William Scott, R.A.

Gimpel Fils, London
Gallery Kasahara, Osaka
Gimpel Fils, London
Private Collection, Canada
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Real Life, 2nd June-6th September 1977, (unnumbered, dated 1977);
Osaka, Gallery Kasahara, William Scott, 28th November-17th December 1977, cat.no. 9, illustrated p.13 (as An Orchard of Pears IX, dated 1976).

Original canvas. Protective strips of black adhesive tape have been applied to the edge of the stretcher. The canvas is slightly loose in the corners. There are scattered spots of craquelure, including to the white plate and to and around the black bowl. There is a stretcher bar mark along the bottom edge and middle of the top edge. There is a small indentation to the canvas in the upper left corner on the edge which follows a pit to the wooden stretcher. The surface is slightly dirty with a few specks of staining and may benefit well from a light clean. Ultraviolet light reveals areas and specks of fluorescence which do not appear to be retouching, but are apparently due to variation in the artist's pigments. Held in a metallic frame with a canvas inset. Please phone the department on 0207 293 5575 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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The present work is registered with the William Scott Archive as no.877.

Sarah Whitfield is currently preparing the Catalogue Raisonné of works in oil by William Scott. The William Scott Foundation would like to hear from owners of any work by the artist so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue or in future projected catalogues. Please write to Sarah Whitfield, c/o Sotheby's, 20th Century British Art Department, 34-35 New Bond Street, London, W1A 2AA.

Following the energetic and rhythmic nature of his series of Berlin Blues from the mid 1960s and the outburst of curvilinear shapes and forms that he developed for murals at Altnagelvin Hospital, Londonderry and the new Irish Television Centre, Dublin, Scott's series of work from the late 1960s and 70s took on a fresh and understated aesthetic. Their subjects are unmistakeable, the pans, bowls and objects of the still life paintings Scott had produced in the years after the end of WWII and into the 1950s. In the same ways that he had developed the compositional vocabulary built on the basic forms and elements of kitchen paraphernalia through that period until they became removed from their original forms and were released into the abstract paintings of the 1960s, so their return was never likely to be simply a rerun. These elements are here simplified to their most basic forms, cutting them loose from any associations they may have and allowing them to operate in a purer way.

This series of paintings is a remarkable group, and is perhaps one of the rare examples of an artist in later career creating a body of work which both draws upon earlier precedent but also develops a very specific voice of its own.