Alison Watt

Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, whence purchased by the present owner

The canvases are unlined and are in good overall condition. The paint surfaces are in good overall condition. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. The triptych is unframed.
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Having graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1988, Watt was at the forefront of a generation of British artists in the late 80s and early 90s whose work concentrated on the figure, intensely observed and depicted. During this period, she focussed primarily on depicting the female nude within untidy domestic spaces surrounded by everyday objects such as unmade bed sheets and crumpled clothes (see for example Sleeping Nude, 1989, Private Collection). Increasingly, as her husband Ruaridh Nicoll observed, 'when the day ended and the models left, Alison stood at her easel, looking at the crushed fabric where their [the model's] bodies had been and in those impressions she saw the possibilities that would take her forward. In her paintings, the model was soon separated from the fabric, and, in the end, no longer required...To me, the folded fabric of her paintings became the body, and often the body at its most intimate...' (Ruaridh Nicoll 'Perfecting a vision of life for the Dead', Scotland on Sunday, 25 July 2004).

A seminal exhibition of Watt's work at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery in 1997, Fold, introduced sections that reproduced highly decorative printed fabrics, making reference to both abstraction and earlier painters, particularly Ingres (see for example, Sleeper; Fragment II, sold in these rooms, 13 July 2007, lot 179). With the exhibition Shift in 2000, Watt exhibited twelve large paintings which took as their sole subject swags of material. Their almost abstracted imagery seems to invite tangible investigation, and as Nicoll described, they convey a sense of human presence without actual evidence. The so-called 'folds' gain an added significance when taking their titles into consideration; the present work is entitled Blanche Moreau in relation to the classic white, summer flowering rose originally bred by Moreau-Robert.  The organic swirls of the composition take on both the delicate texture of rose petals whilst at the same time achieving a serene monumentality.

In February 2004, shortly after the present work was executed, Watt invited the poet Alan Spence to write the text for a book to accompany a new large-scale piece Still hung at the Memorial Chapel, Old St Paul's Church, Edinburgh. Still also takes folds of material as its principal subject and it is highly significant that Spence 'saw roses in everything: in the folds; in the symbols of defiance the Jacobean woman had worn in the early years of Old St Paul's and in the name of the first bishop, Alexander Rose. "The dark chapel / white rose a chalice of light," runs one of his contributions...' (Nichol, ibid.).