Lot 2
WILLIAM MCCANCE (SCOTTISH 1894-1970) §
PORTRAIT OF AGNES MILLER PARKER; BLUE NUDE IN AN ORKNEY CHAIR - 1930
£530
Auction: 02 October 2024 from 10:00 BST
Description
Portrait of Agnes Miller Parker, charcoal;
Blue Nude in an Orkney Chair, signed and dated lower left, charcoal and blue chalk (2)
Dimensions
the sheet 26cm x 25cm (10.25in x 9.75in); 50.5cm x 38cm (20in x 15in), unframed
Provenance
From the Estate of William McCance.
Footnote
The Art Edit is delighted to present paintings, drawings and prints by William McCance and his circle. The collection includes a portrait of McCance’s first wife Agnes Miller Parker (1895–1980), cards printed and inscribed by artist friends, and designs produced during McCance’s tenure as Controller of the Gregynog Press. All works come from the Artist’s Estate and have never before appeared on the market.
Like any modernist worth his salt, William McCance sought to document twentieth century industrial life. His subject is often domestic, but is realised using a vorticist schematisation which promotes underlying geometric volumes. Thus, organic forms assume an almost mechanised quality: a human figure is transformed into a strange automaton; a grove of trees is delineated as if it were a cluster of factory pipes.
McCance moved to London in 1920 with Agnes Miller Parker, where they were amongst the earliest Scots to adopt a Wyndham Lewis-inspired vorticism. Their mutual inclination towards line and pattern lent itself well to the graphic arts; Miller Parker was a talented wood engraver and illustrator, while McCance worked across painting, printmaking, design, sculpture, writing and typography.
In 1930 McCance became second Controller of the Gregynog Press, a significant private press in Montgomeryshire, Wales. The Press flourished under his stewardship, and he oversaw the production of several exquisite limited edition publications.
Gregynog was unique at the time in that publications were printed, typset, illustrated and bound under one roof. McCance and Miller Parker contributed designs and engravings, as did the artists Gertrude Hermes (1901–1983) and Blair Hughes Stanton (1902-1981), who was also employed at the Press in a directorial capacity. However, owing to fraught relations with the owners of the Press, McCance resigned after three years.
By 1943 McCance was lecturer in Typography and Book Production at the University of Reading. The few works from this later period held in public collection indicate a preoccupation with the Venus of Laussel, the c.25,000 year old limestone figure of a female nude discovered in 1911 in a rock shelter in the Dordogne. McCance likely encountered the Venus during a visit to the region after the Second World War, and nude figures with smooth simplified curves inspired by the Venus recurred within his work hereon.
McCance parted ways with Miller Parker in 1955, and by 1960 he had retired to Scotland. He died in Ayrshire in 1970.
