Untitled (Composition no. 30)

Scott had been the first of the British artists to encounter the exponents of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists, Mark Rothko; Willem de Kooning; Franz Kline; Jackson Pollock; and James Brook, after an introduction from his dealer, Martha Jackson in 1953 when he spent the summer teaching at Banff School of Art at the University of Alberta. At first he registered: ‘Bewilderment, it was not the originality of the work, but it was the scale, audacity, and self-confidence - something had happened to painting’ (William Scott, quoted in interview with A. Bowness, exhibition catalogue, William Scott: Paintings, Drawings and Gouaches 1938-71, Tate Gallery, London, 1972, p. 71). It changed Scott’s previously European approach to painting for a time and he became a bridge between his British peers, Nicholson, Heron and Hilton, and their American counterparts, extolling the concepts of Abstract Expressionism and channelling it into his work.

The present work was previously recorded as Brown when it was published in SEDA in 1965, before reverting to Composition No. 30, a title which may have been given by Scott himself as it was used for other paintings from this period. It is a composition handled with great confidence, as a soft brown background is enriched by black, orange and ochre shapes, with white and black outlines, which float across the thickly handled paint surface. As Sir Alan Bowness commented of Scott’s work, ‘it is the texture and paint quality that carry the picture’ (William Scott: Paintings, London, 1964, p. 11).