William Scott, R.A. 1913-1989

Hanover Gallery, London, whence acquired by the present owner

David Anderson, William Scott: Drawings, New York, 1975, illustrated, pl. 20;
Norbert Lynton, William Scott, Thames and Hudson, London, 2004, no.264, illustrated.

Scott had produced a series of linear and schematized nude drawings in 1953-54, and the flattened images which transmuted themselves into equivalents to the increasingly abstracted table-top paintings of the period are a very distinctive group within his graphic oeuvre.

Having left Corsham in 1956, he renewed his engagement with the female nude subject and produced a body of work which continues the theme but develops it in a startlingly different way. The organic sense of the subject in these drawings is strong, the rounded and fecund figures taking up almost the whole space of the sheets (some drawings spreading across up to six separate sheets pasted together) and the clearly visible erased and altered forms of previous forms and views build a sensation of breathing life. That Scott immediately felt that these drawings, along with his contemporary still-life drawings, were worthy of exhibition was demonstrated by the inclusion of fourteen charcoal drawings in his one-man show at the Hanover Gallery in September-October of 1956.

The present work is listed with the William Scott Archive as no.675