Art Miami 2022

Marlborough Fine Art, London
Private collection (purchased from the above in 1959)

T. Woollcombe (ed.), Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work, London, 1997, p. 144, no. KA70.
J. Scott, The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage, London, 2016, p. 111, no. 71, plaster version illustrated.

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Kenneth Armitage, July – August 1959, no. 33, another cast exhibited, catalogue not traced.
Hanover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Kenneth Armitage/Lynn Chadwick, April – May 1960, no. 16, another cast exhibited, as ‘Two seated figures (small model)’, catalogue not traced.
Norwich, Arts Council of Great Britain, Castle Museum, Kenneth Armitage, December 1972 – January 1973, no. 9, another cast exhibited: this exhibition travelled to Bolton, Museum and Art Gallery, January – February 1973; Oldham, Art Gallery, February – March 1973; Kettering, Art Gallery, March – April 1973; Nottingham, Victoria Street Gallery, April – May 1973; Portsmouth, Museum and Art Gallery, May – June 1973; Plymouth, City Art Gallery, June – July 1973; Llanelli, Museum and Art Gallery, August – September 1973; Leeds, City Art Gallery, September 1973; and Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, October 1973.

From the edition of 6

Armitage moved from being represented by Gimpel fils to Marlborough Fine Art, London in the Autumn of 1959. This particular cast was bought from Marlborough that year and was unsigned and unnumbered. 

When, in December 1994, Armitage was elected a Royal Academician, he donated  ‘Reclining Figure (Relief)’ as a diploma work, and recorded that it had been shown in the Venice Biennale in 1958 and that ‘This cast which I have kept all these years is neither signed nor dated because I didn’t in those days.’

The Artist

Private Collection, Canada (purchased from the above)

Osborne Samuel London

Coppel, Stephen. Linocuts of the Machine Age: Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School. (Scolar Press, Aldershot: 1995). no. SA 13

Leaper, Hana. Sybil Andrews Linocuts: A Complete Catalogue. (Lund Humphries, Surrey: 2015). no. 15.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints: Collectors’ Collections,” February 19, 2020–October 5, 2020. (another copy)

Printed from 3 blocks in Chinese orange, spectrum red and Prussian blue

Lumley Cazalet Gallery, London
Private British Collection
Private collection
Osborne Samuel Gallery

Konody, Observor, June 4, 1933, p.10

Stephen Coppel, Linocuts of the Machine Age, published by Scolar Press, 1995, SA 27, p.113

Hana Leaper, Sybil Andrews Linocuts: A Complete Catalogue, published by Lund Humphries in Association with Osborne Samuel, 2015, no.29, p.75

London, Redfern Gallery, 1933, no.46

Melbourne, 1937, no.43

Linocut printed on buff oriental oriental laid tissue in 3 blocks: Chinese orange; permanent blue; Chinese blue

The Windmill was inspired by Elmers Mill, an old Suffolk post windmill at the village of Woolpit, near Bury St Edmunds. The mill is also the subject of Cyril Power’s first known linocut, Elmer’s Mill, Woolpit (1921).

Osborne Samuel, London
Private collection Italy
Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia

Coppel, Stephen. Linocuts of the Machine Age: Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School. (Scolar Press, Aldershot: 1995). no. SA 9

Leaper, Hana. Sybil Andrews Linocuts: A Complete Catalogue. (Lund Humphries, Surrey: 2015). no. 11.

White, Peter: Sybil Andrews – Colour Linocuts/Linogravures en couleur, Calgary 1982,
cat. rais. no. 9

The Artist

The Artist

Private Collection, New York, by 1959

Private Collection, 2003

Grosvenor Gallery, London, 2004
Private Collection, UK
Osborne Samuel London

Colin Ralph, The Colin Collection: Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture collected by Mr. & Mrs. Ralph F. Colin, New York, 1960
Margaret Garlake, New Art, New World: British Art in Postwar Society, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1998
Margaret Garlake, The sculpture of Reg Butler, Henry Moore Foundation in Association with Lund Humphries, 2006, cat no.176, illustrated Fig 35, p.43

Hanover Gallery, May-June 1957 (Cat 34.)
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, February 1959 (cat, 14)
J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, Oct.-Dec. 1963, Reg Butler, A Retrospective Exhibition, cat 67

Butler was a man with two distinct, yet highly accomplished, careers. As Cottrell, Butler he was an architect with a burgeoning practice, while as Reg he was an essentially untrained avant-garde sculptor, having only worked briefly as an assistant in Henry Moore’s studio in 1947 and tried his hand as a blacksmith during the war, whose idiosyncratic style and experimental approach drew the attention of contemporary artists and critics alike. While exhibiting at both the 1952 and 1954 Venice Biennales he made a significant contribution to Herbert Read’s defining concept of post-war art, the so-called ‘Geometry of Fear’, and was also talent spotted by international gallerists such as Curt Valentin in New York and later Pierre Matisse.
Figure in Space is one of Butler’s finest explorations into the human figure. His architectural background provided him with a sensitive understanding of the relationship between form and space, an understanding which he applied to strong effect through the creation of cage-like structures, such as that visible here, which are very similar to those used by Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon in their work. In this instance the structures surrounding the atrophied human figure provide the sculpture with an extraordinary sense of movement while also referencing the spruing which surround bronzes in the initial stages of the casting process. By drawing our attention to the making process itself Butler draws our attention to the artificiality of the human figure and encourages a detached, Existentialist, standpoint. Butler explained this to Pierre Matisse: ‘to me the so-called base…is a very important part of the total sculpture – it isn’t merely a base but I’m sure does things to the meaning of the whole thing’ (letter to Pierre Matisse, November 1966, quoted in Pierre Matisse and His Artists (exh. cat)., The Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York, 2002, p.128).
Pierre Matisse was quick to sign Reg Butler into his stable of artists after the Curt Valentin Gallery closed in 1955, although Matisse struggled to develop a close working relationship with Erica Brausen who represented Butler in London. In March 1956 he included Butler in an exhibition alongside prestigious and established names such as Le Corbusier, Giacometti, Marino Marini and Joan Miro (among others), but it was not until February 1959 that he was able to stage a solo exhibition. It was not only Butler’s idiosyncratic approach to form which fascinated Matisse and ensured him a place in his prestigious gallery but also the sensuality of his figures which sat very well alongside those of Balthus and Maillol, who were regular features at the gallery.

Private Collection, France

Estate of the Artist
Private collection, USA

Robert Melville, Lynn Chadwick, Quadrum, Issue 2, Brussels, November 1956, pp. 98-108
G. S. Whittet, London Commentary, The Studio, Issue 154, October 1957, p. 125
Herbert Read, Lynn Chadwick, Artists of Our Time/Künstler Unserer Zeit, Switzerland, 2nd Edition, 1960, English and German text, no. 22
Josef Paul Hodin, Chadwick, Modern Sculptors, London, 1961, no. 24
W. S. Lieberman & A. H. Barr, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection: Masterpieces of Modern Art, 1981,
p. 150
Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, Aldershot, 2006, no. 170, p. 110, illustrated p. 111

Venice, XXVIII Biennale, June – October 1956 and tour (another  cast)
Kendal, Abbott Hall Art Gallery and Bowness-on-Windermere, Blackwell The Arts and Crafts House, Lynn Chadwick: Evolution in Sculpture, March – June 2013 (another cast)

Among the series of dancing couples Chadwick created, from 1954 onwards, Teddy Boy and Girl proved the most provocative. The very act of plucking a title from popular culture seemed  calculated to raise critics’ hackles – a ‘catchpenny’ trick as guileful as a song’s refrain. For Chadwick it reflected both the playfulness often evident in his sculpture and a narrowing of the distance between art and reality: a confrontation that proved increasingly fertile. Such clashes could be merely allusive – in titles such as Later Alligator or Moon of Alabama – or, as in the case of Teddy Boy and Girl, point to imagery derived fundamentally from contemporary visual culture.

