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Lot Essay
Shown in William Scott's 1956 exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, Brown Still Life stood out for its size and for being 'Not For Sale'. Alone among Scott's many 'easel paintings' (as opposed to murals), it had been commissioned to fit a particular place. The commission came from the architect (Sir) Basil Spence who was then developing his designs for Coventry Cathedral and working closely with a number of British artists he knew and admired in order to engage some of them to make new works of art for specific parts of the new church, including Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Elisabeth Frink, Geoffrey Clarke and Jacob Epstein.
Scott was not invited to contribute to that piece of post-war reconstruction and renewal. In spite of some dramatic figure paintings he made in the mid-1950s, and earlier works hovering between abstraction and landscape and/or figures, he was generally regarded as a painter of abstemious still lifes. Spence asked Scott to make a painting to hang in the dining room of his house in Canonbury. The placing determined its width; its height may have been left for the painter to decide. The canvas Scott produced has the proportion of 1:1.64, which is very close to the Golden Section (1:1.62). He made other large paintings of similar proportions in 1956, including the White Reclining Nude which Martha Jackson, his New York dealer, bought for her personal collection before it was given to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. Scott used the Golden Section ratio again in the early 1970s when he was painting some of the finest of his late still lifes, called 'neoclassical' on account of their refinement and air of simplicity.
Many of his mid-1950s still lifes use a blue-grey-black colour chord. Reds, oranges and browns show more often in Scotts' nudes of the time, but become prominent in several still lifes of 1957 and after as though his working on the Spence painting had produced an urge in him to paint still lifes in brighter, more advancing hues. Already in 1957 he painted major still lifes in browns and oranges and in a strong deep orange (two paintings in the British Council collection), and then his exceptionally large work on paper, Gouache: Abstract (in the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester) in which still life forms, large and small (bowls, pots, pans etc.) are crowded together as though in optimistic expectation of the Last Trump to form a radiant surface of reds, oranges and white.
For Spence's still life, Scott chose colour fields in a lower key - a rich brown, painted over red, for the tabletop that occupies two-thirds of its area and, for the wall behind it filling the upper third, a creamy, greyish pale brown. These two, with what is sensed as a horizontal line between them, give the whole picture a hint of landscape or even, with its format close to marine proportions, of a seascape. The objects, in white and black, Scott shows on the table are few and, mostly, far apart. They are rendered as more or less flat silhouettes, except for the deep-fry strainer in black line alone, the form of which hints at perspective without actually demanding depth. Two white forms, right left, are cut by the canvas's edges - a characteristic Scott device, probably learnt from Bonnard, which makes the composition feel wider than it is. The strainer and the white and black saucepans next to it are set on one line (major vessels sailing purposefully past the smaller craft?), and those two saucepans enact a little drama that Scott had rehearsed in smaller still lifes done the same year. Their long, rising handles, little more than a white line and a black line, cross like fencing foils. Scott said that he enjoyed working symbols into his still lifes but refused to specify them, so that our looking for them or ignoring them depends on our dispositions. I have already given my reading of those opposed lines, their dramatic presence enhanced by the way they rise into the paler top bank of the picture. Even so, is this sport or a serious duel? Crossed handles implying cross words? The peaceable character of the picture as a whole inclines me to a pacific reading: sport, not war. Also, Scott knew of our general tendency to assimilate pictures from left to right, so, having brought us in at the left edge with a really rather long white handle belonging to a small white saucepan, he wanted also to lead us out, on the right, via the larger white saucepan's more compelling handle. Opposing the black saucepan and handle to that slows us down and puts the picture's main event, as so often, to the right of centre. He liked his compositions to tease our reading habits by taking them close to, or making them lie across, the divisions we make between still life, figure painting, landscape etc. and probably hoped we would sense qualities of land- and sea-scape in this picture.
Anthony Denny discusses the interior of Sir Basil Spence's dining room in his house in Canonbury, 'The furnishings and decoration of the dining room were designed around the tawny browns, creams and greys of a large William Scott still life. The sideboard and fire-place fittings, as well as the chairs, were designed by Mr Spence, the last in conjunction with Morris of Glasgow for the Scottish Industries Exhibition at Glasgow in 1949' (op. cit.).
