Lynn Chadwick 1914-2003

Mrs Helen Lessore OBE (1907-1994) was a painter and British gallerist. She was, most notably, the director of Beaux Arts Gallery in London from 1951 until its closure in 1965. Having studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (1924-1928), Lessore was an accomplished painter who had a full retrospective exhibition at the Fine Art Society in London in 1987. Her paintings can currently be found in public collections around Britain, including Tate and the Royal Academy of Arts.

Chadwick’s, Short Horn, was loaned to Venice for the XXVIII Biennale (1956) by Mrs Lessore, where it was subsequently purchased by the renowned Belgian art critic and collector, René Gaffé.

Reflecting on Short Horn, Gaffé wrote:

Délaissant le marbre et le bois, ne voyons-nous pas tous les jours de grands sculpteurs se précipiter sur des métaux quels qu’ils soient, à condition qu’ils puissent, sans trop d’efforts, les plier à leur convenance et en assurer le transport par des moyens moins onéreux qu’autrefois? …Ainsi, chaque matin que le soleil me tire du lit, j’aperçois le Taureau de Lynn Chadwick, armure d’acier recouverte de plâtre [sic] coloré et cette bête puissante, résignée, me regarde en silence. Elle ne perçoit pas les raisons secrètes qui me font assister à ses charges dont elle est généralement frustrée dans l’arène où elle est condamnée à mourir à cinq heures de l’après-midi.

Dans son ‘Guadalquivir’, Joseph Peyré l’a chanté:

Taureau noir, taureau noir,
Une mort à chaque corne,
Une peine dans chaque goutte
De son sang tourmenté.

Leaving aside marble and wood, don’t we find every day some great sculptors rushing to work on all kinds of metals, providing they are able to bend them without to much effort according to their needs, and ship them through less expensive means than in the past?… And so, every morning the sun pulls me out of bed, I see the ‘Taureau’ of Lynn Chadwick, a steel armor covered with colored plaster, and this powerful beast, resigned, stares at me in silence. It doesn’t perceive the secret reasons that make me watch its charges, from which it is usually deprived in the arena where it is sentenced to die at five o’clock in the afternoon.

Joseph Peyré sang it in his Guadalquivir:

Black bull, black bull,
One death on every horn
One sorrow in every drop
Of his tormented blood.

(R. Gaffé, ,A la verticale: Réflexions d’un collectionneur, Brussels, 1963, pp. 98-99)

Mrs. Helen Lessore O.B.E.
Acquired by René Gaffé at the Venice Biennale, 15th September 1956
Private Collection, The Netherlands
Osborne Samuel, London
Private Collection, Canada

J.P. Hodin, Lynn Chadwick, Werk, vol. 44 (no. 3), March 1957, p. 113.
D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p. 111, cat. no. 143 (ill. b&w)

London, New Burlington Galleries, 53rd London Group: British Painting and Sculpture, November – December 1954, no. 264
Venice, XXVIII Biennale, June – October 1956, p. 412, no. 51 (titled Vacca Shortorn), lent by Mrs H. Lessore

Among the most famous black and white photographs of Lynn Chadwick taken by David Farrell, the sculptor’s photographic documenter, is the one reproduced on the front cover of Michael Bird’s monograph, Lynn Chadwick (Lund Humphries, 2014). The 1958 image of Chadwick welding the armature of Stranger III in his newly acquired studio at Lypiatt Park, Gloucestershire, epitomises the essence of the sculptor’s physical working practice during the late 1950s. Michael Bird states, ‘His main project during the winter of 1958-59 was the construction of Stranger III, the final, full scale incarnation of his R34 [memorial] concept. While snow lay outside, and Frances and her two-month-old baby were beset by builders in the freezing old manor house on the other side of the wall, David Farrell photographed the sculptor at work in the chapel. (Michael Bird, Lynn Chadwick, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p. 106).

R34 Memorial was a major commission, driven and funded by the Air League of the British Empire in 1957. Intended as a memorial to commemorate the successful double crossing of the Atlantic by the airship R34 in July 1919, the sculpture sadly never reached fruition. It was planned to be positioned at the Long Haul Terminal Building at London Airport (Heathrow), designed by Frederick Gibberd and due to open in 1959. Despite wide enthusiasm and acceptance from the R34 Memorial Committee, including the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, the concept was withdrawn by the Air League in December 1958 following strong opposition in the House of Lords, led by Lord Brabazon of Tara, a pioneering aviator and former cabinet minister.

