Still Life

Still Life is thought to be one of a group of four small paintings that Scott painted in Venice in the summer of 1958 when he was lent a studio in the Accademia during the Biennale, where he was representing Britain. Norbert Lynton describes this series: ‘The new paintings are still lifes consisting of just a few bowls and pans on a tabletop, with or without the horizon line that marks the far edge of the table, but with the table itself brought right forward… sometimes grouped more formally as in Morandi’s characteristic paintings of the 1950s. The table becomes a stage, the objects become performers, dramatis personae, ready to regroup and perform again the next day. There is a quiet concentration about these paintings that distinguishes them from the much larger canvases then glowing and flowing from the walls of the British Pavilion, even though Scott’s means are essentially the same. It may be he was reconsidering his essential purposes’ (N. Lynton, William Scott, London, 2004, p. 207).

As can be seen, the present work was painted at an important time for Scott’s artistic development as he continued to distil his subjects to organic forms while simultaneously perfecting the still life so central to his oeuvre. Characteristic of Scott’s work of 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. Warmed by a cardinal red, Still Life is a masterful example of Scott’s pictorial stagecraft.

We are very grateful to The William Scott Foundation for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.