About the artist
William Scott (1913-1989) was born in Greenock, Northern Ireland. He studyied art in Belfast and later at the Royal College of Art, London. Between 1937 and 1939, he lived and taught art in Brittany, France, where he discovered a profound connection with the tradition of French still-life painting, tying together 18th-century Chardin and Braque. Even when he briefly ventured into pure abstracts in the 1950s, his work always retained this linkage. Scott's creations often featured forms like circles and squares, rendered with a sensitive, painterly touch rather than geometric precision. In the late 1960s and 1970s, his style took on a more austere tone. Despite his work's narrow scope and quiet character, Scott became known as a leading British artist of his time, serving as a senior painting lecturer at Bath Academy of Art and frequenting the St Ives artistic community.
