William Scott, Circles Diminishing, 1961

1961

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

160 × 172.7 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-153592

In 1964, the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation invited Alan Bowness, then senior Lecturer in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, Lilian Somerville, Director, Fine Art Department of the British Council, and Norman Reid, Director of the Tate Gallery, to make a collection of recent British Art. It was in this capacity that Bowness wrote to Scott on 16 September 1965, saying, I've been meaning to write to you for months to ask about available major oils for Stuyvesant, as I think it's time we bought another and it ought probably to be an early one. (Justin is very keen on Nearing Circling I think).' The title 'Nearing Circles' is near enough to Circles Diminishing for that to be the work in question. (`Justin was Justin Knowles, then working for Peter Stuyvesant in public relations and, according to Alan Bowness, the driving force behind the collection' (ed. Sarah Whitfield, William Scott, Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings 1960-1968, Volume 3, Thames and Hudson, London, 2013, cat no.475, illus colour p80) Circles Diminishing was painted before May 1961 when it was included in the Hanover Gallery exhibition. There it attracted the attention of the critic Pierre Rouve who saw in `the unspoiled immediacy of the handwriting and the recurrent honesty of the colour' of Scott's recent paintings a close connection with the art of Roger Hilton. `Their world,' Rouve Wrote,' is not the rarefied atmosphere of formal permutations, it is the domain of man aware of his earthly nobility. That is why there is such a heavy load of unadulterated directness in Circles diminishing' (ibid. p80)