Private Collection, UK

Osborne Samuel Gallery

The drawings with which Chadwick recorded each of hi sculptures  – thumbnail sketches in ink, each  accorded an opus number – were the precursors of his drawings in pen and wash. Filled with sepia, the outlines gain solidity and hence sculptural veracity. Chadwick would draw sculptures, once finished, to enable him to reassess them, and thence,  perhaps, to  take their forms in new directions.

Two Figures (1956) parallels the developing series of Teddy Boys and Two Dancing Figures, while not quite matching either. Heads are reduced to beaks, ribs strongly defined. Yet is this a pair, or two single figures? Each has four legs, a compositional ploy more often used for composite works to join two dancers as one. The potency of Chadwick’s draughtsmanship is such, however, that a cross-current passes between the two figures, gesturing and posing: dynamic in stance.

Private Collection, USA

A.M. Hammacher, Modern English Sculpture, London, 1967, p. 113, another cast illustrated.
D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor, Aldershot, 2006, p. 186, no. 367, another cast illustrated

Brussels, Galerie Withofs, Lynn Chadwick, October – November 1969, not numbered, another cast exhibited

Twister I held in The Tate Gallery Collection, London

The two sculptures that constitute the Twister Series were both conceived in 1962. According to Tony Reichardt, working at the Marlborough Gallery at this time, Twister I, which is a unique piece made from welded steel, was a response to the expiry of his contract with the gallery. In 1960 Chadwick had signed a two year deal with Marlborough and although very lucrative he found it demanding. He celebrated this freedom by creating a series of unique pieces, rather than editioned bronzes, to fulfil an exhibition schedule.
The Twister Series are clearly related to the Watchers that Chadwick had been producing from 1959 and ‘stand observant but undemonstrative, sinister, armless beings … the Watchers seem to be tensed; waiting, aware that something is going to happen.’ (A. Bowness, Lynn Chadwick, London, 1962)
Twister II appears to have the same physical attributes as the Watchers, however, Chadwick has marginally offset the three blocks that make up the abstracted figure. Rather than ‘tensed and waiting’ these subtle changes give the piece a sense of movement, even dance; a restrained joviality. The surface maintains the impression of welded unrefinement, so important in his earlier work, despite being cast in bronze.
Is this work Chadwick celebrating the cutting of gallery ties or maybe a response to an experience he had as Artist in Residence at Ontario College of Art during 1962? He himself maintained that he gave his works the titles after he had created them and he famously did not interpret his own sculptures, stating that ‘Art must be the manifestation of some vital force coming from the dark, caught by the imagination and translated by the artist’s ability and skill … Whatever the final shape, the force behind … indivisible. When we philosophize upon this force we lose sight of it. The intellect alone is too clumsy to grasp it’ (A. Bowness, ibid.)

The estate of the artist has confirmed that this example was cast prior to 1974.

Galleria Blu, Milan.
Private Collection, Milan
Private Collection, UK

D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor 1947-1988, New York 1990, p. 248, no. 618 (another from the edition illustrated, p. 249).

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 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.

Christie’s, Amsterdam,  1997
Private Collection
Sotheby’s, London,  2015
Private Collection, Brussels
Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor, published by Lund Humphries, no. 735, p.320

Galerie Farber, Brussels, Lynn Chadwick, Victor Pasmore, November – December 1976 (another cast)

Female figure 49.2 cm. (19 3/8 in.) high, Male figure 50.2 cm. (19 3/4 in.) high

Chadwick’s Winged Figures are not allegorical beings but are a result of his intuitive dialogue with materials and process. The leitmotif throughout Chadwick’s career was the paired figure. From 1953 onwards, Chadwick developed an array of typologies, whose features he inflected and interchanged. The first manifestation was Conjunction, followed by Two Dancing Figures (or simply Dance), then Encounter, Teddy Boy and Girl  and Winged Figures.  These were never passive meetings, or, for that matter, decorative pas-de-deux. In each instance, an electricity seems to arc between the figures. 

The Artist, thence by family descent

Osborne Samuel Gallery, London

Dennis Farr & Éva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-1996, Lypiatt Studio, Stroud, 1997,p.314, cat.no.763S

Edinburgh, Mercury Gallery, Lynn Chadwick, 25 February-31March 1983, cat.no.9 (another cast)

Cloaked Couple V conceived in 1977 demonstrates how by joining together the male and female figures Chadwick was able to explore the ideas of tenderness and intimacy in his paired sculptures. With the separated couples the owners’ can determine their positioning and relationship to one another; they can be controlled and expressed in a myriad of ways. But with the fusing of the bronze cloaks, at a position where the lower arms and hands meet underneath, an unbreakable bond is created between the sexes which is first established in Chadwick’s mature phase in his life-size Two Reclining Figures (1972). The emphasis shifts, as the 1970s progress and the technique developed, to an emotional level, where the figures’ humanity is realised in new terms. With Cloaked Couple V the subtleties of the woman’s stretched neck and positioning of face leaning into her companion imply a moment of privacy and dialogue is occurring which, as viewers, we are privileged to share.

Michael Bird comments on Chadwick’s work from this time:

‘His increasing tendency to interpret his work in terms of human relationship, rather than formal balance, begins to be audible. “Presences” was how he referred to his new figure sculptures; they were about being, not doing: “I used to call them Watchers, but no longer. Sometimes they are not watching anything. What they are doing is illustrating a relationship – a physical relationship – between people”. It was through this relationship, not through purely formal or allusive qualities, that he wanted his sculptures to speak: “If you can get their physical attitudes right you can spell out a message”‘ (Michael Bird, Lynn Chadwick, Lund Humphries, Farnham, Surrey, 2014, p.147).

Sir Colin & Lady Anderson, London 
Christie’s, London, November 18, 2005, lot 115
Private Collection, USA (Acquired at the above sale)
Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-1996, Stroud, 1997, no. C53S., illustration of another cast p. 363

The Artist
Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Chicago, 2004
Private Collection, USA, May 2004

Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, Aldershot, 2006, no. C107, illustrated p. 409

Feico Hoekstra, Loes Visch, Teo van den Brink, eds., Exhibition Catalogue, Zwolle, Museum de Fundatie, Giacometti-Chadwick: Facing Fear, 2018, illustrated in colour p. 150

Another work from this edition has been included in: Zwolle, Museum de Fundatie, Giacometti-Chadwick: Facing Fear, September 2018 – January 2019

I noticed some stainless steel sculptures in Miami once, by the sea, and they looked very shiny and bright and wonderful. While if you had things with any iron in them at all [in those circumstances] they looked dilapidated and rusty. So I thought I’d try stainless steel. ¹

Having embarked on his adventure with a new material, it was natural that Chadwick should see what happened when he used it to create some of his established archetypes, like the Sitting Couple. They are superficially similar to the monumental bronze couples of the 1980’s but the forms in stainless steel are crisper and sharper throughout. The planes of polished stainless steel reflect every change in colour and light that surround them, imbuing the surface with a vitality that shifts with the line of sight.

