painter and in the way in which that work was received on an international stage.

Scott's still-life painting of the late 1940s and the move into abstraction in the early years of the 1950s are well-documented, and whilst both phases inform the later painting, the work that Scott produced from the mid-1950s onwards takes on a new character that is much harder to categorise. Ostensibly continuing to use the still life format as their basis, the paintings develop in terms of composition and actual painterly quality to become something beyond the pure 'pots and pans' images that had gained him such a strong following earlier in the decade. Given a significant showing by the British Council at the 1958 Venice Biennale, the critics recognised this development, including Herbert Read, whose introduction to the exhibition catalogue tried to describe the way in which Scott's forms were both resonant of their original sources whilst becoming something quite unique and with a life of their own. This concept of a painted or sculpted form having a vitality beyond its actual physical confines was not uncommon in critical writing of the period, and indeed the text by Patrick Heron that was originally intended to introduce Scott's showing in Venice follows a similar course. However one chooses to describe it, even a brief look at the rapid development of Scott's paintings in the 1955-58 period demonstrates that something quite remarkable is happening.

If one looks at a painting such as Brown Still Life of 1956 (Private Collection, U.K.), formerly in the collection of Sir Basil Spence and included in the 1958 Venice exhibition, we see a work which combines the actual and very readable forms of the pans and kitchen paraphernalia placed within the composition with masterly control. However if one then looks at paintings from 1957 and 1958, it is clear just how quickly Scott adapted this. The large Honeycomb Still Life (Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Turin) of 1957 still has the vestiges of the table top of Brown Still Life, but the forms are losing the need to be identifiable as a particular pot or pan, becoming more generic vessels whose importance is as pieces in the complex compositional jigsaw Scott is creating. A richly textured painting, the surface itself is such that the forms almost seem to be taking on a sculptural quality, something that becomes even more marked in a work such as Upright Abstract (Private Collection, Ireland), again from 1957. Not only has the still-life concept disappeared from the title, but the painting itself seems to have brought together the essence of all Scott's work, including his contemporary paintings of the figure, into an abstracted image that is about the spirit and possibility of painting itself. Thus when we look at the present work, we are seeing a painting that is both a distillation of the previous periods of Scott's work, and yet in its bright and unusually coloured palette for the period, looks forward to the next phase of his development.