JAMES FRASER SCOTT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21668, 11 June 1932, Page 15

JAMES FRASER SCOTT

AN ARTIST’S TRIBUTE

“ INDEPEDNENT, COURAGEOUS, ' BRILLIANT." (From Our Own Correspondent,; LONDON, April 28. In several of the leading London papers tribute is paid to the late Mr James Fraser Scott (one-time of Dunedin)/portrait and landscape painter and official artist to the A.I.F. during the war. Mr J. E. Hyett, the portrait sculptor, whose studio at Fulham adjoined that of deceased, wrote to The Times:— “ Scott was a brilliant man—a man we all loved and admired. But he had fallen on hard times. It was a terrible disappointment for him when his one-man exhibition three years ago was a failure. He held the exhibition at the wrong time, when most people were out of town. And now I will fell you of the picture which brought him his deathbed honour, “ THE SCULPTOR’S STUDIO.” “We were sitting here in my studio one day when, with the idea of. getting Scott to go out and cheer himself up — for he was very down —I suggested he should visit a fellow artist’s studio. I told him of the fine ’ sculptures this artist proposed submitting to the Royal Academy. Well, Scott went, and ■ when he returned he told me he was going to do a picture of this artist at, work in his studio. He worked steadily, and when the picture was finished he asked me to view it. It was splendid- I told him it was a 10 to 1 chance that the Royal Academy would accept it. Scott then went away for two days and returned one morning and said he was going to hospital _to be X-rayed. He asked another friend and myself to submit three of his pictures to the Royal Academy. We found that they were not even framed, but we sent them off, and waited anxiously for a reply. “ And; here is the ironic part. The notification from the Academy that two of the portraits were not accepted—which was wonderful news, because it meant that the third was being withheld, and, therefore, would probably be hung—was mislaid in his fiat. Then a letter came for him which I recognised immediately. I opened, it, and there- was a card which meant that his picture, ‘ The Sculptor’s Studio,’ was to be shown in this year’s Academy. But now Scott was very, very ill in hospital. He had had a relapse. The good newa was rushed to him on Saturday morning. He wag overjoyed, but very weak. Everything possible was done for him, but his fight against an illness from which he had been suffering for over five years was hopeless. . . . “ Scott had struggled valiantly for fame all hig life. He lived for his art. . . . He might have gone on and done wonderful things—for he was only 53 — but he was dogged always with this illhealth. I can think of no case where a man so bravely bore up despite repeated ill-luck. Scott’s memory will remain with me always as a gentleman—a very independent, courageous, brilliant gentleman." TRAGIC DIFFICULTIES. “ Quex,” of the News-Chronicle writes; “I have on my own walls a watercolour drawing by James Fraser Scott—a street scene in Italy. “ About three years ago I went one afternoon with Mr Noel Curtis Bennett to see Mr Scott in his studio, in some street off the Fulham road. Mr Scott was doing a portrait in oils of Mr Curtis Bennett. There was an idea that it would be a presentation portrait given by civil servants in recognition of Mr Curtis Bennett’s work for their Playing Fields’ Association. " Even then I fancy Mr Scott was far from well off ; but he based great hopes on an exhibition of his work that was arranged for the New Burlington Galleries. “ The exhibition was held. Mr Scott showed some 200 pictures! There were several large canvases. There were portraits of Dr Richter, for many years music master at Uppingham School, a rugged, true likeness; of Mr Holford Knight; of the daughter of Mr J. P. Eddy, the barrister, in riding kit. But what one liked best was the sunnihess of the artist’s Australian landscapes, the light, tawny tones in his Venetian pictures, the delicacy and fidelity of the undertones in his sketches of Rye and Winchelsea, and Newlands Corner and the spots he had picked out amid the silver birches of St. George’s Hill. . . . “ It was just after that, when he was in St. George’s Hospital, that I heard that he had even gone short of food. I know that ■while he was in the hospital no less a personage than Sir Warren Fisher, permanent secretary to the Treasury and head of the civil service, interested himself in his case and saw that he received special care. That, as I have said, was three years ago, and I am afraid that, unknown to most of his friends, poor Scott spent his last days under tragic difficulties.”