This is a rare still life made with watercolour, dating from the time of his major exhibition with The Scottish Gallery in 1963. It was also the year his mother died, in her hundredth year, following closely the death of his second sister Janet and close friend John Maxwell, after which he began to decline social and professional invitations. But this work is defiantly bright and full of innovation. Many elements are familiar: the pots, tables and shell, but Gillies has reversed the convention of weighting the compositional interest in the upper portion, instead placing the action beneath a great canopy of leaves from a Solomon’s Seal plant arching above the table tops.
Sir William Gillies is still highly underrated in Modern British terms. Born in Haddington, he trained and taught at Edinburgh College of Art, and did the latter as principal. He was a great influence on many of the next generation of the Edinburgh School. He himself studied in Paris with Andre Lhote and absorbed, variously, the work of Munch, Matisse, Braque and Bonnard. Still life and landscape oils tend to be composed studio pieces of subtle complexity. Watercolours are lyrically observed renderings of the Scottish Borders based on decisive pencil or pen drawings or for larger works, executed alla prima. Gillies had a long and fruitful relationship with The Scottish Gallery which continues in the secondary market.