IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 27 MAY 2024 AT 6PM

80 53 William Scott CBE RA (1913-1989) ONE PEAR, 1979 oil on canvas signed and dated on reverse 12 by 16in. (30.5 by 40.6cm) Frame Size: 19 by 23in. (48.3 by 58.4cm) Provenance: Gallery Moos, Toronto; Sotheby’s, London, 7 May 2009, lot 58; Private collection Exhibited: ‘W. Scott Memorial Exhibition’, Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, 26 September to 31 October 1992, catalogue no. 29 The present work is listed in the William Scott Archive as no. 1569. William Scott is internationally recognised as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. Born in Greenock in Scotland, he later moved to his father’s native Enniskillen; he studied art initially in Northern Ireland, then in London. He lived for a time in mainland Europe until the outbreak of the secondWorldWar. Scott’s work addressed a range of themes, but he is best known for his ground-breaking approach to still life where he combined his response to familiar domestic objects, like cooking utensils and foodstuffs, drawing on the abstract possibilities of their profiles. Objects were projected both individually and in their relationships to each other; sometimes represented like musical notes - harmonious or discordant - ranged across the surface of the canvas. They could appear outlined or profiled as complete forms, or cut-off as though the array continued beyond the picture plane. Scott chose the forms of common, mundane, familiar domestic objects; his appreciation of their simple abstracted beauty made their very ordinariness compelling, a strategy that ran counter to the long tradition of valuing the rare exclusivity of high craftsmanship of rich materials. Scott’s appreciation of the ordinary was fundamental to Modernism, to an egalitarian accessibility and ubiquity. Abstraction is recognised as a defining element of Modernist imagery and Scott evolved his objects from a relatively naturalistic representation, becoming increasingly stylised, until the full abstraction of his Berlin Blues series in the 1960s. However, he regularly returned to objects in the tangible world. In the 1970s, Scott carried out several paintings and works on paper that explored the potential of the pear, typically with its projecting stalk. While various fruit forms appear in his work from time to time, the pear provided a particular focus. The resulting series examined the profile and the formal relationships, either singly or in groups. In some artworks the object appeared in outline, and in others, it was presented as a dense flat form, as in One Pear. In some images, Scott presented the forms as though floating against a monochromatic ground, while in others, such as One Pear, the entity is framed as though displayed on a plate. Scott alluded to his preference for manufactured over natural objects, and while the pear might be deemed a natural object, its distillation to a two-dimensional shape, and presentation within a linear ‘frame’, removes it decisively from a naturalistic setting. Scott’s deceptively simple arrays are visually compelling, their arrangement and form demonstrating the relationship of positive and negative space. Such imagery distinguishes abstraction from description, and gives the forms a kind of ritualistic value that both depends on, and separates them from, their mundane origins. Yvonne Scott, April 2024 €60,000-€80,000 (£51,280-£68,380 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot53