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William Gear

White Structure
1954
Oil on canvas
28¾ x 21¼ ins (72.9 x 54.1 cms)

signed, dated March 1954 and inscribed verso

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Painted in 1954, shortly after Gear moved out of London to find seclusion in rural Kent, White Structure is a departure from his forties techno-coloured abstraction toward a more immediately referential form of painting.

Preferring to keep his distance from his St Ives contemporaries, Gear viewed himself within an international, rather than island-bound context. Being Scottish of origin and spending three years between 1947-1950 living and working as an artist in Paris (after serving in the Royal Corps of Signals in the World War II) furnished Gear with a more far-reaching perspective of both life and art than many of his generation.

Though here it is evident the subject is not the artist's primary concern, the forms are suggestive of fencing, fields and pasture. The bold distinguishing of one form from another owes much to the tuition Gear received from Léger whilst in Paris. The artist's sheer enjoyment of painting, of applying palette-knife and brush to canvas is clearly expressed.

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