The Awakening
About this artwork
During the early 1920s McCance began to schematise the human body, stripping away detail until it had an almost robotic appearance. This is one of several oils which feature vividly coloured, cubist-inspired nudes in a landscape. Specific stories seem to be suggested, though precisely what these are remains a mystery. The figures in the background appear to be making gestures but are obscured by the nudes in the front, caught in curiously contorted postures. These poses have clearly been chosen to provide a compositional structure and give the idea of movement in opposing directions, but the resulting picture adds up to far more than this. It is the awkward rigidity, the ambiguity and the strangeness which makes the painting intriguing.
Updated before 2020
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artist:William McCance (1894 - 1970) Scottish
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title:The Awakening
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date created:1925
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materials:Oil on board
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measurements:61.00 x 46.00 cm; Framed: 76.80 x 62.00 x 4.90 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Purchased 2007
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accession number:GMA 4840
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gallery:
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subject:
William McCance
William McCance
McCance was born in a suburb of Glasgow and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1911-5. In 1918 he married a fellow student, Agnes Miller Parker (one of Britain's leading wood-engravers), and they moved to London two years later. In the early 1920s McCance developed a machine-inspired, near...