Sir William George Gillies, C.B.E., R.S.A., R.A. 1898-1973

Purchased by the present owners from Ian MacNicol, Glasgow in 1964

STRUCTURE This picture is unlined and in original condition with no visible condition problems. UNDER ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT There are no signs of retouching. FRAME The picture is contained in an attractive plaster moulded frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

William Gillies was one of the most dominant forces in twentieth century Scottish art and a great influence upon his own generation of painters and the next. It was his adoption of a stark and vibrant style of painting, developed from Expressionistic influences combined with the more controlled style of Bonnard and Braque, which give his best still lifes their commanding impact. He was born in the pretty East Lothian market town of Haddington, on the Forth estuary. His father owned a tobacconist shop and it was in the rooms above the shop that William was born. There were no professional artists in his family but Gillies was lucky that his maternal uncle taught art at a school at Broughty Ferry near Dundee and he encouraged his nephew's endeavours. It was at the Edinburgh College of Art that he truly flourished but towards the end of his second term in the spring of 1917 his training was interrupted when he was called up for service in the Scottish Rifles. He was discharged in 1919 following a long period in a military hospital, to resume his studies. No doubt the young man who returned from France following the war was a great deal maturer than he was when he left, having seen untold terrors on the battlefield. However it is also possible that the war had been the catalyst for much of the vigour which he began to impose upon his art. The war in France may have ended but a new conflict had begun in the art schools of Britain as the young service-men returned to their easels with their minds irrecoverably changed. A new art, Modernism was beginning to prevail among Gillies' generation and he became one of it's most vehement supporters. There was only one destination for students of Modernism and in 1923 following the award of his Diploma and a scholarship, he travelled to Paris to study. The pictures he painted at this time were mainly landscapes, much influenced by Braque and Picasso. It was not until the 1930s that Gillies began the striking series of still lifes, following his return to Edinburgh to live in the studio formerly owned by his friend William Crozier who died tragically aged only thirty-three. The stability offered by Gillies' establishment of a professional studio, resulted in an increased number of still lifes as he was in more congenial surroundings in which to paint them. Gillies' approach to still life painting has been summed-up thus; 'It involved systematic planning, fixing the idea for a picture, stripping content to essentials, laying form bare, judging the relativity of tonal harmonies and, like an acrobat, bringing off a balancing act. This simple arrangement of objects... is, like most still-lifes, a picture painted under the artist's magisterial control, a scheme set up in advance, but flexible enough to allow for intuitive improvisation.' (W. Gordon Smith, W G Gillies; A Very Still Life, 1991, p.47)

It is likely that the present picture was painted in the 1940s and appears to have been made around the same time as Still Life on Blue Ground (Sotheby's, Glasgow, 14 February 1995, lot 251) which is dated 1944. Both pictures, like many other later examples, depict a view of a table arrayed with pots and vases seen from above. They also both depict the same black glass vase filled with flowers which appears in a number of Gillies' still lifes of the period.