William George Scott was a British artist. Representing a combination of abstract and figurative art, his still lifes, nudes, and landscapes, made in oil or gouache, depict a variety of forms from everyday life.
Background
Ethnicity:
William Scott’s father came from the Nothern Ireland, and his mother was Scot.
William Scott was born on February 15, 1913, in Greenock, Scotland, United Kingdom. He was a son of William John Scott, a house painter and signwriter, and Agnes Scott (maiden name Murray).
Education
William Scott spent the first ten years of his life in Scotland. In 1924, he relocated with his mother to the native town of his father in Northern Ireland, Enniskillen. Scott’s father died while helping to save people in a fire.
Scott attended the local Model school and studied art on Kathleen Bridle’s night classes at the Technical School. He became a student of the Belfast School of Art in 1928. Aided by a scholarship which he was given three years later, William had an opportunity to pursue his artistic training in the Royal Academy Schools, first in the sculpture department, then in the painting one.
Scott’s academic achievements were marked by a silver medal and a title of a Landseer scholar. Painters Alfred Janes, Mervyn Levy, and a poet Dylan Thomas were among his fellows.
Later, Scott was bestowed honorary doctorates from the Royal College of Art in London, Queen’s University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin.
William Scott started his career in France and Italy where he lived from 1937 to 1939. During his residence in Pont-Aven, Scott established an art school along with the painter Geoffrey Nelson. In 1938, the artist presented his artworks at the Paris Salon d’Automne.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Scott came back to his homeland and settled down in Somerset where he helped to manage an art school. In 1942, he joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and then shifted to the Royal Engineers in a capacity of a lithographic draughtsman. Scott pursued his artistic activity throughout the war, including the participation in the solo and group exhibitions, till his discharge in 1946.
After the end of the War, William Scott became a senior lecturer on a painting department of the Bath Academy of Art, Corsham Court, Wiltshire. During the ten years spent at the institution, Scott was involved in Cornwall’s St. Ives Group of artists. He also traveled to the United States where he got acquainted with Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. Although Scott adopted abstractionism after the encounters, his art of the period was mostly represented by figurative still-lifes. Many of the works were demonstrated at the solo shows in the Leicester Galleries, London in 1948 and 1951. The next exhibition held at the Hanover Gallery in a couple of years was composed of abstract canvases.
In the middle of the 1950s, Scott gave up full-time teaching but remained true to academics till the end of his days. In 1958, he took part in the Venice Biennale as a representative of the United Kingdom, and then, in the same capacity, at São Paulo Bienal three years later. The international acclaim he received by the time provided him with similar invitations to the art events from the British Council during the subsequent years.
The retrospectives of his works were organized around the world, including the shows in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Japan, Canada, and Australia. The major one that included more than 125 of his works was held in 1972 in the Tate Gallery, London. The following year, William Scott made an educational trip to India, Australia, and Mexico as a British Council lecturer.
The last major exhibition of Scott’s works while still alive was organized in 1986 by the Ulster Museum in Belfast. It was shown in Dublin and Edinburgh as well.
Quotations:
"I am an abstract artist in the sense that I abstract. I cannot be called non-figurative while I am still interested in the modern magic of space, primitive sex forms, the sensual and the erotic, disconcerting contours, the things of life."
"I find beauty in plainness, in a conception which is precise."
Membership
William Scott was elected a member of the London Group in 1949. He was also elected a Royal Academician in 1984.
London Group
,
United Kingdom
1949
Royal Academy of Arts
,
United Kingdom
1984
Personality
William Scott found the inspiration for his figurative canvases in prehistoric art, children’s drawings, as well as in the paintings of Jean-Siméon Chardin, Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, and Amedeo Modigliani.
Interests
farming
Artists
Jean-Siméon Chardin, Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, Amedeo Modigliani
Connections
William Scott met his future wife, Mary Lucas, while studying at the Royal Academy Schools. They married on May 19, 1937. The family produced two children named Robert and James.
William Scott
This volume includes works from all periods of William Scott's career – most reproduced in full color – introduced and assessed by the art historian Norbert Lynton, who was given full access to Scott's private archive by the William Scott Estate.