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Lot Essay
Ronald Alley discusses the paint surface of Scott's oils from the late 1950s, 'The quality of the picture surface was now extremely important, the textural contrasts, the thin paint and the thick paint and the scratched lines. But although Scott treated oil paint as a delectable substance, he was anxious to avoid a too perfect finish, a facile smartness: he wanted the surfaces to have tension and vitality and to show signs of a struggle. Hence his careful-careless way of applying the paint, his practice of allowing corrections to show through, and his liking for what he calls 'the beauty of the thing done badly'.
Though the encrusted impasto and colour blocks of certain of these works may have owed something to Nicolas de Staël (a memorial exhibition of whose work was shown in London in the summer of 1956), Scott was, as always, quick to absorb his borrowings and made them his own. The blocks of colour in his paintings in fact often resembled the old stones in the dry stone walls surrounding his cottage and studios at Hallatrow' (see R. Alley, William Scott, London, 1963, pp. 10-11).
Though the encrusted impasto and colour blocks of certain of these works may have owed something to Nicolas de Staël (a memorial exhibition of whose work was shown in London in the summer of 1956), Scott was, as always, quick to absorb his borrowings and made them his own. The blocks of colour in his paintings in fact often resembled the old stones in the dry stone walls surrounding his cottage and studios at Hallatrow' (see R. Alley, William Scott, London, 1963, pp. 10-11).