William Scott 1913-1989
Whites, 1960
oil on canvas
30.5 x 35.4 cm
12 x 14 in
12 x 14 in
signed and dated verso
As Scott’s work became slowly more abstract throughout the 1950s, many critics felt his work differed from that of contemporary abstract painters of the time because unlike them, Scott still...
As Scott’s work became slowly more abstract throughout the 1950s, many critics felt his work differed from that of contemporary abstract painters of the time because unlike them, Scott still depicted the still life objects of his preoccupations, only he did it through the lens of abstraction. Moving away from the sometimes more cluttered and claustrophobic abstracted tabletop still life paintings of the late-1950s, the present example heralds something new, clearer and closer to the pure abstraction Scott was moving towards. Occupying half of the picture are two of Scott’s favoured forms, a square and a cup-like semicircle. Above them the negative space extends with two rectangular shapes hovering in the upper regions of the pictorial landscape. Formally, the work exudes a rather clean-cut and decisive quality, the brushwork is light and the forms look almost as though they could have been cut out and stuck on; the forms still carry something of an objective subject, but there are far fewer of them when compared with work from a year earlier. Scott must have deemed the composition a successful one as he went onto revisit a version of it again.