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Lot Essay
The location of the present work is Port-Manech, a small village a
short distance to the south of Pont-Aven, Brittany. Ronald Alley,
writing in the 1986 exhibition catalogue discusses Scott's work of the late 1930s and the lure of the region, 'Pont-Aven had a long tradition as an artist's colony and was particularly associated with Gauguin and his followers, who had worked there in the 1880s and 1890s. Scott's
models even included an old woman who had posed in her youth for
Gauguin, and he also met two artists who were former members of
Gauguin's circle, Emile Bernard and Maurice Denis. In October 1938 he exhibited two paintings at the Salon d'Automne and was elected a
sociétaire of the salon; and in the course of visits to Paris he came to know several of the younger French painters such as Francis Tailleux and Tal Coat.
The paintings made at Pont-Aven consisted mostly of studies of the human figure, painted from a model in the studio, plus a number of flower pieces and a few landscapes. They show his interest in the work of such artists as Derain, Cézanne and Modigliani, but are rendered with great simplicity in bare settings, combined with a sensuous handling of paint and colour.
Although he attempted to paint landscapes in a kind of Cézanne manner he found that fundamentally he did not respond enough to nature to be a landscape painter. 'I don't respond to air and sea and the things of nature, and when I approached landscape it was the man-made things that attracted me'. Thus he tended to concentrate on such features as the stone walls enclosing a harbour, which he used to divide up the picture and contrasted with large areas of emptiness' (see R. Alley, Exhibition catalogue, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, William Scott, Belfast, 1986, p. 11).
short distance to the south of Pont-Aven, Brittany. Ronald Alley,
writing in the 1986 exhibition catalogue discusses Scott's work of the late 1930s and the lure of the region, 'Pont-Aven had a long tradition as an artist's colony and was particularly associated with Gauguin and his followers, who had worked there in the 1880s and 1890s. Scott's
models even included an old woman who had posed in her youth for
Gauguin, and he also met two artists who were former members of
Gauguin's circle, Emile Bernard and Maurice Denis. In October 1938 he exhibited two paintings at the Salon d'Automne and was elected a
sociétaire of the salon; and in the course of visits to Paris he came to know several of the younger French painters such as Francis Tailleux and Tal Coat.
The paintings made at Pont-Aven consisted mostly of studies of the human figure, painted from a model in the studio, plus a number of flower pieces and a few landscapes. They show his interest in the work of such artists as Derain, Cézanne and Modigliani, but are rendered with great simplicity in bare settings, combined with a sensuous handling of paint and colour.
Although he attempted to paint landscapes in a kind of Cézanne manner he found that fundamentally he did not respond enough to nature to be a landscape painter. 'I don't respond to air and sea and the things of nature, and when I approached landscape it was the man-made things that attracted me'. Thus he tended to concentrate on such features as the stone walls enclosing a harbour, which he used to divide up the picture and contrasted with large areas of emptiness' (see R. Alley, Exhibition catalogue, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, William Scott, Belfast, 1986, p. 11).