¹Edward Lucie-Smith, Chadwick, puplished by Lypiatt Studio, 1997, p. 131

Private collection (purchased at the 1974 exhibition)
Osborne Samuel, London

Exhibition catalogue, Chadwick: Recent Sculpture, London, Marlborough Fine Art, 1974, pp. 7, 28, no. 26, illustrated.
D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Farnham, 2014, p. 295, no. 657, another cast illustrated.

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Chadwick: Recent Sculpture, January 1974, no. 26.

The Artist

Galerie Faber, Brussels, 1976

Private Collection, Belgium (purchased from the above 1977)

Galerie Faber, Brussels, November – December 1976

Estate of the artist, California, 1994
Chalk & Vermillion Fine Arts, Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut, 1997
Private Collection, California
Osborne Samuel, London

Hulten, Pontus. Sam Francis. Bonn: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1993; exh. cat., p. 412 (illus.);
Sam Francis. Rome: Galleria II Gabbiano, 1998; exh. cat., p. 45 (illus.);
Sam Francis: 1957-1986. Tokyo: Nantenshi Gallery, 1987; exh. cat. (illus.);
Sam Francis: Remembering 1923-1994. Amsterdam: Gallery Delaive, 2004; exh. cat., pp. 104, 112 (illus.);
Sam Francis: Retrospective in Blue. Bratislava, Slovakia: Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum,
2010; exh. cat., p. 253 (illus.)
Burchett-Lere, Debra, ed.Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings, 1946–1994. Berkeley, California:University of California Press and Sam Francis Foundation,2011, cat. no. 1163, ill. in color on DVD I.

Las Vegas Art Museum, Las Vegas. “Sam Francis: Remaking the World,” 7 March-21 April 2002; exh. cat., p. 46 (color illus.).

Registered with the Francis foundation under archive numbers SFP85-90 and online archive number SFP85-190

Galerie Kornfeld, Bern
Galerie Iris Wazzau, Davos
Private Collection, Switzerland

Gstaad, Galerie Lovers of Fine Art, Sam Francis: 1923-1994, 2002

The Artist

Osborne Samuel

The Artist

Osborne Samuel

Private Collection, USA

Craig Hartley 55; Starr Figura 76

Sarah Howgate 123; Sebastian Smee 1

William Feaver 66; Yale 41

Toby Treves, Lucian Freud: Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints, published by Modern Art Press, 2022, No. 80, illustrated p.207

London, National Portrait Gallery, Lucian Freud: Portraits, 9 Feb – 27 May 2012, illustrated p.197, another impression

New York, Museum of Modern Art, Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings, 16 Dec 2007 – 10 Mar 2008, illustrated p. 76, another impression

Lucian Freud was one of the most significant portraitists of the last century, acclaimed Internationally. His portraits are both ruthless, coldblooded examinations and yet also intimate and impartial. This seemingly contradictory approach stemmed from seeing himself as “a sort of biologist”, interested in “the insides and undersides of things.” ₁

He refused to work from photographs as he stated, “the aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell.”₂ Sitters had to be patient and prepared to be nocturnal, so inevitably this led to self-portraits. Freud depicted mirror images of himself throughout the breadth of his career and often referred to this process in titles, such as in the etching, Self-Portrait: Reflection. 

This etching is an extraordinary portrait and display of technical command, the artist as in so many portraits, naked, filling the large plate from the chest upwards. Freud stood his copper plates upright on an easel from the mid 1980’s onwards and found he was able to work with greater force and fluidity. He claimed to find etching easier than drawing.

Self-Portrait: Reflection is uncompromising, the irregularities of the surface and lack of balance to his features are laid bare. The artist’s eyes scarcely visible but piercing, self-examining and yet also boring into the viewer.  

Freud stated, “Many people are inclined to look at portraits not for the art in them but to see how they resemble people. This seems to me a profound misunderstanding.” ₃

Frank Auerbach began to unravel this ‘misunderstanding’ in the Tate catalogue that accompanied Freud’s retrospective of 2002:

‘When I think of the work of Lucian Freud, I think of Lucian’s attention to his subject. If his concentrated interest were to falter he would come off his tightrope; he has no safety net of manner. Whenever his way of working threatens to become a style, he puts it aside like a blunted pencil and finds a procedure more suited to his needs.I am never aware of the aesthetic paraphernalia. The subject is raw, not cooked to be more digestible as art, not covered in a gravy of ostentatious tone or colour, nor arranged on the plate as a ‘composition.’ The paintings live because their creator has been passionately attentive to their theme, and his attention has left something for us to look at. It seems a sort of miracle.’₄

₁ Royal Academy Blog, 22^nd October 2019
₂ Lucian Freud: A Life, David Dawson and Mark Holborn, published by Phaidon, 2019
₃ Freud cited in Cape, J., Freud at Work, Alfred Knopf, New York, 2006, p. 32
₄ William Feaver, Lucian Freud, Tate Publishing, 2002, p.51

The Artist
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Private Collection

Starr Figura 61; Sebastian Smee 44; 

Toby Treves, Lucian Freud: Catalogue Raisonné of the Prints, published by Modern Art Press, 2022, no. 96, illustrated p.239

New York, Museum of Modern Art, Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings , 16 Dec 2007 – 10 Mar 2008 (another impression exhibited and illustrated p.92)

The journalist Emily Bearn was the subject of this etching, she was also the sitter to several paintings in 2001-2002.

From the edition of 9

From the edition of 6

From the edition of 5

From the edition of 9

AP aside from the edition of 6

Private Collection, UK
Osborne Samuel, London
Private Collection, UK  (purchased from the above 2006)

A multidisciplinary artist well known for his charcoal drawings often tied to socio-political conditions in post-apartheid South Africa, William Kentridge aims to record history. In 1994, South African pop group Mango Groove commissioned a short film from Kentridge with the aim, as an activist group, to demonstrate the changes that had occurred in South Africa following the democratic election of Nelson Mandela. The film was used as a music video for the group’s song, Another Country, and was comprised of a montage of Kentridge’s drawings depicting scenes of protest, strikes, and poverty. The present work, Untitled Night Drawing, was created as the final frame of the film and has been in the personal collection of Mango Groove’s lead artist since its creation. Initially creating films as a means of documenting his drawings, the artist has said that the “charcoal drawings come first and the technique of erasure and redrawing was a way of arriving at a static drawing. Then I started filming the process. So the films arrived rather than being decided upon.” Shedding light on a country’s desire for peaceful change in the midst of political shifts, Untitled Night Drawing is a notable example of Kentridge’s oeuvre and provides an exceptional glimpse into his animation techniques that are ultimately rooted in drawing alone.

“I’m not interested in the computer doing the animation, in filling in between and using techniques of drawing on a screen—there’s something about the feel of paper and charcoal that is essential, and that a mousepad and a pressure pen or stylus doesn’t begin to approximate. The analogue basis at the heart of it all is essential.”

A native Johannesburg artist, Kentridge has been lauded with awards such as the Kyoto Prize, 2010; the Oskar Kokoschka Award, 2008; and the Sharjah Biennial 6 Prize, 2003, among others. His work is held in the permanent collections of esteemed museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Kunstmuseum Basel.

