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Fine Art

Works From the Estate of William McCance

9 June 2025

Chantal de Prez

The Art Edit is delighted to present Part II of Works from the Estate of William McCance (lots 1-33) in our June 2025 auction, including paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by William McCance and his circle.

This special collection includes still life paintings, fireclay sculptures and works on paper, a sketch of McCance’s first wife Agnes Miller Parker (1895-1980), as well as prints and correspondence from artist friends Gertrude Hermes and Clare Leighton. The collection comes from the Artist’s Estate and is presented to the market for the very first time.

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WILLIAM MCCANCE (SCOTTISH 1894-1970)

CONTEMPLATIVE FIGURE - 1945

Signed and dated lower right, oil on board

29.5cm x 38.5cm (11.5in x 15in)

£1,500 - £2,000 + fees

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.

GERTRUDE HERMES (BRITISH 1901-1983)

CHRISTMAS ROSE

Wood engraving, with printed message inside ‘Greetings for Christmas and the New Year from Gertrude Hermes, 1937, 27a, St Peter’s Square, W.6', unframed

the sheets 23cm x 27.5cm (9in x 6.75in)

£200 - £400 + fees

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.

In 1933, having relocated to a converted windmill in Albrighton near Wolverhampton, 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.

WILLIAM MCCANCE (SCOTTISH 1894-1970)

RHYTHMICAL FIGURE - 1935

Signed and indistinctly dated to lower back edge, fire clay sculpture

19cm x 27cm x 21cm (7.5in x 10.5in x 8in)

£700 - £900 + fees

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. By the 1940s his style had changed substantially, his use of sculptural studio props endured.

WILLIAM MCCANCE (SCOTTISH 1894-1970)

SEATED FIGURE WITH FRUIT

Signed in pencil lower left, oil on board, with a further oil composition verso signed and dated '46

30.25cm x 40cm (12in x 15.75in), unframed

£400 - £600 + fees

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. In 1960, an exhibition celebrating McCance’s oeuvre was held at Reading Museum and Art Gallery; several of the works featured in this special Estate collection were included in this display. The artist retired to Scotland in the ‘60s, and in 1970 he died in Ayrshire. He died in Ayrshire in 1970.

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