William Scott, R.A. 1913-1989

Having returned to a figurative vocabulary in the mid-1950s, Scott’s work once again began to develop a more abstract idiom towards the end of that decade and into the early 1960s. The Hanover Gallery show in 1961, his first one-man exhibition since 1956, gave the critics the opportunity to see how his work had been moving and the responses were good.

As with the abstract paintings of 1952-53 (see lots 38 and 39), the original starting point remained the still life object but this new work was marked by a deliberate exploration of texture whilst the forms become fewer and simpler. The oil paintings of this period become ever more rough in texture, echoing the qualities of natural surfaces such as walls and stones. However, as the paintings developed, the objects themselves became less and less important, their forms becoming increasingly simplified and distorted, and their importance lying in their use as formal compositional elements. Freed from a need to keep the recognisable form of the object, Scott became ever more willing to use each one as a vehicle for textural diversity, either heightening a colour contrast with the brushwork, or in some paintings, as here, using the paint handling itself to delineate forms within a like-coloured background.

The present painting is unusually domestic in scale, but demonstrates the expansive and free handling that was characteristic of his larger canvas paintings of the period. Three simplified forms float and drift across the picture surface, almost suggesting that they continue independently off the canvas, and in their indulgent and enjoyable richness of texture demonstrate the prevalence of a strong European tradition of painterliness which may be seen as a reaction to the absence of history in contemporary American art. Scott was more familiar with current European painting than many of his contemporaries, and comparisons with artists as diverse as Dubuffet, Tapies and Manzoni may all be profitably considered.

‘The new paintings have textures that are often nearer to the mural, weathered and abused by time, than to the perfectly-kept easel painting’ (J.Russell, exhibition review in The Sunday Times, 21^st May 1961).

The present work is listed with the William Scott Archive as no.167.