Nutter Buzacott
Scene at Doncaster
Known as Buzz to his friends, the painter, printmaker and
illustrator was welcomed at the George Bell School when he returned
from furthering his studies in London where he had been greatly
influenced by the wood carvings of Ian McNab.
One of the few social realists to attend Bell's
School, Buzacott captured the positive aspects of working life
rather than the depressing side of humanity. Scene at
Doncaster depicts ordinary people going about their daily
business chopping wood or working around the cottage and chatting
over the fence, in a semi rural area in 1939.
Adding to the rhythm and liveliness of this work are the warm
ochre colours juxtaposed with cool colours that have been thickly
applied and then scraped back in places to create a textural
surface.
When Buzacott was awarded the Crouch Prize in 1940, the
judge George Bell said of this work that… "it was sonorous in
[its] rhythm and colour," and that he believed that "it was most
likely not painted from life, very few good pictures were."