William Scott

Born: 1913


William Scott was born in Britain on 15 February 1913, in Greenock, Scotland.

During the early years of World War II he helped to run an art school in Bath, Somerset. In 1941 he settled in Hallatrow, High Littleton, Somerset. In 1942 he volunteered for the navy, but was accepted for the army, and after serving with a number of regiments he became attached to the Royal Engineers, with whom he served until 1946 and where he learned lithography in the map-making section.

From 1946 until 1956 Scott was senior lecturer in painting at the Bath Academy of Art. In the summer of 1953 he visited the USA where he met Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko. Although his work had become predominantly abstract in 1952, after his meeting with the American Abstract Expressionists., he reverted to his roots in still life and European painting.