Lot 310: David Scott, R.S.A. (1806-1849)

Study for 'The Agony of Discord, or the Household Gods Destroyed' oil on paper laid on canvas 321/4 x 26 in. (82 x 66 cm.) PROVENANCE Anon. sale, Sotheby's at Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland, 29 August 1977, lot 634. EXHIBITION Artists and Models, 1998, no. 5. NOTES A study for a large allegorical canvas that Scott embarked on shortly after Easter 1833. At the time he was living in Rome, and the painting was intended to encapsulate his response to the old masters and to ensure his own niche in the tradition of history painting in the grand manner. In particular, the central figure, represented by the present sketch, betrayed his admiration for the Laoco”n, the famous Hellenistic sculpture in the Vatican. The cartoon was finished in August 1833 after a trip south to Naples and Pompeii, and the canvas had been laid in by Christmas. Scott continued to work on the picture when he returned to Edinburgh in 1834, but it had not found a buyer when he died in 1849. His younger brother, William Bell Scott, to whom fell the unenviable task of finding homes for David's pictures, placed it with his Newcastle patron James Leathart, but being too unwieldy to hang at the Leatharts' home, Low Fell in Gateshead, it got rolled up and lost. A watercolour sketch for the whole composition is in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (fig. 1). For a further account of Scott's career, see lot 302.