William Scott (1913 – 1989) was one of the most prominent
British painters of the post war period. Originally from Northern Ireland, he cemented his international reputation when
he was selected to represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1958.

The 1950s see William Scott at the height of his career. His
still life paintings utilise domestic objects – pots, pans, bowls, and plates –
to their essential form. Scott defined them into simple, often flat shapes,
eliminating unnecessary detail but retaining their compositional weight. Scott
manipulated the perspective of the painting, flattening the viewpoint,
elevating the everyday objects.

Scott wrote in Lawrence Alloway’s influential book, Nine
Abstract Artists:

‘The forms I use are the forms I see about me and the forms I
have dreamt about since I was a child. I was brought up in a grey world, an
austere world: the garden I knew was a cemetery and we had no fine furniture.
The objects I painted were the symbols of the life I knew best and the pictures
which looked most like mine were painted on walls a thousand years ago.’1

And later in 1959 he wrote:

‘…some of my paintings are saucepans and other kitchen
utensils on a bare kitchen table, but that does not mean that I’m particularly
attracted to frying pans and saucepans. In fact, I think that these things are
completely uninteresting. That’s why I paint them. They convey nothing, there
is no meaning to them at all, but they are the means to making a picture.’ 2

Scott’s ‘means of making a picture’ in Untitled (Still
Life), 1950, creates a masterly symphony and balance of contrasting
texture, colour, shape and form, within the discipline of a muted palette.

1.
Lawrence Alloway, Nine Abstract Artist,
their work and theory, London, 1954, p.37

2.
From William Scott’s lecture, prepared in
1959 with the help of Sir Alan Bowness at the invitation of the British Council

Both of the above were cited in William
Scott but Norbert Lynton, published by Thames & Hudson, 2004, p. 70

The Estate of the Artist

S. Whitfield (ed.), William Scott, Catalogue Raisonne of Oil Paintings, vol. 1, Thames & Hudson & the William Scott Foundation, 2013, p. 250, no. 176 (ill.)

Leicester Galleries, London, Recent Paintings by William Scott, 1-22 February 1951, no. 25 (as Pan, Eggs and Toasting Fork)
Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Annual Exhibition, 1951, no. 319 (as Kitchen Table Still Life)