BRAFA Art Fair: Brussels 2024

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, UK (gifted from the above)
Thence by descent

Dennis Farr & Éva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-1996, Lypiatt Studio, Stroud, 1997, p.64, cat. no. 58

The Artist’s Estate has confirmed the provenance and that this is part of F&C 58 (1997), and that Chadwick had recorded in his notebook that this section had been gifted.

Private Collection, UK
Osborne Samuel, London

The drawings with which Chadwick recorded each of his 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.

The Artist
Lillian Heidenberg Fine Art, New York
Private collection, USA
Osborne Samuel Ltd

Lynn Chadwick – Sculptor – With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2005, Dennis Farr and Éva Chadwick, published by Lund Humphries, London, 2006, 288

Zurich, Galerie Charles Lienhard, Lynn Chadwick, 6th – 31st July 1959, cat. no.10 (another cast)

The leitmotif for Chadwick’s work in the 1950’s 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 , Winged Figures and Boy and Girl. These were never passive meetings, or, for that matter, decorative pas-de-deux. In each instance, an electricity seems to arc between the figures. They circle, momentarily attracted, thrusting arms upwards in ritual dance or courtship. Stephen Spender potently described such pairings as ‘holding up negative and positive poles or prongs through which powerful currents interflow’. ₁

₁ Stephen Spender, catalogue essay for ‘Lynn Chadwick’ (New York: Knoedler Gallery, 1961).

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

The Estate of John Craxton

This fascinating and bold study for Lucian Freud’s impressive 1946 oil on canvas, Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait) (Tate collection) fleshes out the finished composition with detailed accuracy and artistic spontaneity. All aspects of Tate’s painting (purchased in 1961) are incorporated into this small monochrome design, so that the viewer is presented with an insightful snapshot of the artist’s working process.

Lucian Freud, Man with a Thistle, 1946 

‘The artist shows himself looking through a window at a spiky thistle resting on a ledge in the foreground. At the same time, the thistle may also be read as an emblem occupying flattened space at the bottom of the painting. This ambiguity allows the thistle to be interpreted as a real object, but also as a device which suggests the mood of the painting and Freud’s own psychological state. (Tate Gallery label, September 2004) 

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 6

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)

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.

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.

Christie’s London, 1999
Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich
Private Collection, UK

Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, vol.3, 1940-49, Aldershot, 2001, no.AG44.75; HMF 2259a, p.228-229

The six reclining figures in this wartime drawing are beautifully drawn ideas for sculpture typical of the artist’s working method. The six figures are isolated in space and float on ledges. These ideas were developed in a drawing from the same period Reclining Figures: Ideas for Stone Sculpture, 1944, in which each figure appears in an individual pod in a subterranean setting. Moore’s interest in underground landscapes had previously been expressed in his ‘Shelter Drawings’ series of 1941, depicting figures taking refuge in the London Underground during the Blitz, and in his coal mining drawings of the same year.

The Artist
Curt Valentin, Buchholz Gallery, New York 
Mrs. Vera List, philanthropist and supporter of contemporary art, Greenwich, Connecticut (purchased from the above in 1951)
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

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). 

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

Private collection, New York
Private collection, Paris

Osborne Samuel, London

A Bowness (ed), Henry Moore Complete Sculpture Volume 6 1980-86, published by Lund Humphries, 1988, no. 811, p.41

Bronze cast and original plaster owned by the Henry Moore Foundation.

The Artist
Galerie Farber, Brussels.
Private collection, Brussels
Osborne Samuel Ltd, London

Alan Bowness & Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore: with a catalogue raisonne of paintings, constructions and graphics 1926-1979, published by Thames and Hudson, 1980, ref. B 549

Galerie Farber, Brussels, 1974

The formal neutrality of the square format has been retained from the 1960s constructed reliefs. The ensuing stability and order gives an underlying counterpoint to the more random deployment of rounded brown oblongs, coloured ovals and black lines. Whatever associations with the natural world these shapes may contain Pasmore was clear that,  the symbol is intrinsic in the form of the painting and not a conceptual factor outside it. ₁ In other words the imagery is, intrinsic and organic» and is not a distortion or abstraction from natural appearances.

As well as reflecting the relative influence of the Maltese environment works like Linear Symphony reveal the experimental tenor and conceptual restlessness of Pasmore’ s work, its moving between different aesthetic poles. He talked of the developing process which printmaking and the collaboration with architects and urban planners on the long drawn out Peterlee New Town project in the north east bought to the fore. In 1988 Pasmore explained to Peter Fuller how Peterlee, gave me a sense of multi dimensional space, mobile modern space, not the confined space of the Renaissance. ₂

Such qualities of flux, movement and infinite space are evident in the aptly titled Linear Sympony. The hardness of architecture is, though, replaced by the organic softness of shapes whose residual associations with nature are only of an ambiguous kind.

