.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The 1950s was a breakthrough decade for Scott, culminating in the British Council’s selection of 20 of his paintings for display at the Venice Biennale, which toured in 1958-59 to Paris, Cologne, Brussels, Zurich and Rotterdam. Although not exhibited there, Blue Still Life may well have been painted in Venice, where Scott was lent a studio for the duration of the Biennale. He is known to have painted a series of 16 x 20 inch pictures there: still lifes consisting of just a few bowls or pans on a table-top, with or without the horizon line marking the far edge of the table, so common to previous renditions of the artist’s still life.
Described by distinguished art critic, Hilton Kramer as ‘the best painter of his generation in England’, William Scott is most often admired for his inimitable brand of still life, paintings populated by the pots and pans of his mother’s kitchen, forms which, the artist explained in an interview in 1954, ‘I have dreamt about since I was a child’ (quoted in R. Alley and T.P Flanagan, William Scott, Belfast, 1986, p. 24). There exists in Scott’s still lifes a contrast between the austerity of his subject-objects, symbols of the life he knew best, and the sensuality with which they are depicted. This dialectical relationship between austerity and sensuality is evident in Blue Still Life.
Key to such sensuality was Scott’s interest in the textured quality of the painted surface, something which assumed increasing importance in his oeuvre throughout the 1950s. ‘The actual touch and the way I put paint on canvas matter very much … I am extremely interested in textural qualities - the thick paint, the thin paint, the scratched lines, the almost careful-careless way in which a picture’s painted. I don’t like a picture painted with too much know-how’ (William Scott quoted in A. Bowness (ed.), William Scott: Paintings, London, 1964, p. 11). Blue Still Life is composed simply of two bowls and two cup shapes unanchored and seeming to float in thickly, richly coated blue-black space, and is a prime example of the ‘careful-careless’ way in which Scott loved to paint. Scott sought to express himself in colour; the exploration of colour and more specifically, of tonal variations in monochromatic colour, as exemplified in Blue Still Life, is also central to the sensuality of Scott’s approach to painting.
Blue Still Life also demonstrates the artist’s desire to achieve a synthesis between objects and space. In a statement in 1955 he explained that, ‘what interests me in the beginning of a picture is the division of spaces and forms; these must be made to move and animated like living matter’ (quoted in exhibition catalogue, The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors, New York, MOMA, 1955). Untethered to a table-top, the subject-objects in Blue Still Life seem imbued with a kind of autonomy, a life of their own and yet, as can be seen by the line which separates the cup on the right hand side of the canvas from the rest of the group, they are subject still to Scott’s structural vision. What animates these objects, or ‘personages’ as the artist’s friend and fellow artist, Patrick Heron, referred to them, is a mysterious quality, a sort of cryptic energy which belies at first glance the simplicity of the scenes Scott sets. ‘Behind the façade of pots and pans there is sometimes another image … a private one, ambiguous … sensed rather than seen’ (William Scott quoted in A. Bowness (ed.), ibid, p. 8). As in Blue Still Life, despite the sensuality and vigour of the brushstrokes, there is an almost electrifying sense too of restraint and inhibition.
Described by distinguished art critic, Hilton Kramer as ‘the best painter of his generation in England’, William Scott is most often admired for his inimitable brand of still life, paintings populated by the pots and pans of his mother’s kitchen, forms which, the artist explained in an interview in 1954, ‘I have dreamt about since I was a child’ (quoted in R. Alley and T.P Flanagan, William Scott, Belfast, 1986, p. 24). There exists in Scott’s still lifes a contrast between the austerity of his subject-objects, symbols of the life he knew best, and the sensuality with which they are depicted. This dialectical relationship between austerity and sensuality is evident in Blue Still Life.
Key to such sensuality was Scott’s interest in the textured quality of the painted surface, something which assumed increasing importance in his oeuvre throughout the 1950s. ‘The actual touch and the way I put paint on canvas matter very much … I am extremely interested in textural qualities - the thick paint, the thin paint, the scratched lines, the almost careful-careless way in which a picture’s painted. I don’t like a picture painted with too much know-how’ (William Scott quoted in A. Bowness (ed.), William Scott: Paintings, London, 1964, p. 11). Blue Still Life is composed simply of two bowls and two cup shapes unanchored and seeming to float in thickly, richly coated blue-black space, and is a prime example of the ‘careful-careless’ way in which Scott loved to paint. Scott sought to express himself in colour; the exploration of colour and more specifically, of tonal variations in monochromatic colour, as exemplified in Blue Still Life, is also central to the sensuality of Scott’s approach to painting.
Blue Still Life also demonstrates the artist’s desire to achieve a synthesis between objects and space. In a statement in 1955 he explained that, ‘what interests me in the beginning of a picture is the division of spaces and forms; these must be made to move and animated like living matter’ (quoted in exhibition catalogue, The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors, New York, MOMA, 1955). Untethered to a table-top, the subject-objects in Blue Still Life seem imbued with a kind of autonomy, a life of their own and yet, as can be seen by the line which separates the cup on the right hand side of the canvas from the rest of the group, they are subject still to Scott’s structural vision. What animates these objects, or ‘personages’ as the artist’s friend and fellow artist, Patrick Heron, referred to them, is a mysterious quality, a sort of cryptic energy which belies at first glance the simplicity of the scenes Scott sets. ‘Behind the façade of pots and pans there is sometimes another image … a private one, ambiguous … sensed rather than seen’ (William Scott quoted in A. Bowness (ed.), ibid, p. 8). As in Blue Still Life, despite the sensuality and vigour of the brushstrokes, there is an almost electrifying sense too of restraint and inhibition.