William Scott
Paintings and DrawingsFifties Through Eighties
October 16 – December 21, 2019
William Scott CBE, RA (1913-1989), acclaimed British artist of the Post-war generation was, together with Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron, considered one of the giants of the Modernist movement in the UK. Patrick Heron, who also doubled as ‘one of the finest art critics of the century’, wrote perceptively of Scott’s work. ‘It is the sensation of space and depth in a painted flatness,’ he explained in 1953, ‘that inspires much contemporary painting. Scott is a brilliant exponent of it.’
Scott was born in Greenock, Scotland, in 1913 and raised in Northern Ireland, where he lost his father in an accident at an early age. Winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in London, the young Scott became friends and room-mates with the poet Dylan Thomas. Following five years in the army, he then settled in England with his wife, the sculptor Mary Scott, and their two boys. It was shortly after the war was over that he became Head of Painting at the Bath Academy of Art. His paintings are in public collections around the world, including the Tate, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, the Art Gallery of Toronto and many others in the UK and in Ireland.
