William Scott
Pans, eggs and a table top, abstracted until only the shapes and the intervals are left.
William Scott was born in Greenock in 1913, grew up in Enniskillen, and trained at Belfast and the Royal Academy Schools. He served in the war as a lithographic draughtsman and taught at Bath Academy of Art at Corsham, where his students included a good part of the next British generation. The subject barely changes across forty years: a frying pan, a saucepan, eggs, a fish, a colander, laid on a table and seen from above, then progressively flattened, simplified and pushed towards abstraction without ever entirely leaving the kitchen. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1958 and died in 1989.
The still lifes are the core of the market and the degree of abstraction, along with the date, is what distinguishes them. Paintings are unique and are usually oil on canvas, often in muted browns, ochres, blacks and whites with occasional strong colour, and the flat grounds show retouching plainly. Works on paper — gouaches, drawings and a significant print output of lithographs and screenprints — are numerous. Signature and date are frequently on the reverse. The William Scott Foundation maintains the catalogue raisonne and is the reference.
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