Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1 MARCH 2023

28 15 WILLIAM SCOTT RA (1913–89) Still Life Forms (1969) Gouache on paper, 29.5 x 42cm (11½ × 16½”) Signed and dated (19)’69 This work is registered in the William Scott Archive as number 2361 Provenance : Collection of R.W.Wilson, Dublin Exhibited : Queen’s Art Gallery, Belfast, Selling Exhibition in Aid of Innocent Victims Fund, 1-8 November 1969, where purchased by R.W. Wilson € 20,000 - 30,000 William Scott is widely regarded as one of the most inno- vative artists of the twentieth century, noted in particular for his unique combination of still life and abstraction. Scott was born in Greenock, in Scotland, and subsequent- ly moved with his family to his father’s native Enniskillen at the age of eleven, where his education as an artist began. He continued his studies at the Belfast College of Art, fol- lowed by the Royal Academy Schools.in London. He trav- elled in Europe, returning to the UK at the onset of World War II, and taught for a time at the Bath Academy of Art. By the late 1950s, his reputation was established when he was one of three artists chosen to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1958. While at the outset, the content of William Scott’s work was easily identifiable, his tendency to stylisation rather than illusionistic realism was soon evident. Over the years, Scott explored a number of thematic genres in his artwork. However, his interest in still life themes predominated and provided subject matter throughout his life as an artist. His interpretation focused on the humble, domestic objects of a working-class environment, and he explained that the objects he painted were the symbols of the life he knew best. Still life provided a substantial range of methods for Wil- liam Scott, and his work evolved through an array of dis- tinct phases. For example, during the late 1950s, his ‘table top’ images were crowded with forms and texture, and his relatively monochromatic leanings were shot through with elements of vibrant, contrasting colour. This gave way to a more spacious and airy aesthetic bordering on abstraction that was fully realised, in the mid 1960s, with his celebrated Berlin Blues series. He continued to venture between the two genres of still life and abstraction, each informing the other. Scott often worked with an almost monochromatic selection of col- our as Still Life Forms (1969) demonstrates, using tonal variations for definition. The stark contrasts of white and black objects are fore- grounded by the grey surround, and the paler greys of two further containers add visual interest as they denote depth in the compo- sition. A further bowl-shaped object, on the lower right, appears ‘cut off ’ as though continuing beyond the picture surface. Thus the artist finds a way to play with volumes and space, with tones and profiles, thereby translating a series of ordinary domestic objects into a dynamic abstraction that emphasises rather than diminishes their symbolic relevance in his life. Remarkably, with such a humble and selective range of objects, Scott found multiple arrangements and colours to explore, on the brink of abstraction. The airiness of the image, and the clean, confident outlines, here drawn in what presents as thick, dark pencil, might suggest at first glance an adhesion to the ‘machine aesthetic’ pioneered by some Modernists to suggest the democratisation of the image with the elimination of thedistinctive handof the artist. However, observation of the work of William Scott identifies its more typical hand-crafted nature; the apparently flat surfaces exhibit the textures of his brush- work, and the objects retain a deliberately blurred edge as paint is allowed to respond to the condition of the surface. Pentimenti – the ghostly lines of obscured earlier marks, almost erased or painted over – indicate how the artist’s changes of mind reflect the evolution towards a greater balance, and where that process is allowed by the artist to be just discernible. Scott enriched his own explorations with an awareness of the achievements of artists whose work he witnessed in galleries and exhibitions, including Piero della Francesca, Chardin, Cézanne, and Matisse. He observed: ‘My interest in still life painting grew directly out of looking at Cézanne. I wanted to look at Cézanne not through cubist eyes, but rather through the eyes of Chardin.’ He went on to explain that: ‘There were few works to be seen, but the great French exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1932 while I was a student jolted me towards new art.’ (1) Contemporaneous artists also provided important impetus in his explorations. Scott went to the United States in 1953, invited by gallerist Martha Jackson as he prepared his exhibitions there, and he came into contact with Yves Klein, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, as well as Mark Rothko who subsequently visited him in Somerset. Scott explained: ‘My experience in America gave me a determination to re-paint much of what I had left unfinished in terms of symbolic still life.’ (2) William Scott addressed familiar domestic utensils, distilling them from their everyday, three-dimensional, practicality, to the cool and airy abstraction of his work. The inherent contradictions in his practice, and the visual tensions evoked, give the work a unique dynamism so that even the most deceptively simple arrangement remains compelling and intriguing. Dr. Yvonne Scott, January 2023