David Winfield Scott Watercolor 1947 - Landscape

David Winfield Scott (1916 - 2009)

Watercolor 1947

14.5" x 10" (image) 24" x 19" (oak frame)

A curator, museum director, and established watercolor painter, David Winfield Scott has embraced both realism and abstraction in his long career.  He was born in Massachusetts, and during his childhood lived in Iowa and Nebraska before moving to Claremont, California, where his father took a professorship at Pomona College.  In 1933, at age 16, he earned a degree from The Webb School and took a summer painting class with Millard Sheets, who was leading the American Scene movement in California. 

Scott attended Harvard University but spent one year between his sophomore and junior year at Claremont because of ill health, and again studied with Sheets.  He became active in the Laguna Beach Art Association and earned a reputation as a bit of rebel for his modernist tendencies amongst many 'sentimental' painters. 

Finishing at Harvard and studying at the Art Students League in New York, he became a student of John Sloan in the last class given by that social realist artist.  Other influential teachers were Ernest Fiene, Jean Charlot and Alexander Abels.  He also earned a Master's Degree in painting from Claremont's Graduate University program, and in 1940 and 41 taught at Riverside Junior College in Riverside, California.

During World War II, he served in the Photo Intelligence division of the Air Corps and spent much time in Europe.  He did much sketching of landscape scenes and wartime activities.  After the war, he taught at Scripps College along with Millard Sheets, and ultimately chaired the Department.  He married, and he and his bride spent many months painting in Mexico and also exploring art history subjects---which led to him pursuing a doctoral dissertation on French Romanesque architecture.

He became active in the California Watercolor Society, which he served as President.  In 1962, he joined the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, moving to Washington DC, and filling that position until 1984.  In 1990, he served as Acting Director for eleven months of the Corcoran Gallery.