Artist
Private collection, Johannesburg
Private collection, USA, 2002

‘Drawing from Il Ritorno d’Ulisse’ is a drawing still from Il Ritorno d’Ulisse – Montiverdi’s opera directed by William Kentridge in 1998 as a multimedia performance. 

The opera was a collaboration between the Handspring Puppet Company, William Kentridge, opera singers from various countries and a Belgian string quartet. 

The role of this drawing within the structure of a play or theatrical performance underpins its significance. William Kentridge is known for his multimedia work using puppets and opera. ‘Ubu’ commissioned by the Truth and Reconicilliation Committee and the ‘Confessions of Zeno’, made to be shown at Documenta XI (2002) are just two of the many important productions worked on by Kentridge.

The opera is based on the Greek legend of the return of Ulysses where the battle-scarred Ulysses returns from an epic voyage to find a home he barely recognises—a place where his face is no longer known, and his waiting wife Penelope beset by those who stand to gain if he never returns.

Homer’s Odyssey is a story of exile and longing, of love, deception and revenge, and it has been retold in almost every conceivable artform, from epic poetry to Hollywood movies; from experimental novels to animé. And, of course, opera. Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse is more than one of the oldest operas in the repertory. It is also a gripping human drama, told through energetic Renaissance dance music and passionate song, bristling with all the emotion, energy and wit of what was—when it was first performed in 1639—state-of-the-art blockbuster entertainment.

Now, visionary director William Kentridge, early music specialists the Ricercar Consort and vocalists specialised in baroque singing, including mezzo-soprano Kristina Hammarström and tenor Jeffrey Thompson, join South Africa’s world-famous Handspring Puppet Company to share their version of Monteverdi’s opera. In a 20th-century Johannesburg hospital, an elderly Ulysses looks back on the events of his life. Through video animation, the power of Monteverdi’s music performed live and Handspring’s extraordinary, life-size puppets, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse blurs the boundaries between human reality and artifice, memory and actuality, to create a powerful, universal and unforgettable operatic experience—like Homer’s original, a timeless epic of absence and adventure, of yearning, love and human fragility, and how fidelity and courage ultimately triumph over deception and greed.

Private Collection, UK, 1954
James Kirkman, London
Piccadilly Gallery, London

Osborne Samuel, London

Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, vol.3, 1940-49, Aldershot, 2001, no.AG44.20; HMF 2241a, p.214-215

From the Rescue Sketchbook, page 21. The early part of this sketchbook contains various studies for textile designs and family groups which may date to 1943. The latter part to preliminary sketches for The Rescue, a melodrama by Edward Sackville-West published in 1945 including reproductions of Moore’s drawings.

Curt Valentin, New York
George Gallowhur, USA
Brigitta Bertoia, USA
Private collection, Los Angeles
William Beadleston Gallery, New York
James Kirkman, London
New Art Centre, London
Lillian Heidenberg Gallery, New York
Osborne Samuel, London

Herbert Read, Moore (Vol.1), 1944, pl152a; 1949, pl.152a
Henry Moore Complete Drawings; Volume 2 (1930-39) , edited by Ann Garrould, published by Lund Humphries, no. AG39.19; HMF 1460
Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2002), illustrated p. 237.

This drawing and Eighteen Ideas for Sculpture AG39.20 originally formed part of a large sheet. Moore gave permission for the two sections to be separated in December 1983.

Around 1937, Moore became fascinated by Fabre de Lagrange’s mathematical models in the Science Museum: beautiful objects, made in 1872 from polished brass, wood and coloured filaments. Their aim was to demonstrate the new discipline of Descriptive Geometry, but for Moore it was the models’ structure and changing viewpoints that proved compelling – ‘the ability to look through the strings as with a bird cage and see one form within the other’. ₁

The precursors to these models, containing fixed elements, were devised by Gaspard Monge (1746–1818), whose pupil, Théodore Olivier (1793–1853), refined the concept by designing versions able to be distorted and rotated into a variety of configurations. It was these models, made by Lagrange, that changed the course of mathematical teaching. Forming the basis of teaching collections, they dictated the tenor of lectures, their delicate construction even requiring technicians to care for them.₂  Moore evidently studied Lagrange’s models carefully, commenting,

I was fascinated by the mathematical models … made to illustrate the difference of the form that is halfway between a square and a circle. One model had a square at one end with 20 holes along each side … Through these holes rings were threaded and lead [sic] to a circle with the same number of holes at the other end. A plane interposed through the middle shows the form that is halfway between a square and a circle ₃

Over a three-year period, between 1937 and 1939, Moore created around fifty sculptures in which space is modified by taut threads. There is a complex relationship between such works, Moore’s drawings and photography, as Andrew Causey has noted. A photograph, showing a cluster of stringed maquettes arranged on a plinth in Moore’s studio, corresponds exactly with the composition of Landscape with Figures (1938), in which Moore has supplied an imagined background. ₄ The implication is that Moore was exploring ideas beyond sculpture, and it is pertinent, as Causey also observes, that Moore’s drawings were included in the series of Penguin Modern Painters. ₅

In the two sets of drawings presented here, originally part of a single sheet, stringed figures predominate: proliferating and mutating serially across the paper, to suggest bones or stones, worn into strange cavities and curvatures. Fourteen Ideas for Sculpture relates most closely to the complexity of Lagrange’s conoid models, albeit exchanging their angularity for organic, rounded forms. In Eighteen Ideas for Sculpture the focus alters, to address – as Moore’s annotation makes clear – the ‘mother & child’. Moore made biomorphic stringed sculptures with this title, predominantly small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, in 1938–9. Also on this page are more familiar depictions of the subject, a mother standing, child in arms, as well as an abstract enclosing figure, similar to Moore’s internal/external forms. Most intriguing, and fitting into Causey’s category of the uncanny, are the two drawings to the lower left of the sheet, in which a bone-white structure is set closely against a quasi-human form. If the yellow of these figures isolates them, their darkly shaded background contributes to a sense of menace. Such ambiguity was captured by Robert Melville’s term ‘object-presences’: figures ready at any moment to ‘break into overt and destructive action’. ₆

₁ Moore, in Henry Moore and John Hedgecoe, Henry Spencer Moore (Thomas Nelson, 1968), p. 105.
₂ Jane Wess, ‘The history of surface mathematical models’, in Intersections: Henry Moore and Stringed Surfaces (London: The Royal Society, 2012), p. 7–8.
₃ Moore, in Moore and Hedgecoe, Henry Spencer Moore, p. 105.
₄ Andrew Causey, ‘Henry Moore and the Uncanny’, in Henry Moore: Critical Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003), p. 82–90.
₅ Geoffrey Grigson, Henry Moore, The Penguin Modern Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Limited, 1943). Plate 20 shows a drawing, Objects – string and wood (1938), illustrating stringed figures in a prison-like setting.
₆ Robert Melville, Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, 1921–1969 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), p. 17.

Private Collection, UK

Henry Moore and the Challenge of Architecture , published by the Henry Moore Foundation, 2005, catalogue no.3, page 6

David Mitchinson, Henry Moore: Prints and Portfolios, published by Patrick Cramer, Geneva, 2010, p.11, illustrated fig, 3

Henry Moore Foundation, Henry Moore and the Challenge of Artchitecture, Perry Green Much Hadham, 2005

c.1920

One of only 3 recorded impressions. (the Henry Moore Foundation acquired one of the three copies in 1985)

Dancing Figures is a rare and early linocut from c.1920, created as an idea for an architectural frieze and conveys a sense of movement and dynamism among the stylized figures, giving a clear insight into Moore’s creative process at a time when he started his earliest explorations of architectural concepts.