Maquette for R34 (Maquette for Stanger III), of which several different versions exist, is among the most faithful from a design perspective to Chadwick’s full-size model, which measures 104 inches wide and 86 inches high. The Chadwick complete illustrated catalogue explains, ‘His first ideas were for a two-headed winged figure, with two huge, roughly symmetrical, bat-like wings, poised on three tapered legs. (Or it could more accurately be said that they were two figures fused into one). The separate beaked heads, looking to left and right, which symbolised the double transatlantic journey, were later fused into an elongated rectangular shape, set at an angle as if looking out across a space, and marrying well with the massive wings, which were themselves modified into a truncated pyramidal form on the left balanced by a shorter, squarer wing on the right. The sculpture both suggests movement and yet remains implacably solid and immobile.’ (Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, pp. 25-26)

Two casts of Stranger III are held in the collections of The City of Spoleto, Umbria, Italy, and Colby College, Bixler Art and Music Centre, Waterville, Maine, USA.

Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia
Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p. 324, cat. no. 321 (another cast ill. b&w)

New York, Knoedler Galleries, Lynn Chadwick, 1961 (different cast) 

From the edition of 4.

The Artist
Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1960
Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor: with a Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 1947-2005, number 323, another cast reproduced page 167

Caracas, Venezuela, Museo de Contemporaneo de Caracas, Lynn Chadwick, November 1990, catalogue number 19  

Toyama, Japan, The Museum of Modern Art, Lynn Chadwick, April 20 – May 19, 1991, catalogue number 19, reproduced.  This exhibition travelled to: The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, June 15- July 28, 1991, The Hakone Open-Air Museum, Hakone, August 3 – September 4, 1991, The Museum of Kyoto, Kyoto, September 13 – October 2, 1991.

Gallery Moos, Toronto
Private Collection, Canada (purchased in March 1969)
Osborne Samuel, London

Exhibition catalogue, Lynn Chadwick, London, Marlborough Fine Art, 1961, n.p., no. 30 (another cast ill.)
D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Farnham, 2014, p. 191, no. 335 (another cast ill. b&w)

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Lynn Chadwick, November – December 1961, no. 30 (another cast)

In 1959 Chadwick began working on an iconic series of sculptures: ‘The Watchers’. These mysterious creatures stand in majestic isolation, even when they appear in triads. All marks of the individual have been removed from the figure, to create an image that is neither human nor animal, neither male nor female. Writing about The Watchers, Herbert Read dubbed Chadwick’s unique aesthetic as “the new image of man”.

Lynn Chadwick was interviewed by Cathy Courtney for the British Sound Archive and she asked specifically about ‘the Watchers.’ ,

Chadwick answered, ‘it is my way of saying the same thing as the Easter Island figures are saying…. They’re not in any way, representative of anything. They are just shapes….. You see, the Easter Island things …. have this great intensity of … message, as it were and I wanted to do the same thing….. All I was aware of was that they ….satisfied me that I had done what I wanted to do, I wasn’t trying to do anything specific but it was just this way of having this intense feeling.’1

In 1959, Chadwick began a series of over forty sculptures titled Watcher. The earliest maquette angled its block-shaped head inquisitively, its torso curved in a gentle, questioning arch. More characteristically, the Watchers would appear erect and level headed, their gaze directed resolutely ahead.

Watcher VI (1961) was conceived in the same year that Chadwick began work on the group of three monumental Watchers, a cast of which was sited in Roehampton, overlooking the modernist architecture of the Alton Estate, by the London County Council in 1963. Like them, it inhabits a rectangular profile, upright and self-contained. Yet within this simplicity of profile there is abundant detail, subtly reinforcing the stance: no plane is left unconsidered. The head bears traces of horizontal seams, layered as a dry-stone wall. The torso is articulated with diamond facets. This particular Watcher twists its head, slightly: a receptor stilled in observation.

1.Michael Bird, Lynn Chadwick, London, 2014, p.112

Minimum footprint of legs at base 28.5 x 25 cm (11 1/4 x 10 in)

A study for the ‘Watcher’ series of 1961, executed in ink and watercolour on paper, is held in the collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. ,

Other ‘Watcher’ sculptures in public collections, include the Berman Museum, Pennsylvania, the Sprengel Museum, Hanover and the San Diego Museum of Art.

Private Collection, Europe
Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, with a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2005, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2006, cat. no.349, illustrated p.180(another cast)

Michael Bird, Lynn Chadwick, London, 2014, no. 5-16, illustration of another cast p. 122

Marlborough Fine Art, London, Nov-Dec, 1961

Private Collection, UK

D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p. 250, cat. no. 551 (ill. b&w)

Milan, Galleria Blu, June 1968 (another cast)

The winged figure, often presented as a pair, threads through Chadwick’s sculpture from the mid-1950s onwards. Early examples often danced in duet, their wings splayed in courtship ritual. In 1962, Chadwick transformed the idea completely, starkly abstracting its form to resemble aeroplane wings: Two Winged Figures, constructed from plate steel at an industrial works in Italy, and painted bright yellow and black, towered above the viewer.

