Lot 305
  • 305

William Scott, R.A.

Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 GBP
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Description

  • William Scott, R.A.
  • Quiet Ochre
  • signed on the reverse: W. SCOTT
  • oil on canvas
  • 106.5 by 122cm., 42 by 48in.

Provenance

Gallery Moos, Toronto, where purchased by the present owner, circa 1985 

Exhibited

Toronto, Gallery Moos, An Exhibition of New Paintings by William Scott, 1973, no.15

Literature

Sarah Whitfield (ed.), William Scott Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings Vol. 4, 2013, no.751, illustrated p.136

Condition

Original canvas. The work appears in excellent overall condition. Under ultraviolet light there appears to be a very minor fleck of retouching at the bottom of the left edge. Held in a dark grey wooden box frame.
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Catalogue Note

Painted in 1973, Quiet Ochre appears on the auction market for the time. It is a powerful and sensual example of the still-life genre which Scott made his own though a unique language balanced between abstracion and figuration. Scott’s commitment to the still-life genre was the defining feature of his career, and the 2013 centenary exhibition at Tate St Ives, Hepworth Wakefield and Ulster Museum powerfully reinforced the enormity of this singular dedication and the scale of his achievements. 

The genesis for Scott’s lifelong treatment of the still-life was a visit to an exhibition in Paris in the summer of 1946 entitled A Thousand Years of Still Life Painting, which left him 'really overwhelmed by the fact that the subject had hardly changed for 1000 years, and yet each generation in turn expressed its own period and feelings and time within this terribly limited narrow range of the still life ' (Scott, quoted in Norbert Lynton, William Scott, 2004, p.61). Despite the seemingly 'limited' subject, the exhibition left him in no doubt as to the power of the genre and its capacity for artistic creativity. By 1969, he had developed the distinctive forms evident in the present work - the long handled frying pan, round bottomed dish or square bowl. The instantly recognisable forms clearly reference early works such as The Frying Pan (1946, Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery, London) whilst the minimalist handling demonstrates how his work had evolved in an abstract direction since the 1940s.