On returning to Castleford, his Yorkshire home town, in February 1919 after demobilisation at the end of the First World War, Moore joined the pottery classes of his former art teacher Alice Gostick, before going in September that year to Leeds School of Art as a sculpture student. Though studying in Leeds Moore continued to live in Castleford and to spend some evenings at Alice Gostick’s classes. Dancing Figures c.1920, a linoleum print on olive-green wove paper measuring 165 x 344mm, dates from this period.

Collection of the artist. Collection of Ann H. Zwinger.
By descent, Ann H. Zwinger Trust.

Orebro, Sweden, 1952

Dimensions include the artist’s base Height 2cm; 3/4 in

The recent, spectacular exhibition of Moore’s Helmet Heads at the Wallace Collection in 2019 demonstrates their enduring fascination. Moore had visited the Wallace Collection in the 1920s and made drawings of armour, recording details that found their way into his sculptures – most intensely during the 1930s to 1950s, but sporadically throughout the course of his life.

Early intimations of Moore’s Helmet series appear in his drawings in the mid-1930s. Helmets morph into heads, skulls contain blanched structures, branching within them. From these seedling ideas developed Moore’s first metal sculpture. The Helmet (1939–40), originally in lead, is a slender vertical structure. Two holes, piercing its top, appear as eyes. Most importantly, however, it encloses a separately cast inner form suggesting a figure, planted on two stubby legs. The upright form of this figure, in combination with the womb-like enclosure of the outer shell, suggests a mother and child.

Moore, in fact, cited multiple sources for the series that unfolded from this startling composition. In addition to the Wallace Collection, he recalled that his early interest in armour had been informed by the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he wandered at lunchtimes as a student. ₁ He also linked The Helmet’s origin to Wyndham Lewis ‘talking about the shell of a lobster covering the soft flesh inside’. The carapace protects a vulnerable interior, just as a mother shields her child:

The helmet … became a recording of things inside other things. The mystery of semiobscurity where one can only half distinguish something. In the helmet you do not quite know what is inside. ₂

It is an intriguing line of thought, and one that Andrew Causey probed by juxtaposing Moore’s The Helmet with Epstein’s Rock Drill, which likewise shelters an embryo inside its mechanistic ribcage. ₃

Moore’s use of lead for the early versions of the Helmet series was a practical solution to casting his own work. Lead could be melted at a relatively low temperature, from sections of piping, and cast outdoors. Later, Moore cast these same sculptures in bronze to make them less vulnerable to damage. But again, there was an alternative reading. Moore described the original versions as ‘more expressive because lead has a kind of poisonous quality; you feel that if you licked it you might die’. ₄

Helmet (1950) is a maquette for the first numbered sculpture in the series. It has a more open, simplified form from the front, while the back has two pointed apertures and a series of slits, suggesting vents. Echoing this, the inner form is both pointed and curved, containing its own sharp slit. To the top are two circular holes. The catalogue for the Wallace Collection exhibition related the overall shape of this sculpture, with its prominent circular air vents, to the German ‘coalscuttle’ helmet – the M1916 Stahlhelm, which was a sought-after souvenir for British troops in World War I. Moore would have seen such helmets during combat in 1917. ₅

Yet, unlike the larger version of Helmet Head No. 1, the maquette is unique and possesses a distinct history. Cast in 1950, it was chosen in 1952 by Moore and Fritz Eriksson (Head of the Swedish Arts Council) as part of a touring exhibition destined for a year-long tour of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Germany. An installation photograph shows the two maquettes for Helmet Head No. I and Helmet Head No. 2, side by side on a plinth. To the left is Moore’s stone Composition (1932), subsequently bought by the Tate, and to the right, Half-Figure (1929) in cast concrete, purchased by the British Council in 1948. On the walls, enlarged photographs of further works by Moore indicate the breadth of his practice as a sculptor. Sold to its only owner, Ann Zwinger, in the early 1950s, the maquette for Helmet Head No. 1 was in fact a substitution for a different lead sculpture, which was damaged in transit. The maquette’s base touchingly records this provenance, bearing both the British Council’s exhibition label and the handwritten dedication ‘To Ann Zwinger, from Henry Moore’.

₁ Moore, in Alan Wilkinson (ed.), Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2002), p. 214.
₂ Ibid.
₃ Andrew Causey, The Drawings of Henry Moore (Lund Humphries, 2010), p. 99.
₄ Moore, in Moore: Head-Helmet: An Exhibition to Celebrate the 150^th Anniversary of the Foundation of the University of Durham (Durham: DLI Museum and Arts Centre, 1982), p. 1
₅ Tobias Capwell & Hannah Higham, Henry Moore: The Helmet Heads (London: The Wallace Collection, 2019), p. 86.

Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York (by 1955).
Erna Futter, New York; Estate sale, Christie’s, New York, 1986
Private Collection, USA (acquired from the above)
Osborne Samuel, London

Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings , with an introduction by Herbert Read, published by Lund Humphries, first published 1944, illustrated p. xxxii

A. Garrould, ed., Henry Moore, Complete Drawings 1940-49 , London, 2001, vol. 3, p. 156, no. AG 42.148 (illustrated p.156).

As its title implies this working, energetic sheet is a graphic rehearsal or blueprint for possible sculptures and contains both reclining, seated and figures with internal forms, themes which were to dominate Moore’ s career. Elements hark back to the surrealist tendencies from the late 1930’ s but also formal sculptural resolutions have evolved on the sheet and are familiar in works from the 1940’ s onwards. The energetic application of layers of mixed media echoes the bony, taut surfaces of the sculptures. The memorable drawing ’ Crowd looking at a tied-up object (1942) recalls Yves Tanguy’ s ocean-bed surrealism. Ideas for Sculpture , though a set of un-related studies rather than an independent or cohesive narrative, contains a similarly elusive feeling of mystery and atmospheric flux.

Dominion Gallery, Canada

Private Collection, USA

Osborne Samuel, London

D. Mitchinson (ed.), Henry Moore: with comments by the artist, London, 1981, pp. 106, 311, no. 203 (another cast illustrated)
A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture 1949-54, Vol. 2, London, 1986, p. 31, no. 289a, pls. 34-35 (another cast illustrated)
S. Compton, Henry Moore: Catalogue of the Royal Academy Exhibition, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1988, p. 226, no. 112 (lead version illustrated)
Exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore: Sculpture from the 40s and 50s, London, Waddington Galleries, 1995, pp. 14-15, no. 5 (lead version illustrated)
Exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore: War and Utility, London, Imperial War Museum, 2006, p. 51, no. 22 (another cast illustrated)

Conceived in 1950 in lead and cast in an edition of 9 in bronze in 1972.

The Artist, May 1981, from whom acquired by
Private Collection, New Zealand
Private Collection, U.K.
With Berkeley Square Gallery, London, 2003, where purchased by
Private Collection, U.K. by whom gifted to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.
Osborne Samuel, London (Formerly Berkeley Square Gallery)

Alan Bowness, Henry Moore: Volume 6, Complete Sculpture, 1980-86, London, 1999, p.37, cat.no.790 (ill.b&w., another cast)

Rome, Vigna Antoniana, Henry Moore, 1981
Ravenna, Moore, Sculture, disegni e grafica, 1986 no.13 (illustrated)

Height excludes base.

