WILLIAM MCCANCE (SCOTTISH 1894-1970) §
RESTING CAT
Estimate: £700 - £900
Auction: 25 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
Fire clay sculpture with wooden base
Dimensions
the sculpture 10cm x 27cm x 19cm (4in x 10.5in x 8in)
Provenance
From the Estate of William McCance.
Footnote
The presence of cats is a constant throughout McCance’s oeuvre. One of his earliest known sculptures depicts a vorticist-style cat with an arched back (National Galleries of Scotland, GMA 5160), which McCance then featured multiple times in his 1922 painting Primeval Movement (private collection). The National Galleries of Scotland hold a further McCance sculpture dating to c.1922-24 titled Abstract Cat (GMA 3620).
Cats also feature in the work of McCance’s wife, the artist Agnes Miller Parker. A master wood engraver, she also produced paintings, including the celebrated 1930 tempera composition The Uncivilised Cat (The Fleming Collection, 3259).
This diverse array of cat compositions from McCance’s studio are rendered with profound affection. His sketches of reclining and sleeping cats (lots 7-8; 10-11) constitute a charming investigation into the animal’s movement and personality - McCance appears to have worked quickly and intuitively in order to complete his sketch before the cat’s position changed. Resting Cat (lot 9) may date to the early 1930s, when McCance and Miller Parker lived in a converted windmill near Wolverhampton, and sculpted with a gritty red clay which he fired at a local brickworks. The painting Spring (lot 12) is typical of the metaphysical themes of life, death and rebirth that appear to have preoccupied McCance throughout the 1940s, catalysed by the Second World War and the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. In Spring a cat, which may itself be a sculpture, feeds a litter of kittens next to a pale piece of bone.