£25,000
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture ft. S.J. Peploe at 150 | 668
Auction: Scottish Paintings & Sculpture ft. S.J. Peploe at 150
Signed, oil on canvas
Provenance: The Collection of the late R. L. MacDonald
Note: Crozier's death at the age of thirty-three meant that his career was short and his oeuvre is small. A French Sunlit Market is a rare example of the work with which he nevertheless established a reputation as a key member of the Edinburgh School. This group of artists included William Gillies and William MacTaggart amongst others and rose to prominence during the inter-war period. They met as students at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) with Crozier eventually sharing a studio with MacTaggart.
Following studies under André Lhote in Paris, Crozier and MacTaggart spent several winters together in France during the 1920s. The present work is thought to have been inspired by one such trip. Its low-toned palette and geometrical simplication of form, particularly obvious in architectural terms, shows Crozier's sensitive handling of light and colour, as well as an awareness of Cubism.
Crozier died following a fall in his studio. His ECA contemporary, Harold Harvey Wood, later recalled 'Scottish painting suffered a very severe loss in the premature death of Wiliam Crozier, who, quite apart from his considerable gifts as a painter, represented a kind of oasis in the illiterate and philistine deserts of the Scottish studios' (as quoted in Ann Simpson, William Crozier 1893-1930, Edinburgh 1995, p.8).