The early 1980s proved an important moment in Pasmore’ s ever-evolving career. An Arts Council touring show in 1980 was followed by his becoming Companion of Honour (1981) and Royal Academician (1983).

₁  Victor Pasmore. Ed. Grieve.Tate Publishing p 139. 2010.
₂ Grieve 2010 p.98.

Private Collection, USA

In 1943 Piper received a commission to document a slate quarry inside the mountain of Manod Mawr, north Wales, where the collections of the National Gallery were sent for safe storage during the war. While the interior proved too dark to draw, Piper took the opportunity to explore the region, using John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in North Wales (1898) as his guide.

Returning to Snowdonia in the summer of 1945, he discovered and rented ‘Pentre’, a cottage halfway down the Nant Ffrancon valley, through which a river runs, and to which, at the time, there was an unmade track barely passable in winter. Piper acquainted himself with the geology of the area by reading A.C. Ramsay’s The Old Glaciers of Switzerland and North Wales (1860) and by drawing the mountains repeatedly, thereby beginning to notice how rocks near to hand often resembled the contours of those in the distance. Writing to Paul Nash in November 1945, he described a gale ‘which made the clouds whirl round the mountains in circles and lifted the water off the river in spray’, adding, ‘I hope you will see the place one day.’¹

It is likely that Rocky Sheepfold, which resembles Piper’s photographs of a drystone enclosure in the Nant Ffrancon valley, relates to the landscape near this cottage.² The painting balances topographical detail against broad washes of tone, evoking the mood of lithographs commissioned for the poetry volume English Scottish and Welsh Landscape (1944), described in a review as ‘sinister … livid and menacing’.³ To the perimeter of Rocky Sheepfold, scattered stones extrude from the grass; larger boulders shelter and form part of the enclosure. Elemental and windswept, it demonstrates an opportunistic intervention into the landscape.

¹ Frances Spalding, John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 267–8.

² John Piper, photographs of sheepfold in Nant Ffrancon, Caernarvonshire (c. 1930s–1980s), black and white negatives, Tate Archive TGA 8728/3/3/10–11.

³ English Scottish and Welsh Landscape 1700–c. 1860, verse chosen by John Betjeman and Geoffrey Taylor, with original lithographs by John Piper (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1944); The Studio (December 1944), p. 192.

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

Waddington Galleries, London, May 11, 1987

Private Collection, USA

Thence by descent

Osborne Samuel, London

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).

Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London

Christie’s, June 1991

Roberto Ceriani, U.S.A. (acquired from the above)

Redfern Gallery, London 

Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above) 

Osborne Samuel, London

In 1964 Vaughan bought a row of derelict cottages in the heart of the Essex countryside and set about renovating them. He created a small studio upstairs where he worked on small-scale oil paintings and gouaches at the weekends and during the summer months. Having nowhere to swim, he cleared a patch of land at end of the garden and excavated a waterhole. Railway sleepers interspersed with plants were dug into a shallow embankment to create a picturesque setting. The pool was more than a mere source of recreation. The theme of bathers had been a central subject in Vaughan’s work since the mid 1940s and now he began to paint friends reclining and drying themselves at the water’s edge in his garden. Two Bathers by a Pool depicts such a scene. Fellow artists were invited to visit Harrow Hill cottage at weekends. Patrick Procktor was a regular guest from 1966 onwards as was Mario Dubsky, one of Vaughan’s most talented pupils at the Slade. He recalled days spent making drawings of each other by the pool and Vaughan being at his most relaxed:

‘Keith and Patrick and I had some great fun. We held summer parties in the garden, swimming naked of course, and drank freezing drinks in between skinny dips in the pool. Mrs. Vaughan sometimes sat knitting in her deckchair, at the other end [of the garden], keeping a watchful eye on us. God knows what she thought of me and Patrick larking around after several gins. But we also had some serious discussions well into the night, about painting and literature. Keith would tell me what I should be reading. Patrick and Keith used to talk endlessly about the ways they could turn their personal experiences of life into art.’1

Procktor also brought with him the filmmaker Derek Jarman who, apparently, loved nothing better than to strip down and dive off the railway sleepers into the pool. The BAFTA-winning documentary maker Peter Adam visited along with his illustrious friends, including David Hockney, the grand master of the pool-painting genre. He recalled them all swimming and wallowing together in Vaughan’s garden pond – a far cry from the glamorous Californian pools he was used to:

‘David was living in Los Angeles but on his annual visit to his family in Bradford, (his mother still thought that it was the sun that bleached his hair!), he always took care to visit Keith. Once we drove in his new Morris Minor convertible to Essex. We splashed about in his little natural pool…All that amused Keith greatly.’2

Gerard Hastings

1. Mario dubsky, from gerard hastings, ‘paradise found and lost: keith vaughan inessex’, pagham press, 2016 

2. Peter adam, from ‘gerard hastings, keith vaughan: the photographs’,pagham press, 2013