A cast is owned by the Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, UK

Though a pervasive theme throughout Moore’s oeuvre, the artist created more images of the Mother and Child in the final decade of his life than in any other period of his career.  Moore wrote in 1979: “The ‘Mother and Child’ is one of my two or three obsessions, one of my inexhaustible subjects. This may have something to do with the fact that the ‘Madonna and Child’ was so important in the art of the past and that one loves the old masters and has learned so much from them. But the subject itself is eternal and unending, with so many sculptural possibilities in it—a small form in relation to a big form, the big form protecting the small one, and so on. It is such a rich subject, both humanly and compositionally, that I will always go on using it” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Berkeley, 2002, p. 213). 

Marlborough Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above in June 1983
Private collection

Henry Moore, 85th Birthday Exhibition: stone carvings, bronze sculptures, drawings (exhibition catalogue), Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1986, illustration of another cast p. 66
Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Complete Sculpture 1980-1986, vol. 6, London, 1986, no. 873, illustrations of another cast p. 54 & pl. 114

Dimensions include artist’s bronze base

A cast from the edition is in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, gifted by Jeffrey Loria

The original plaster for this work is in the collection of the Henry Moore Foundation and visible in the Bourne maquette studio. One child is shown with the mother. 

Moore made several drawings for and of this sculpture, using the device of two children to emphasise the interaction between the children and the mother. This is the only recorded sculpture with this theme

Private Collection, purchased at the November 1972 exhibition 

Thence by descent

Osborne Samuel, London

Exhibition catalogue, Small Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore, London, Lefevre Gallery, 1972, pp. 8-9, no. 1, illustrated.
A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture 1980-86, Vol 6, London, 1999, p. 28, no. 175a, another cast illustrated.

London, Lefevre Gallery, Small Bronzes and Drawings by Henry Moore, November – December 1972, no. 1. (this cast)

The Goodman Gallery, South Africa 

Private Collection, London (acquired from the above in 1981) 

Thence by descent

Osborne Samuel, London

Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture: 1980-86, Vol. 6, London, 1988, no. 788, another cast illustrated, p. 36-37

Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Ursinus College, Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Henry Moore Relationships, Drawings, Prints & Sculpture from the Muriel and Philip Berman Collection, 1993-1994 (another cast).
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Henry Moore, A Centennial Salute, An Exhibition in Celebration of Philip I. Berman, July-November 1998, no. 18 (illustrated, p. 30) (another cast).

A cast from the edition is owned by the Henry Moore Foundation.

In John Hedgecoe’s seminal book on the artist, Moore states, “from the very beginning the reclining figure has been my main theme.’₁  This subject is central to Moore’s creativity throughout his career. In his own words, “the reclining figure gives the most freedom, compositionally and spatially… A reclining figure can recline on any surface. It is free and stable at the same time. It fits in with my belief that sculpture should be permanent, should last for eternity.” ₂

Reclining Nude: Crossed Feet is an iconic sculpture. The initial impetus for the posture of the woman was inspired by the Chacmool figures which the artist first saw at the British Museum in the 1920s; the arms perpendicular to the ground, the knees raised and the twisting contours of the body. However in Moore’s Reclining Figures, the masculine rain god of the Chacmool has been, in William Packer’s words,  ‘transformed into an image more general, unhieratic and benign, as a simple function of the softer, rounded forms that came with the change of sex, and the humanising informality of the relaxed and turning body.’ ₃

The crossed feet and hands are abbreviations of the limbs, an extension of the contradictory, relaxed  torsion in the body. The contours of the sculpture evoke, as Moore noted, the disparate and enigmatic contours of the landscape, opening up voids beneath the shoulders and under the arms, echoed in the arching of the legs.  The sculpture can thus be seen in the round, each angle stimulates a new and perhaps surprising interpretation.

₁ John Hedgecoe, Henry Moore, published by Nelson, New York, 1968, p. 151

₂ Henry Moore cited in J.D. Morse, ‘Henry Moore Comes to America’, Magazine of Art, vol.40, no.3, March 1947, pp.97–101, reprinted in Philip James (ed.), Henry Moore on Sculpture, London 1966, p.264.

₃ Celebrating Moore, selected by David Mitchinson, published by Lund Humphries, 1998, p.125, extract written by William Packer

The Artist
Curt Valentin, Buchholz Gallery, New York 
Mrs. Vera List, philanthropist and supporter of contemporary art, Greenwich, Connecticut
Thence by descent
Osborne Samuel, London 

Henry Moore, Volume Two: Sculpture and Drawings Since 1948, (London: Lund Humphries, 1955)

Robert Melville, Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings 1921-1969, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970) 

Ann Garrould, ed., Henry Moore: Complete Drawings, Volume 3, 1940-49; (London and Much Hadham: Lund Humphries, 2001, p.288, ref AG48.43; HMF 2515

New York, New York, Buchholz Gallery, Henry Moore, March 6-31, 1951, illustrated cat no. 66 (in this catalogue the drawing is incorrectly dated 1949)

This work is registered in the Henry Moore Foundation archives as HMF 2515 and research file number 2020.38. 

Rocking Chairs was purchased at Buchholz Gallery in 1951. The drawing was executed in 1948, four years before the bronze, Mother and Child on Ladderback Rocking Chair. In this drawing, Moore depicts five figure groups on rocking bases, with the
mother figure holding the child in various positions. Each group is three-dimensional, indicating that Moore conceived of the figure group as a sculpture from the beginning.

Moore’s series of sculptural rocking chairs was begun in 1950, when his daughter Mary, a much-loved and long-awaited child, was four years old. Although Moore had explored the theme of the mother and child since the 1920s, these new works showed a joy and tenderness born of experience. Will Grohman described them as ‘enchanting impromptus, the offspring of a lighter muse.’ 1 Their creation offers a glimpse both into Moore’s domestic life and the extent to which his personal and creative identity intertwined. Just as he experimented with how to balance the sculptures, so that they rocked perfectly, he would encourage Mary to think practically through play. For her eighth birthday party he produced a set of scales and invented a game to guess the weight of each guest. Moore’s estimates, perhaps unsurprisingly for a sculptor, proved accurate to within a few pounds. 2

Moore’s drawings provide a different insight. In the Rocking Chair Notebook (1947–8) he experimented with radically varied designs for the chair as well as the figures seated within them. The drawing, Rocking Chairs (1948), shows Moore adjusting the postures of mother and child so that each suggests an altered dynamic: from a protective embrace, to the joyous wriggling of the child held aloft, to an independent stepping forward, away from the mother’s arms. While mass is weighed through the technique Moore described as ‘sectional drawing’, dividing surfaces into jigsaw grids to highlight curves and planes, relatively little attention is paid to the chairs’ potential for movement: certain of the rockers seem implausibly flat. Instead, Moore lavishes his imagination on the figures. Grohmann noted how such variation developed across the span of the rocking chair series, although his words apply equally to this sheet of drawings: ‘heads became archaic knots, the bodies clothed skeletons, but the expression remains elated.’ 3

Rocking Chairs was bought in 1951 by the American philanthropist and collector, Vera List (1908–2002), from the Buchholz Gallery in New York. List, who a year later bought Moore’s Mother and Child on Ladderback Rocking Chair (1952), was an early and dedicated patron. In 1961 she and her husband sponsored the commission of Moore’s large-scale Reclining Figure (1963–5), in bronze, for New York’s Lincoln Center.

