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Lot Essay
We cannot be certain which painting Scott undertook or completed first, the Brown Still Life which the architect Basil Spence commissioned for his dining room or the Blue Still Life. Both are dated 1956, Brown Still Life was number 46 in Scott's 1972 Tate Gallery Retrospective, curated by (Sir) Alan Bowness in close collaboration with the painter; Blue Still Life was number 48, which may indicate their sequence. That Blue Still Life was not shown in Scott's Hanover Gallery exhibition that September-October suggests that it was not ready to be shown then. Visual examination supports this hypothesis.
The paintings are the same size. Spence specified its width to fit the wall behind his sideboard; Scott decided on the picture's height, steering by the Golden Section dear to modern painters as to the old masters, but of especial value to an artist who laid great store by the surface division of his compositions. Only one of Scott's previous paintings had been as large, Table Still Life (55½ x 72 in. British Council collection), itself a development of the unusually large Still Life (45½ x 60½ in.; Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo) he painted for the historic Arts Council's 'Festival of Britain' exhibition of 1951. Again, both paintings were completed the same year, but it is certain that the Table Still Life, not exhibited until 1953, grew out of (so to speak) the earlier piece. It was in these relatively monumental compositions that Scott first gave dividing the surface area the all-important role it played in much of his subsequent works, sometimes blatantly, sometimes quite subtly. The structural division of Brown and of Blue Still Life is the same: in both, the broad band which is the canvas's lower two thirds is presented as a tabletop; the upper third, again side to side, indicates a background, a wall. Various objects are shown as resting on this tabletop, and their presence makes us assume we are looking down onto a surface sloping away from us. Without them, the band of colour which we see as tabletop would feel vertical and spaceless, like the wall.
It was not unusual for Scott to begin a new painting by starting from a structure he had used recently and felt worth exploring further and perhaps to other ends. In this instance, having become in the 1950s almost a specialist in still-life, and having here produced a work which, for all its warmth of colour and echoing forms, is unusually economical, even austere, for Scott in the mid 50s, he found himself drawn to making a richer, busier and more active picture of, otherwise, much the same sort. It is not merely a question of quantities, though where Spence's still life displayed seven objects, in whole or in part, its successor has twice that number. These also range more widely in size and pictorial importance. In the left quarter of Blue Still Life we see a cluster of small things, white, black or grey, that are not easily recognised or named; three of them incorporate little outline forms that could be knobs on lids. The remainder of the surface is commanded by two major objects, the frying-pan, its handle coming towards us, and a grey and white saucepan, seen almost in profile, its handle rising to the right to continue beyond the picture's edge. Several other objects are cut by the right and left edges. This is characteristic of Scott's compositions in the 1950s and after: he liked to suggest that what he painted was a section of a wider arrangement which our imaginations would work with. Hinting at extensions and complications, even sexual action, was an aspect of this painter's pictorial stagecraft, his wit becoming more apparent as his confidence grew and he could rely on an engaged public.
In Brown Still Life the largest object, the one to which Scott gave pride of place just to the right of centre, is a strainer of the sort used for deep-frying chips but shown here as a thing formed of wire which in fact delineates its roundness and the wire handle. To its right come the two saucepans, white and black and opposed also in their handles which rise steeply in the plane of the canvas and cross as though enacting some sort of domestic duel. Nothing of this sort is implied in Blue Still Life, though its stage is more crowded and thus seems noisier. The key location, centre right, is given to an object easily missed, a glass bowl that we might not notice but for its solid white highlight; nothing else in this picture or in the Brown Still Life refers to light falling on these objects to leave highlights or shadows.
