WILLIAM MCCANCE (SCOTTISH 1894-1970) §
LUCIFER NO.1 - 1945
Estimate: £400 - £600
Auction: 25 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
Signed and dated ‘45 upper right, inscribed in pencil verso ‘No. 1, Lucifer, Resist’, watercolour wax resist with ink and pencil
Dimensions
the sheet 34cm x 43.5cm (13.5in x 17.25in), unframed
Provenance
From the Estate of William McCance.
Footnote
The 1935 fireclay sculpture Rhythmical Figure (lot 2) features in McCance’s 1945 watercolour wax resists Lucifer Nos. 1 & 3 (lots 1 & 32) and his 1946 oil painting Seated Figure with Fruit (lot 3).
McCance depicted his own sculptures in his paintings from as early as 1920. The first known example of this productive inter-media dialogue is believed to be the 1921-22 sculpture Cat (National Galleries of Scotland, GMA 5160) which features within his 1922 painting Primeval Movement (private collection). Sculpture could be easily manipulated in the studio to test various configurations, and proved conducive to the vorticist style McCance propounded in the 1920s, which promoted underlying geometric volumes.
McCance ceased sculpting and painting in the early 1930s, owing to the significant workload at the Gregynog Press. It was not until 1933, having departed the Press and relocated to Wolverhampton, that he began to work on figurative red clay compositions which he fired at a local brickworks. Their curvature and solidity exhibit an affinity with the contemporary output of Henry Moore and Frank Dobson. These sculptures feature repeatedly throughout McCance’s still life paintings of the 1940s, and while McCance’s style had by this point changed substantially, his use of sculptural studio props endured.