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Coffee pot and abstract shapes

[creator]: Cumming, James William Hunter, RSA · 1922-1991

Still life has always played a key role in Cumming’s exhibited work, indeed his first RSA exhibit in 1951 was a Still Life with Jetsam. A similar delineation of the coffee pot can be seen in the right hand side of his 1952 oil, In a Lewis Kitchen (Firth, op cit., pl.4, pp38-39), but the present sketch is probably related to the 1980’s when, following his retiral from Edinburgh College of Art and his move to the village of Lennel near Coldstream, Still Lives re-emerged as a key area of interest for the artist. Frith (op cit., p.26) wrote; “I have always thought that for Cumming still life was the relaxation from thematic intensity, the aesthetic exercise of his picture-making talents, freed from other meanings.”