Blue Still Life makes significant use of an element not exploited in the earlier picture. Hardly anything in Brown Still Life creates space: the lid of the large white saucepan may or may not be slanting, but only the wire silhouette of the strainer implies space and, wittily, volume without mass. Here, the large frying-pan insists on space. We assume it is a circular pan, shown eliptically in a manner that recalls Cézanne's way with dishes and bowls, and since we think of it as being circular it must also be occupying space in depth. This is then confirmed by the frying-pan's handle, a narrow white form coming away from the dark blue of the pan and sensed as rising slightly as it projects some inches above the tabletop. At this point, therefore, we have no doubt that the tabletop is seen in perspective. In his next paintings Scott would present crowds of kitchen utensils and sometimes a hint of a figure, and some of these works can strike one as quite playful. Here he seems to be on the brink of that adventure. The composition created for the architect has been accomplished and welcomed; now the painter can stretch his wings. In the paintings he did from about 1950 on Scott had avoided giving his compositions pictorial depth while letting them spread beyond their lateral edges. This restriction to the picture plane is now being countermanded, to be re-imposed in his paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, notably in the late still-life pictures that I call neo-classical.
Colour is always important. Size and colour is what we see first, though we may give our first conscious attention to a picture's subject. The basic colour signature of Brown Still Life may well have been determined by what the architect told Scott about his dining room. Hence the all-over brown cast, which the painter modulated as brown to red and pale brown to orange, with neither of the two areas being presented as entirely flat surfaces. The upper third of Blue Still Life is filled with a relatively solid brown. The lower two-thirds, the tabletop, is blue. Neither area, again, is painted as a flat, unmodulated surface. The blue-grey of the lower part, especially, displays a wide range of tones and brushmarks, some of them hinting at alterations made by the painter as he worked. He thought it right to let the evolution of a work show in the result: the varying touches and tones, and the suggestions of vestigial forms superceded in the process, suggest time as well as some depth in the surface itself. The object, more diverse in colour, tone and form that we notice at first, adds substantially to this visual richness. The painter who had, in the earlier 1950s, been making his work more abstract, possibly encouraged by the example of the painters he had come to know and admire during his visit to New York in 1953, was now confirming his roots in the art of Western Europe.
We are very grateful to Professor Norbert Lynton for preparing this catalogue entry.
John Hulton, the previous owner of Blue Still Life, worked on the 1958 Venice Biennale at which William Scott exhibited and would almost certainly have attended the Scott exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, London, in 1956. Hulton, having worked at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, immediately after the Second World War, joined the Fine Arts Department of the British Council in 1948 and he became Director in 1970. John Hulton and Norbert Lynton worked together on the São Paolo Biennale in 1972. Hulton also owned Egyptian, 1963, by David Hockney, R.A., which is being sold as lot 118 in this sale.
The paintings are the same size. Spence specified its width to fit the wall behind his sideboard; Scott decided on the picture's height, steering by the Golden Section dear to modern painters as to the old masters, but of especial value to an artist who laid great store by the surface division of his compositions. Only one of Scott's previous paintings had been as large, Table Still Life (55½ x 72 in. British Council collection), itself a development of the unusually large Still Life (45½ x 60½ in.; Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo) he painted for the historic Arts Council's 'Festival of Britain' exhibition of 1951. Again, both paintings were completed the same year, but it is certain that the Table Still Life, not exhibited until 1953, grew out of (so to speak) the earlier piece. It was in these relatively monumental compositions that Scott first gave dividing the surface area the all-important role it played in much of his subsequent works, sometimes blatantly, sometimes quite subtly. The structural division of Brown and of Blue Still Life is the same: in both, the broad band which is the canvas's lower two thirds is presented as a tabletop; the upper third, again side to side, indicates a background, a wall. Various objects are shown as resting on this tabletop, and their presence makes us assume we are looking down onto a surface sloping away from us. Without them, the band of colour which we see as tabletop would feel vertical and spaceless, like the wall.