If there was always a dialogue between the human and the machine, by the early 1970s Chadwick’s imagery had settled in favour of the former. Maquette V Two Winged Figures (1973) is, on balance, more human than otherwise. The wings, folded downwards, resemble robes. The female figure is clearly identifiable as such, broad-hipped and round-breasted, while the square shoulders of the male figure determine the geometric fall of his tunic and wings. But the head? So often in Chadwick’s sculpture this is where ambiguity concentrates. Heads resemble beaks, science-fiction jaws, insectoid mandibles, square television monitors. Sometimes they are reduced almost to invisibility, seeding doubt as to their sentience. In Maquette V Two Winged Figures, Chadwick characteristically uses a cube and pyramid to denote difference. Borne erect, and rendered proportionally in relation to each figure’s torso, these heads give cause for reassurance – yet the frisson of alterity persists.

The Artist
Tony Reichardt, 1979
Marlborough Fine Art
Private Collection, Belgium (purchased from the above c.1980)
Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr & Éva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p.297, cat.no.672

The winged figure, often presented as a pair, threads through Chadwick’s sculpture from the mid-1950s onwards. Early examples often danced in duet, their wings splayed in courtship ritual. In 1962 Chadwick transformed the idea completely, starkly abstracting its form to resemble aeroplane wings: Two Winged Figures, constructed from plate steel at an industrial works in Italy, and painted bright yellow and black, towered above the viewer.

If there was always a dialogue between the human and the machine, by the early 1970s Chadwick’s imagery had settled in favour of the former. Maquette VI Two Winged Figures (1973) is, on balance, more human than otherwise. The wings, folded downwards, resemble robes. The female figure is clearly identifiable as such, broad-hipped and round-breasted, while the square shoulders of the male figure determine the geometric fall of his tunic and wings. But the head? So often in Chadwick’s sculpture this is where ambiguity concentrates. Heads resemble beaks, science-fiction jaws, insectoid mandibles, square television monitors. Sometimes they are reduced almost to invisibility, seeding doubt as to their sentience. In Maquette VI Two Winged Figures, Chadwick characteristically uses a cube and pyramid to denote difference. Borne erect, and rendered proportionally in relation to each figure’s torso, these heads give cause for reassurance – yet the frisson of alterity persists.

Basil Trakman, South Africa
Riva Cohen, Atlantic Art Gallery, South Africa (purchased from the above 1987), thence by descent
Private Collection, USA

D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Farnham, 2014, p. 297, no. 673s (another cast ill.)

London, Marlborough Fine Art, January – February 1974, and tour

The work is composed of three separate elements: the two figures and the base.

Osborne Samuel, London

D. Farr
and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated
Catalogue 1947-2003, Farnham, 2014, p. 341, no. 787S (another cast ill.)

Belgium, Fondation Veranneman, Kruishoutem, October-December 1980 (another cast)

Erika Meyerovich Gallery, San Francisco, 1988
Private Collection, USA
Osborne Samuel, London

D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p. 353, cat. no. C18 (another cast ill.)

London, Marlborough Fine Art, October – December 1984 (another cast)

Waddington and Shiell Galleries Ltd., Toronto, Ontario
Private Collection, Toronto, Ontario (acquired from the above in November 1985)
Osborne Samuel, London

D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p. 359, cat. no. C25 (another cast ill. b&w)

Bath, Beaux Arts, September – October 1986 (another cast)

Private Collection, UK, 2013
Osborne Samuel, London

D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p. 366, no. C41 (another cast ill. b&w)

Canada, Vancouver, Bushlen Mowatt Gallery, June – July 2000 (another cast)

Anne Jaffe Gallery, Bay Harbor Islands, Florida

Private collection, USA (acquired from the above in 1992)

Osborne Samuel, London

D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, no. C18S, illustrated p. 353 (another cast)

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Lynn Chadwick: Recent Sculpture, October – December 1984, illustrated (another cast)

Florida, Bay Harbor Islands, Anne Jaffe Gallery, Exhibition of Lynn Chadwick, January – February 1992 (where acquired by the present owner)

London, Berkeley Square Gallery, Lynn Chadwick Retrospective, 28 March – 3 May 1996, illustrated in the exh. cat. p. 20 (another cast)

The Artist

Galerie Faber, Brussels, 1976

Private Collection, Belgium (purchased from the above, 1977)

Osborne Samuel, London

Brussels, Galerie Faber, November – December 1976

Private collection, UK
Austin Desmond, London
Osborne Samuel, London