SP 4800
WILLIAM SCOTT, RA CBE
Greenock, Scotland 1913 – 1989
Composition, c.1952
Signed; signed and inscribed with the title on the overlap
Canvas: 20 x 24 in / 50.8 x 61 cm
Framed size: 27 ¼ x 31 ½ in / 69.2 x 80 cm
Provenance:
Lawrence Alloway,
Private collection
The present work is registered with the William Scott Archive as no. 1281 and will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of works in oil by the artist
Composition, c.1952 was executed during a period of fundamental change for William Scott. Inspired by the work of pioneering European abstractionists Piet Mondrian and Nicolas de Staël and increasingly aware of American Abstract Expressionist painting, Scott began to simplify the forms in his pictures and move away from more representational still lifes and landscapes. Between 1950-1952 Scott painted a series of black and white, geometric oil paintings and gouaches. Norbert Lynton comments on the works of this period: ‘Colour was absent from these paintings, or limited to one named hue accompanying black, grey and white. WS later said that he had found it necessary to put colour aside: ‘I had to solve the problem of leaving out imagery, and thinking in the simplified terms of black and white relieved me of responsibilities and struggles with colour’ (Norbert Lynton, William Scott, Thames and Hudson, 2004, p 123).
The controversy surrounding a move towards total abstraction in the Post-War period was highlighted by Alan Bowness in the exhibition catalogue accompanying Scott’s retrospective at the Tate, ‘It needs repeating in 1972 that twenty years ago a step [into abstract art] was still a heroic act, and Scott – like Victor Pasmore at the same time – was putting at risk the public support he had won for his earlier painting. The English abstract painters in 1952-54 were a small and embattled minority, open to hostile criticism on all sides. But there was a sense of common purpose, and indeed some elements of a common style, as can be seen from the illustrations in Lawrence Alloway’s little book, Nine Abstract Artists.’(A. Bowness, ed., William Scott: Paintings and Gouaches 1938-71, ex.cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1972, p. 45).
The English art critic and curator (as well as original owner of the present work) Lawrence Alloway (1926-1990) also considered this to be a critical point in Scott’s career, reflecting that, ‘William Scott has also changed, not suddenly, but gradually. He has gone from a stylized realism to a more highly abstracted style in which tables and figures are residual presences, rather than clear signs. The decisive nature of Scott’s change became clear in 1953’ (L. Alloway, Nine Abstract Artists: their work and theory, Alec Tiranti Ltd., London, 1954, p. 3). Alloway believed Scott was aligned to a subdivision of non-figurative artists, ‘painterly abstractionists who melt, bury, or fracture platonic geometry (ibid., p.3). The combination of sober geometrical design with the luscious, layered application of viscous paint in the present work seems to confirm Alloway’s classification. The compositional austerity is contrasted with the sensuous, freehand application of media, the soft-edged, unpredictable squares recorded with a rich fluency which generates a lively interaction between forms. The apparent duality of Scott’s ‘painterly abstractionist’ purpose was confirmed by him in a statement for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, three years after Composition was painted. ‘I have a strong preference for primitive and elementary forms and I should like to combine a sensual eroticism with a starkness which will be instructive and uncontrived’ (exhibition catalogue, The New Decade, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1955, pp.74-75).
WILLIAM SCOTT, RA CBE
Greenock, Scotland 1913 – 1989
Born in Greenock, Scotland on 15th February 1913 to an Irish father and Scottish mother, William Scott grew up in Enniskillen, a small town in Northern Ireland. He studied at Belfast College of Art from 1928-31 and at the Royal Academy Schools in London from 1931-35, first in the sculpture school then from 1934 in painting. During his education at the Royal Academy, Scott won a silver medal for sculpture, became a Landseer scholar in painting and on leaving the schools was awarded a Leverhulme Scholarship. In 1936 Scott worked for six months in Mousehole, Cornwall. The following year he married a fellow student at the Royal Academy, Mary Lucas. For the next two years William and Mary Scott travelled and lived abroad, mainly in France, Venice and Rome. William, Mary and Geoffrey Nelson ran an art school at Pont-Aven in Brittany in the summer months of 1938 and 1939, living for the rest of the year in the south at St. Tropez and Cagnes–sur-mer. In 1938 he was elected Societaire du Salon d’Automne, Paris. He left France in the autumn of 1939, spending a few months in Dublin before returning to London. In January 1941 he took a cottage at Hallatrow, near Bristol, where he ran a market garden and taught part-time at Bath Academy.
In 1942 Scott was given his first one-man exhibition at the Leger Galley, London. The same year he volunteered for the army and served nearly four years from 1942-6 in the Royal Engineers, during which time his painting practically ceased. While in the map making section, Scott learnt the technique of lithography. In 1945 he illustrated the Soldier’s Verse, chosen by Patric Dickenson with original lithographs by W. Scott.
In 1946 Scott was appointed Senior Painting Master at Bath Academy, Corsham. He was elected a member of the London Group in 1949 and in 1953, after teaching at a summer school in Canada, Scott visited New York, where he met Jackson Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko and Frans Kline. In 1958 a retrospective exhibition of Scott’s work was exhibited at the British Pavillion at the Venice Biennale, and he was commissioned to create a large mural for Attnagelvin Hospital, Londonderry. In 1959 he was awarded first prize in the painters section at John Moores Liverpool Exhibition. William Scott died on the 28th December 1989.