1.    Will Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, new enlarged edition (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1960), p. 142.

2.       Mary Moore, in Elizabeth Day, ‘The Moore Legacy’, The Observer (27 July 2008).

3.       Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, p. 143

Gifted by the artist to his nephew as a wedding present (Albert Spencer Speight)
Thence by descent

Private collection UK

Recorded in the Henry Moore Foundation Archives as HMF2440a

The Henry Moore Foundation has suggested a date of 1948 for the drawing and that it originally was part of the 1947-49 sketchbook.

“My drawings are done mainly as a help towards making sculpture – as a means of generating ideas for sculpture, tapping oneself for the initial idea: as a way of sorting out ideas and developing them.

Also sculpture compared with drawings is a slow means of expression, and I find drawing a useful outlet for ideas which there is not time enough to realise as a sculpture. And I use drawing as a method of study and observation of natural forms (drawing from life, drawings of bones, shells etc.)”

Notes on sculpture, (1937) reprinted in ‘Henry Moore Complete Sculpture, vol 1, published by Lund Humphries, 1988, p.xxxv

Gérald Cramer (ed.) Alistair Grant & David Mitchinson, Henry Moore.
The Graphic Work, 1931-72, vol. I, London, 1973, no.9, illustrated.

Printed in three colours: yellow, blue grey and black. 

Collograph based on several drawings of 1948/49.

A few prints have been dated 1950.

In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s collography was a new printing technique. Collography is a printmaking process in which materials are applied to a rigid substrate (such as cardboard or wood). The word is derived from the Greek word koll or kolla, meaning glue, and graph, meaning the activity of drawing.

The plate once assembled can be intaglio-inked, inked with a roller or paintbrush or some combination of methods. Ink or pigment is applied to the collaged substrate and used to print onto paper using a printing press. (Collograph is sometimes spelt colograph or collagraph). Moore was at the forefront throughout his career of innovative printing techniques.

Dennis Hotz Fine Art, Johannesburg, 1992.
Whitehouse Gallery, Johannesburg
Private collection (purchased from the above in 2016)
Osborne Samuel, London

I. Jianou, Henry Moore, Paris, 1968, p. 86 no. 491A, pl. 114, another cast illustrated.
R. Melville, Henry Moore, London, 1979, p. 364, no. 637, another cast illustrated, incorrectly recorded as an edition of 9.
A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore Complete Sculpture 1955-64, Vol. 3, London, 1986, n.p., no. 477, another cast illustrated.
A.G. Wilkinson, exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore Remembered: The Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1987, p. 197, no. 149, plaster version illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore Sketch Models and Working Models, London, The South Bank Centre, 1990, pp. 17, 29, no. 33, fig. 13, another cast illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Moore in China, Beijing, China Art Gallery, 2000, p. 54, no. 52, another cast illustrated.
D. Kosinski, exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore: Sculpting the 20th Century, Dallas, Museum of Art, 2001, pp. 220, 310, no. 75, plaster version illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Imaginary Landscapes, Perry Green, The Henry Moore Foundation, 2003, n.p., no. 23, another cast illustrated.
A. Feldman, exhibition catalogue, Moore Rodin, Perry Green, The Henry Moore Foundation, 2013, pp. 44, 138, no. 103, pl. 52, another cast illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Henry Moore: Back to a Land, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2015, p. 155, exhibition not numbered, another cast illustrated.

Toronto, Art Gallery of
Ontario, Henry Moore Remembered: The Collection at the Art Gallery of
Ontario in Toronto, September 1987 – February 1988, no. 149, plaster
version exhibited.
London, The South Bank Centre, Henry Moore: Sketch Models and Working
Models, 1990, no. 33, another cast exhibited: this exhibition
travelled to Coventry, Mead Gallery, May – June 1990; Huddersfield,
Huddersfield Art Gallery, June – August 1990; Wrexham, Library Arts Centre,
August – October 1990; Bristol, City Museum and Art Gallery, October – November
1990; Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery, December – January 1991; Exeter, Royal
Albert Memorial Museum, January – March 1991; and Stirling, Smith Art Gallery,
March – April 1991.
Bejing, British Council, China Art Gallery, Moore in China, October
– November 2000, no. 52, another cast exhibited: this exhibition travelled to
Guangzhou, Guangdong Museum of Art, December 2000 – February 2001; and
Shanghai, City Art Museum, March – April 2001.
Dallas, Museum of Art, Henry Moore: Sculpting the 20th Century, February
– May 2001, no. 75, plaster version exhibited: this exhibition travelled to San
Francisco, Fine Arts Museum, June – September 2001; and Washington D.C.,
National Gallery of Art, October 2001 – January 2002.
Perry Green, The Henry Moore Foundation, Imaginary Landscapes, August 2003, no. 23, another cast exhibited.
Perry Green, The Henry Moore Foundation, Moore Rodin, March – October 2013, no. 103, another cast exhibited: this exhibition travelled to Compton Verney, Compton Verney House, February – August 2014.
Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Henry Moore: Back to a Land, March – September 2015, exhibition not numbered, another cast exhibited.
Leeds, Henry Moore Institute, Henry Moore: Configuration, September 2021 – January 2022, another cast exhibited, catalogue not traced.
Perry Green, The Henry Moore Foundation, Henry Moore: The Sixties, April – October 2022, another cast exhibited, catalogue not traced.

Curt Valentin, New York
Alma Morgenthau Wertheim, New York
Anne Wertheim Werner, New York
Thence by descent
Osborne Samuel

Anne Garrould, ed., Henry Moore Complete Drawings 1950-76, vol. III, Much Hadham, 2001, no. AG 47-49.63, p. 273, illustrated

Marlborough Fine Art, London
Marlborough Fine Art, Rome
Private Collection
Osborne Samuel, London

Private collection, UK

Coppel, Stephen, Linocuts of the Machine Age, published by Scolar Press, 1995, CEP 32, p.99 
Vann, Philip, Rhythms of Colour and Light: The Linocut Art of Cyril Power (1872-1951), published by Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, no.32, p.85

Modernity : British Colour Linocuts of the 1920’s and 1930’s, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, 21 November 1999- 16 January 2000.
Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 30 January – 1st June 2008; Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art, New York, 23 September – 7 December 2008; Wolfsonian, Florida International University, 29 November 2009 – 28 February 2010
The Linocut Art of Cyril Power, Osborne Samuel, 2008

Machine-age London and its modern transport system became a central subject for the Grosvenor School artists. The expanding London Underground, the cities’ red buses and the reliable rush-hour crowds provided the artists with dynamic and contemporary subject matter. The Underground in particular was a favoured venue for Cyril Power, who recorded the escalators full of featureless commuters descending; a tube train carriage with its passengers, some strap-hanging, others claustrophobically seated with reticent English demeanour reading their newspapers; a Greenline bus with an open ‘sunshine’ roof or the swing-boats at funfairs were immortalised by Claude Flight and his followers.

The Tube Station made by Power in 1932 is one of his best known and collected linocuts. It is printed in five colours from five linoleum blocks on a thin oriental tissue paper. In total there were 120 impressions printed; the edition was numbered 1/60 – 60/60 in pencil and signed. The US edition such as this impression was inscribed USA Ed 1/60 – 60/60. 