It was not unusual for Scott to begin a new painting by starting from a structure he had used recently and felt worth exploring further and perhaps to other ends. In this instance, having become in the 1950s almost a specialist in still-life, and having here produced a work which, for all its warmth of colour and echoing forms, is unusually economical, even austere, for Scott in the mid 50s, he found himself drawn to making a richer, busier and more active picture of, otherwise, much the same sort. It is not merely a question of quantities, though where Spence's still life displayed seven objects, in whole or in part, its successor has twice that number. These also range more widely in size and pictorial importance. In the left quarter of Blue Still Life we see a cluster of small things, white, black or grey, that are not easily recognised or named; three of them incorporate little outline forms that could be knobs on lids. The remainder of the surface is commanded by two major objects, the frying-pan, its handle coming towards us, and a grey and white saucepan, seen almost in profile, its handle rising to the right to continue beyond the picture's edge. Several other objects are cut by the right and left edges. This is characteristic of Scott's compositions in the 1950s and after: he liked to suggest that what he painted was a section of a wider arrangement which our imaginations would work with. Hinting at extensions and complications, even sexual action, was an aspect of this painter's pictorial stagecraft, his wit becoming more apparent as his confidence grew and he could rely on an engaged public.
In Brown Still Life the largest object, the one to which Scott gave pride of place just to the right of centre, is a strainer of the sort used for deep-frying chips but shown here as a thing formed of wire which in fact delineates its roundness and the wire handle. To its right come the two saucepans, white and black and opposed also in their handles which rise steeply in the plane of the canvas and cross as though enacting some sort of domestic duel. Nothing of this sort is implied in Blue Still Life, though its stage is more crowded and thus seems noisier. The key location, centre right, is given to an object easily missed, a glass bowl that we might not notice but for its solid white highlight; nothing else in this picture or in the Brown Still Life refers to light falling on these objects to leave highlights or shadows.
Blue Still Life makes significant use of an element not exploited in the earlier picture. Hardly anything in Brown Still Life creates space: the lid of the large white saucepan may or may not be slanting, but only the wire silhouette of the strainer implies space and, wittily, volume without mass. Here, the large frying-pan insists on space. We assume it is a circular pan, shown eliptically in a manner that recalls Cézanne's way with dishes and bowls, and since we think of it as being circular it must also be occupying space in depth. This is then confirmed by the frying-pan's handle, a narrow white form coming away from the dark blue of the pan and sensed as rising slightly as it projects some inches above the tabletop. At this point, therefore, we have no doubt that the tabletop is seen in perspective. In his next paintings Scott would present crowds of kitchen utensils and sometimes a hint of a figure, and some of these works can strike one as quite playful. Here he seems to be on the brink of that adventure. The composition created for the architect has been accomplished and welcomed; now the painter can stretch his wings. In the paintings he did from about 1950 on Scott had avoided giving his compositions pictorial depth while letting them spread beyond their lateral edges. This restriction to the picture plane is now being countermanded, to be re-imposed in his paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, notably in the late still-life pictures that I call neo-classical.
Colour is always important. Size and colour is what we see first, though we may give our first conscious attention to a picture's subject. The basic colour signature of Brown Still Life may well have been determined by what the architect told Scott about his dining room. Hence the all-over brown cast, which the painter modulated as brown to red and pale brown to orange, with neither of the two areas being presented as entirely flat surfaces. The upper third of Blue Still Life is filled with a relatively solid brown. The lower two-thirds, the tabletop, is blue. Neither area, again, is painted as a flat, unmodulated surface. The blue-grey of the lower part, especially, displays a wide range of tones and brushmarks, some of them hinting at alterations made by the painter as he worked. He thought it right to let the evolution of a work show in the result: the varying touches and tones, and the suggestions of vestigial forms superceded in the process, suggest time as well as some depth in the surface itself. The object, more diverse in colour, tone and form that we notice at first, adds substantially to this visual richness. The painter who had, in the earlier 1950s, been making his work more abstract, possibly encouraged by the example of the painters he had come to know and admire during his visit to New York in 1953, was now confirming his roots in the art of Western Europe.
We are very grateful to Professor Norbert Lynton for preparing this catalogue entry.
John Hulton, the previous owner of Blue Still Life, worked on the 1958 Venice Biennale at which William Scott exhibited and would almost certainly have attended the Scott exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, London, in 1956. Hulton, having worked at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, immediately after the Second World War, joined the Fine Arts Department of the British Council in 1948 and he became Director in 1970. John Hulton and Norbert Lynton worked together on the São Paolo Biennale in 1972. Hulton also owned Egyptian, 1963, by David Hockney, R.A., which is being sold as lot 118 in this sale.