We are very grateful to Professor Norbert Lynton, author of the monograph William Scott (2004), for providing this catalogue entry.
Scott was not invited to contribute to that piece of post-war reconstruction and renewal. In spite of some dramatic figure paintings he made in the mid-1950s, and earlier works hovering between abstraction and landscape and/or figures, he was generally regarded as a painter of abstemious still lifes. Spence asked Scott to make a painting to hang in the dining room of his house in Canonbury. The placing determined its width; its height may have been left for the painter to decide. The canvas Scott produced has the proportion of 1:1.64, which is very close to the Golden Section (1:1.62). He made other large paintings of similar proportions in 1956, including the White Reclining Nude which Martha Jackson, his New York dealer, bought for her personal collection before it was given to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. Scott used the Golden Section ratio again in the early 1970s when he was painting some of the finest of his late still lifes, called 'neoclassical' on account of their refinement and air of simplicity.
Many of his mid-1950s still lifes use a blue-grey-black colour chord. Reds, oranges and browns show more often in Scotts' nudes of the time, but become prominent in several still lifes of 1957 and after as though his working on the Spence painting had produced an urge in him to paint still lifes in brighter, more advancing hues. Already in 1957 he painted major still lifes in browns and oranges and in a strong deep orange (two paintings in the British Council collection), and then his exceptionally large work on paper, Gouache: Abstract (in the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester) in which still life forms, large and small (bowls, pots, pans etc.) are crowded together as though in optimistic expectation of the Last Trump to form a radiant surface of reds, oranges and white.
For Spence's still life, Scott chose colour fields in a lower key - a rich brown, painted over red, for the tabletop that occupies two-thirds of its area and, for the wall behind it filling the upper third, a creamy, greyish pale brown. These two, with what is sensed as a horizontal line between them, give the whole picture a hint of landscape or even, with its format close to marine proportions, of a seascape. The objects, in white and black, Scott shows on the table are few and, mostly, far apart. They are rendered as more or less flat silhouettes, except for the deep-fry strainer in black line alone, the form of which hints at perspective without actually demanding depth. Two white forms, right left, are cut by the canvas's edges - a characteristic Scott device, probably learnt from Bonnard, which makes the composition feel wider than it is. The strainer and the white and black saucepans next to it are set on one line (major vessels sailing purposefully past the smaller craft?), and those two saucepans enact a little drama that Scott had rehearsed in smaller still lifes done the same year. Their long, rising handles, little more than a white line and a black line, cross like fencing foils. Scott said that he enjoyed working symbols into his still lifes but refused to specify them, so that our looking for them or ignoring them depends on our dispositions. I have already given my reading of those opposed lines, their dramatic presence enhanced by the way they rise into the paler top bank of the picture. Even so, is this sport or a serious duel? Crossed handles implying cross words? The peaceable character of the picture as a whole inclines me to a pacific reading: sport, not war. Also, Scott knew of our general tendency to assimilate pictures from left to right, so, having brought us in at the left edge with a really rather long white handle belonging to a small white saucepan, he wanted also to lead us out, on the right, via the larger white saucepan's more compelling handle. Opposing the black saucepan and handle to that slows us down and puts the picture's main event, as so often, to the right of centre. He liked his compositions to tease our reading habits by taking them close to, or making them lie across, the divisions we make between still life, figure painting, landscape etc. and probably hoped we would sense qualities of land- and sea-scape in this picture.
Anthony Denny discusses the interior of Sir Basil Spence's dining room in his house in Canonbury, 'The furnishings and decoration of the dining room were designed around the tawny browns, creams and greys of a large William Scott still life. The sideboard and fire-place fittings, as well as the chairs, were designed by Mr Spence, the last in conjunction with Morris of Glasgow for the Scottish Industries Exhibition at Glasgow in 1949' (op. cit.).
We are very grateful to Professor Norbert Lynton, author of the monograph William Scott (2004), for providing this catalogue entry.