William Scott, R.A.

Hanover Gallery, London
Martha Jackson Gallery, New York
Mr and Mrs James Kleege, New York
Sale, Christie's London, 25th May 1994, lot 63, where acquired by David Bowie

New York, Martha Jackson Gallery, William Scott Recent Paintings, 24th March - 18th April 1959, cat. no.2;
Providence, Providence Art Club, Critic's Choice: Art Since World War II, 1965. Kane Memorial Exhibition, 31st March - 24th April 1965, cat. no.66.

Alan Bowness, William Scott: Paintings, London, 1964, no.110, illustrated;
Sarah Whitfield (ed.), William Scott: Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings 1952-1959, Vol.2, Thames & Hudson, London, 2013, cat. no.385, illustrated p.263.

The canvas appears sound. There is craquelure visible to the white pigment in the upper right quadrant, with some further very fine lines of craquelure apparent in the lower left and top right corners. There is some minor rubbing along the extreme edges, most apparent at the lower right corner, owing to the work being unframed, and there are some thin lines of craquelure in places along the edges with some small flecks of associated loss in places. Subject to the above the work appears to be in very good overall condition with a richly textured surface. The work is presented unframed. Ultraviolet light reveals no obvious signs of fluorescence or retouching. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Bowie collected with great respect to the diversity of an artist's oeuvre, and when it came to William Scott there was no exception. The four Scotts in the collection (please see lots 13, 27 and 154) evidence not only of a sensitivity to the artistic development of a painter with a long and distinguished career, but also of Bowie’s innate ability to identify the strongest and most striking works from each period.

Compared to Winter Still Life No.2 and Girl Seated at a Table, Black, Brown and White is most striking for its abstraction. Gone are the traces of the figurative, instead here are bold blocks of colour which clearly reveal the relationship of Scott's style to that of his contemporaries in the St Ives School and his American counterparts, most particularly Mark Rothko, whom Scott had first met in New York in 1953 when he was struck by his 'daring and beautiful colour and handling...' (the Artist, quoted in Alan Bowness, William Scott: Paintings, drawings and gouaches, (exh. cat.), Tate, London, 1972, p.71). Rothko went on to visit the Scott family at home in Hallatrow, Somerset when he came to England in 1959.

However, Black, Brown and White depends not on Rothko's bold palette but rather on a muted and austere one. As Scott explored abstraction, he found that 'to solve the problem of leaving out imagery…thinking in simplified terms of black and white relieved me of responsibilities and struggles with colour' (the Artist, quoted  in Alan Bowness, op. cit., p.9). The close tones of the slate grey, earthy brown and black mean that it is the shapes and textures which take on importance, exposing the picture for what it fundamentally is: paint forms arranged to approach some kind of visual harmony. Perhaps inspired by the rugged, textural landscape of the West Country, throughout the fifties it was the physicality of the paint on the surface of the canvas which increasingly intrigued Scott, the 'careful-careless way in which a picture is painted' (ibid., p.11).

Scott’s abstract works mark the furthest point in his journey of 'stripping away a sense of false realism' (Jonathan Benington et al., William Scott: Simplicity and Subject (exh. cat.), Bath, 2013, p.9) from his pictures. Despite this, one cannot look at Black, Brown and White without being conscious that it was conceived in the same mind as the table top still lifes: the division of the picture plane into 'wall' and 'table' with the square 'objects' resting on that 'table' and a white 'window' in the background. However close Scott came to total abstraction, his images remained 'nearly always extrapolated from objects and places which had been with him since his earliest years' (Sarah Whitfield, op. cit., p.89). As ever, Scott’s enduring interest in simplicity and soberness is combined with such 'a satisfying richness [that] it is no negative virtue' (Alan Bowness, op. cit., p.5).