This still life by Stephen Scott Young stands out in the artist’s oeuvre in that Young is most known for his luminous portraits of African Americans or native Bahamians. Nonetheless, Young’s masterful handling of the watercolor medium and keen sensitivity to natural light is amply evident here in The Window Sill as is his deep reverence for such Old Masters as Johannes Vermeer and the great American artists Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer. It is thus no wonder that collectors of historic American art admire and acquire paintings by Young, as they fit perfectly in the continuum of American realist painting.

The simplicity of the composition of The Window Sill is very much in keeping with Young’s artistic style. For him there is poetic beauty in saying something with less. The simple forms of the bottles, their plain arrangement, and the velvety darkness of what cannot be seen all work together to create a painting that is as tranquil as it is intriguing. The strong light of the foreground illuminates the objects of the known world and yet obscures what is beyond it in the interior of the room. Young gives his forms physical weight by building up layer after layer of the watercolor to create density, but because of the medium’s inherent translucency, the forms almost glow with light from within themselves.

Young acknowledges the influence of Homer and Eakins, even though they worked 100 years earlier. The subject matter of his figurative work is like Homer’s. The accuracy and close observation that each painting requires speaks to the legacy of Eakins. That Young looked to these artists’ work and found his own original artistic practice in their legacy is unique. There is little room in contemporary art for poetic realism, and yet Young’s success demonstrates that there is a strong market for such work.