William Scott, R.A. (1913-1989)

Alan Bowness comments on the still life compositions of this period, 'After the years of near abstraction, he had suddenly in 1955 turned back to still life. He began by painting a number of small canvases of saucepans with pears picking up on the thread from an earlier picture of 1950. Another series of small paintings with the more or less interchangeable forms of bowls, mugs and bottles was done in 1956 [which includes the present work]. This was the year Scott stopped teaching at Corsham, and at 42 he was at last able to paint full-time. He had taken an apartment and a studio in Chelsea in 1952, and now spent part of the year in London' (see op. cit., p. 10).

The thick impasto and arrangement of objects seen in Blue Mugs may owe as much to Nicholas de Staël, a memorial exhibition of whose work was shown in London in the summer of 1956, as it does to the still lifes of Chardin, Cezanne and Braque which continued to fascinate Scott.