It is recorded in Alley 1963 with the title and date given above.

Alley saw this painting as representing Scott’s gradual development towards abstraction as the still- life objects began to turn into irregular shapes, and fill the entire area of the picture surface. He wrote: ‘Whereas Winter Still Life 1956 was a severely static composition, almost geometrical in its construction, pictures such as Still Life 1957 possessed an irregular organic quality as if Scott had breathed into them a subtle animation. The edges of the table became sinuously undulating, the pots leaned to left or right and clustered together or drifted apart, appearing at times to float slowly across the picture in groups in a more or less clock-wise direction. Often they were concentrated at one side or other of the painting and were partly cut off by the edges, while occasionally the composition still involved some suggestion of the human figure. Yet the effect was always of a harmony both calm and radiant. This impression was enhanced by the richness of the colours, which were sometimes dark and mysterious, sometimes glowing with a fiery incandescence; each picture having its particular colour key.’ As noted in the entry Still Life Forms (Blue), one critic, writing in 1987, found this painting could ‘easily be imagined as a company of small boats taking harbor refuge from a stormy sea’.

The painting appears on an invoice for works on sale or return dated 22 June 1963 and sent to the artist by the Kunsthalle, Bern. It was returned to the artist, and remained in his possession until given to the collector in whose family it remains.