New Still Life Study

WILLIAM SCOTT CBE RA

Greenock 1913 - 1989 Somerset

Ref: CC 197

New Still Life Study

Signed and dated on the reverse: W SCOTT 83

Oil on canvas: 66 x 68 in / 167.6 x 172.7 cm

Frame size: 68 x 70 in / 172.7 x 177.8 cm

In its original Robert Sielle frame

Provenance:

Gimpels Fils, London

Gimpels & Weitzenhoffer, New York;

private collection, New York, acquired from the above in June 1983

Sotheby’s London, 4th November 1992, lot 120, as Untitled

Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

Annandale Galleries, Sydney, as New Life Study

Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1999

Exhibitions:

New York, Gimpels & Weitzenhoffer, William Scott, 26th April-28th May 1983(?)

London, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, William Scott: A Retrospective, 3rd April-11th May 1997

Sydney, Annadale Galleries in association with Bernard Jacobson Gallery, William Scott Paintings and Gouaches, 11th May-12th June 1999, no.5

Literature:

Sarah Whitfield (ed.), William Scott Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings, 1969-1989, vol.4, Thames & Hudson in association with the William Scott Foundation, London 2013, no.A166, p.378

While William Scott remained devoted to the representation of still life subject matter throughout his career, his paintings from 1969 onwards drastically departed from his earlier investigation of the genre. The setting disappeared along with the table-top; the individual domestic objects reduced to flat symbolic forms in this second phase of abstraction, each an ordered variation on a new restricted theme or tonal contrast. Each form is perfectly placed, described with economy without being severe and set against a captivating colour-field. Norbert Lynton referred to the reductive and yet harmonious purity of this series of still lifes as ‘neo-classical’, expressing a kind of musicality in the distribution of ‘a few notes cleanly struck, at finely judged intervals.’[1] In this elegant, almost monochromatic arrangement, Scott paints four still life forms across a luminous ivory ground. The pendulous, slightly asymmetric shape of a black frying pan hovers just off-centre of the serene, square composition, a similarly opaque black bowl to its right, with the soft white form of a deeper vessel below. On the far left is a warm brown jug or mug cropped by the edge of the canvas, its squarer, more geometric form undermined by its circular handle.

In 1952, Scott wrote about the genesis of his post-war pictures of frying pans: ‘About four years ago I painted a picture of a frying pan and a whole napkin. I had been interested in the work of Braque for a long time but I felt that it was dishonest to merely take as some people have done the guitar, the carafe and the French loaf. I felt that in painting my own familiar objects I might imbue them with a conviction characteristic of both myself and my race, if the guitar was to Braque his Madonna the frying pan could be my guitar, black was a colour I was fond of and I possessed at that moment a very black pan.’ In photographs of the artist’s studio during the mid-1950s, the black frying pan and other utensils, can be seen hanging or floating on the walls.[2] Though painted five years earlier, Permutations Ochre, 1978, in the Tate collection, has the same dimensions as the present work, as well as sharing a similar palette and still life subject.

[1] Norbert Lynton, William Scott, Thames & Hudson, London 2004, p.317.

[2] Cited in Lucy Inglis, ‘William Scott: a painter of pots and pans’ William Scott Foundation Archive Blog, 7th November 2016 http://williamscott.org/2016/11/07/archive-blog-november-2016/