High Noon

Artist James Cowie (Cuminestown, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 1886 - 1956)

Date1940s

Mediumgouache and watercolour on paper

ClassificationsPaintings And Drawings

DimensionsSight Size: Height: 17 cm, Width: 25.1 cm
Frame: Height: 41.6 cm, Width: 49.4 cm

AcquisitionPurchased in 1992 with assistance from the National Fund for Acquisitions.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG009692

PLAQUE017

Keywords

About MeThis small watercolour was painted during the 1940s, when Cowie was warden of Hospitalfield College of Art, near Arbroath. Although Cowie had painted still-lifes when working as a schoolmaster in Bellshill Academy during the 1930s, it was at Hospitalfield that his still-lifes were at their most metaphysical and compelling.

Here Cowie has arranged a group of objects on a window sill, so that he can combine them with the landscape outside - in this case a field and the sea beyond the Angus coastline. 'High Noon' has all the elements of Cowie's most interesting still-lifes: several simple, favoured objects arranged in a highly structured and complicated way; a landscape setting with surreal overtones, the whole viewed as one, yet in some strange way more dreamlike than real.

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Cowie's dreamlike still lifes place several small objects in a structured and sometimes complicated way against a landscape with surreal overtones