Power’s notes identify this as Bank Underground station which is named after the Bank of England and opened in 1900. It is served by the Central, Northern and Waterloo & City lines.  Here we see the iconic red London tube train as distinctive as the red London double-decker buses as it leaves the station waved off by the guard.  Its passengers are seen through the four windows, probably buried in the morning newspapers.  The curve of the roof is accentuated by the pattern and rhythm of the architecture, the fixtures of the indicator boards and the convex mirror that enabled the tube driver to see the platform.

Cyril Power was one of a group of artists that studied at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art under the guidance of their teacher Claude Flight, in London’s Pimlico district near Victoria Station.  Their imagery and the execution were at the cutting-edge of contemporary printmaking in the 1930s and is now widely collected and is some of the world’s greatest museums from the British Museum to New York’s Museum of Modern Art where there is a room dedicated to the Grosvenor school linocuts.

Rowan Gallery, London (#R1302)
Private Collection, New York (from the above in 1975)
Scolar Fine Art, London (before 2004)
Private Collection, UK (before 2004)
Osborne Samuel, London

Diamond Lil: Lilian Somerville, The Woman Behind the Post-War British Art Boom, by Judith LeGrove, Published by Osborne Samuel, 2022, p. 130 (includes text contributed by Bridget Riley)

The curve form was a fundamental part of Bridget Riley’s work since the early 1960s. They were incorporated into several of her most significant achievements during the first full decade of her career, when black emulsion predominated in her work: Current, 1964 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Arrest 2, 1965 (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri) and Exposure, 1966 (Linda and William Hermann Collection, Dallas) are three extremely fine examples. In all these paintings the curve is employed in different ways and with varying rhythms, or ‘change of pace’ as Riley herself described. When considering Rising and Falling Curve with Turquoise, Cerise, Olive and Black (1974) with its long, slow curves it is with Arrest 2 that the closest affinity can be found. Taking the colour element aside, the paintings which are vertical in structure integrate softly undulating curves which never meet, thus creating space between them which allows the compositions to breathe. The units themselves change in width as the eye is drawn both upwards and downwards (Rising and Falling) through the image, to create a destabilising, asymmetrical effect, enhancing their expressive character.

In conversation with Paul Moorhouse, when asked, ‘What is distinctive about the curve as a formal element?’ Bridget Riley explained, ‘Well, in my case the curve is very much a “made” thing. You could say that a square has a great many cultural references. A square is a man-made shape – a very basic one – and as a result very familiar. It must go back to the time when man began to make something, plan something or construct something, but the curve is not defined…It gives me exceptional freedom. Its range is wider and bigger; it can still be a curve when it is doing really quite surprising things’. 1

Whilst tonal gradations were introduced by Riley to her Arrest 2 painting, softening the stark contrasting elements of her pure black and white works, it was not until 1967, with Cataract 2, that the use of colour became a staple in her fields of curves. Speaking further with Paul Moorhouse, Riley noted, ‘I knew that colour was one of my goals. But it is very complex, very difficult and, pictorially, a great challenge. This was clearly realised from the early days of Modern Art. Colour has always posed a great challenge, but I also knew that you had to stalk this particular quarry with great care.’ 2

This ‘great care’ is much in evidence with Rising and Falling Curve with Turquoise, Cerise, Olive and Black where Riley juxtaposes a perfect harmony of warm colours, typical of her palette choice during the mid-1970s. The pink, blue and green are punctuated at intervals by four twisting lines of black which serve to accentuate the depth of the image. It is these elements especially which Riley linked to movement in a standing human figure, and in particular their sensuality. Yet in parallel with this, the feelings and emotions evoked by certain colours being conjoined was of paramount importance to the artist, and with Rising and Falling Curve with Turquoise, Cerise, Olive and Black these are very much ones of joy and warmth.

Ultimately, Riley found the curve both a successful and fulfilling motif. It would play a pivotal role in her work from 1974-80, after which vertical stripes came to the fore. Curves then re-surfaced in the late 1990s, and asked whether she was surprised to see them back, her succinct reply speaks volumes, ‘Well, not really. I was very happy because I had missed them for so long! And also, especially as I got going, a whole range of possibilities opened itself to me. The interaction of colours and curves seemed boundless.’ 3.

1.Bridget Riley in conversation with Paul Moorhouse, cited in Bridget Riley, The Curve Paintings 1961-2014, Ridinghouse in association with De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, 2015, (pp.43&47)

2. op.cit. p.47

3. op.cit. p.51

The Artist

Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert,  London

Private Collection, UK

Linocuts of the Machine Age, Stephen Coppel, published by Scolar Press, 1995, LT24

Cutting Edge: Modern British Print Making , Dulwich Picture Gallery, Philip Wilsons Publishers, , 2019, p.87

Printed from 3 blocks in dark blue, light brown & light blue.

Lill Tschudi was a Swiss artist (1911-2004) from the town of Schwanden in the municipality of Glarus. She saw an advertisement in The Studio magazine for classes at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London and enrolled there in December 1929.  She stayed for six months, learning a revolutionary new method of linocutting taught by the charismatic Claude Flight, a teacher and artist who ran a course on Tuesday afternoons. Tschudi became a good friend of Flight’s and his companion the artist Edith Lawrence. Her linocuts like many of her fellow students who attended Flight’s classes are concerned with rhythm, velocity and dynamism of modern life of the Jazz Age.

Sailor’s Holiday shows a group of sailors printed in blues, black and brown, the white being part of the blocks that are left uncut and un-inked. It is not known where the scene is but after her time in London Flight suggested she go to Paris to broaden her work.  She spent two months there each year and studied under Fernand Leger, Andre Lhote and Gino Severini. The image suggest Paris as the location; the central figure looks like an accordion player perhaps.  The linocut was made in an edition of 50 in the 1930s but a second edition was begun in 1984 for the US market on the strength of the revival of interest in the Grosvenor School linocuts.  This second edition is annotated ‘USA’ and numbered from 50 as well.

The Artist

Waddington Galleries, London, May 11, 1987

Private Collection, USA

Thence by descent

Amanda A Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, published by the Henry Moore Foundation, 2005, no.267, p. 176

London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull, 1995 (another cast);

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 1998, cat no.1, p.16, illustrated p.17 (another cast);

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 2004 illustrated p.32 (another cast);

London, Sotheby’s S|2, William Turnbull, 9 October – 17 November 2017, p.140, illustrated p.17 (another cast).

‘The idea of metamorphosis in Turnbull’s work is at its most intense in the Blade Venus series. These large sculptures suggest the shapes of Chinese knives, Japanese Samurai swords, pens, paintbrushes, leaves and goddess figures in one elegant, slightly curved form. Their form and inspiration relate them to the Zen paintings that inspired Turnbull and to the calligraphic paintings, drawings and reliefs that he produced in the 1950s. Like a single gesture, with a wide and a thin section, they combine all of the breadth of the front view with the slenderness of the side view in one perception. Part of their ambiguity and their dynamic presence stems from the spectators’ simultaneous ability to see both the wide element and the narrow section as the handle or the blade or tip of the tool. Although they are absolutely still they are also balanced on their sharpest point, poised to act.’

(Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, Henry Moore Foundation & Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, pp.72-73).

Heliography on 16 panels