Born in Greenock, Scotland. He moved to Enniskillen, Northern Ireland in 1924. He studied at Belfast College of Art, 1928-31 and at the RA Schools, 1931.

In 1937 he travelled and lived in France. He had his first solo exhibition at the Leger Gallery, London in 1942 and represented Britain in the Venice Biennale in 1958 to great international acclaim. In 1959 he was awarded the first prize at the 2nd John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool. He was artist-in-residence in 1963-65 at the Ford Foundation in Berlin. The Tate Gallery held a major retrospective of his work in 1972. In 1977 he was elected to the Royal Academy. His paintings of still lifes in the late 1940s and early 1950s led on to occasional periods of experimentation with pure abstraction. His later work is a simplified evolution of his earlier formal arrangements of hard-edged shapes on a flat ground which are reminiscent of pots, bowls and other household items.

LITERATURE

Alan Bowness, William Scott: Paintings, Lund Humphries, London 1964.