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William Scott OBE RA (1913-1989) FRYING PAN AND EGGS, 1952 signed lower left oil on canvas 81 by ...

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William Scott OBE RA (1913-1989) FRYING PAN AND EGGS, 1952 signed lower left oil on canvas 81 by ...
William Scott OBE RA (1913-1989)
FRYING PAN AND EGGS, 1952
signed lower left
oil on canvas
81 by 65cm., 32 x 25.5in.
Provenance:
Collection of Martha Jackson, New York;
Thence to her son, David Anderson, of the Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, New York;
Private collection, London
Exhibited:
’Three British Artists’, (Francis Bacon, Barbara Hepworth and William Scott)
Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 12 October – 6 November 1954, catalogue no.16;
’Paintings & Sculptures from the Collection of Martha Jackson’, Martha Jackson
Gallery, New York, 24 January – 11 February 1956;
’William Scott Memorial Exhibition’, David Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, New York,
26 September – 31 October 1992
In 1950 William Scott was given a small retrospective at the Whitehall Gallery
in London. It was more than twenty years since he had enrolled as a student at
the Belfast College of Art and his neo-Romantic, French influenced works had
already endeared him to collectors and institutions alike. Around this time, he
turned increasingly to such subject matter as would traditionally be associated
with classical still life painting - pots, pans, bowls, fish and eggs. However,
the associative, metaphoric qualities of these items interested him only
briefly. During the summer of 1952 he produced a long series of gouache studies,
in which he simplified the still life forms, producing rigorously abstract
compositions. These were then the basis for a brave new direction in his art,
namely large-scale abstract paintings.
Abstract painters were then a beleaguered and misunderstood minority in Britain.
Roger Hilton, Victor Pasmore, Peter Lanyon and Terry Frost all experienced the
same resistance encountered a generation earlier in Ireland by Evie Hone and
Mainie Jellett. However, far from being stifled, Scott derived inspiration from
Europe in the heavily gestural work of such artists as Dubuffet and de Stael. He
concentrated on the texture of paint surfaces, the "fat dream of paint" - "thick
white pigment / knifed and scrubbed" - as described by Derek Mahon in Shapes and
Shadows, a poem inspired by a painting of Scott’s of the same title1.
Frying Pan and Eggs predates Scott’s first visit to North America by only a few
months. However, the success there of abstract expressionists Rothko, Pollock,
de Kooning and others was such that when Scott first exhibited in New York in
1954, he was immediately accepted as an equal by an appreciative art
establishment. This work was included in his first American exhibition, ‘Three
British Artists’, alongside works by Barbara Hepworth and Francis Bacon. The
gallery’s owner, Martha Jackson, was so impressed with Scott’s work that she
purchased the present work for her personal collection, where it remained until
her death in 1969. It then passed to her son, David Anderson, who exhibited it
along with other works of Scott’s in a memorial exhibition in 1992, whence it
was purchased by the present owner.
1 Adrian Rice and Angela Reid (ed.s), A Conversation Piece: Poetry and Art,
Abbey Press, Newry, 2002, pp. 91-92
€80,000-€100,000 (£56,00-£70,000 sterling approx.)