The Artist, from whom acquired directly by Robert Fusillo in 1959
Acquired directly from the above by Gimpel Fils, London, 1993, where acquired by David Bowie

Nacogdoches, Stephen F. Austin State University, An Exhibition of the Fusillo Private Collection of Contemporary Art, 4th October - 1st November 1964, cat. no.22;
Atlanta, Georgia State University Art Gallery, The Collection of Mr & Mrs Robert J. Fusillo. Contemporary Works, 30th October - 25th November 1970, cat. no.24 (as Winter Still Life II).

Sarah Whitfield (ed.), William Scott Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings Vol. 2, Thames and Hudson, London, 2013, cat. no.285, illustrated p.140.

Original canvas. There is a repair patch visible to the reverse of the canvas, in the upper right quadrant. There are some scattered lines of craquelure in places, and some minor instances of reticulation. There is some light surface dirt and some speckles of mould, most apparent in the lower left quadrant. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals an uneven varnish layer. There are some signs of retouching in the upper left quadrant, corresponding to the aforementioned patch. There is a fleck of retouching to the top of the white saucepan, a spot to the upper right edge of the frying pan on the left, and a few flecks to the black pan at the right edge. There are also some scattered flecks of retouching around the extreme edges, most apparent at the lower right corner. Unframed. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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William Scott once described still life as 'my chief occupation' (the Artist, Alan Bowness, William Scott: Paintings, 1964, p.7). From his first tentative explorations, still fresh from years of academic training, until the end of his career, Scott remained 'overwhelmed by the fact that the subject had hardly changed for a thousand years’, feeling that each generation ‘expressed its own period and feelings and time within this terribly limited narrow range' (ibid.).

For a brief two year period, following his visit to New York in 1953 when he was introduced to the leading Abstract Expressionists, Scott’s work approached near total abstraction. However he soon returned to the still life with renewed vigour and by 1956 was working on four paintings intended for The Seasons, a contemporary art exhibition at the Tate. He exhibited only three pictures, Winter Still Life (Tate, London), Brown Still Life (Private Collection) and Still Life, Blue (National Gallery of Canada), but chose to keep the fourth, the present lot, in his꧙ own collection for a further three years before selling it to 🙈the esteemed private collector Robert Fusillo.

Scott consistently employed the still-life as a means to explore the same concerns as his American counterparts while retaining an inherently British qu🔯ality to his pictures. However he couldn’t reconcile the daring and direct style of Rothko, Pollock, de Kooning and Kline, who were buoyed by an economic boom and atmosphere of infinite possibility, with the brutal realities of recovery in post-war Europe. Although the present work removes almost any illusion to depth and perspective, it still draws inspiration from the familiar 'old country objects' which surrounded the artist in childhood and now hung on the walls of his West Country studio.

The isolated bright white of the saucepan contrasts brilliantly to the painting’s richly textured surface of blues, navies and blacks. The shapes and forms emerge slowly from the darkness, almost forming an austere kitchen on a dark winter’s day, challenging our inclination to impose form and order on abstract shapes and colours. The flat pictorial plane, the impossible tilt of the table, the handles which carve up blocks of colour: all work to reference the still life tradition whilst also seeking to redefine it, to strip it of any adherence to realism and to 'carry us into unfamiliar territory that lies beyond the clutter of the millions of visual images that bombard our consciousness every second of the day' (Jonathan Benington et al., William Scott: Simplicity and Subject, Bath, 2013, p.9).