WILLIAM CROZIER A.R.S.A. (SCOTTISH 1897-1930)
GRIMAUD
£8,820
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale: 08 December 2022 | From 18:00
Description
Signed, oil on board
Dimensions
44.5cm x 48cm (17.5in x 19in)
Provenance
Provenance: Purchased from the artist by Sir Godfrey Thomson
Footnote
In 1916, not long after enrolling at Edinburgh College of Art, William Crozier fell in with a new set. Amongst their number were Anne Redpath, William Gillies and William MacTaggart, a group that would later be known as the Edinburgh School. Due to his untimely death Crozier is generally less well-known than his contemporaries, yet his impact upon the group was profound, and some consider his work as amongst the School’s most original.
Crozier developed a particularly close friendship with MacTaggart, despite an age difference of ten years. Crozier’s structural-analytical approach had a formative influence on MacTaggart’s development as a painter, and from 1923 they shared a studio on Frederick Street, Edinburgh. Both suffered in the cold due to chronic health conditions, and in the winter months they made frequent excursions to the south of France to paint, sometimes visiting the St-Raphaël home of their friends Redpath and and her husband James Michie.
The scenic town of Grimaud is situated in the hills above St Tropez. The precise date of Crozier’s Grimaud oil is unknown, but it is likely to have been realised between 1924 and 1928 when he most frequently accompanied MacTaggart to France. Throughout his career Crozier explored the effects of light and shadow on topography; in this dazzling landscape the sun appears to be high in the sky with little shadow cast at all, and Crozier’s palette, applied with characteristically directional mark-making, therefore comprises of the bright hues of the Mediterranean countryside under the midday sun. MacTaggart also painted a strikingly similar view of Grimaud during the same period (see Iain Gale, William MacTaggart, Edinburgh 1998, p.26., pl.2. ('Grimaud' of c.1924-28).