Five British Sculptors

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Sale, Sotheby’s London, 24 October 2005, lot 107

Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above)

Osborne Samuel, London

R. Penrose, Kenneth Armitage: Artists of our Time, vol. VII, Bodensee-Verlag, Amriswil, Switzerland, 1960, ill. pl. 8 (this cast)

C. Spencer, Kenneth Armitage: Alecto Monographs 1, Academy Editions, London, 1973, ill. p. 6 (another cast)

T. Woollcombe (ed.), Kenneth Armitage: Life and Work, Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1997, KA46, ill. (another cast)

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, British Paintings and Sculpture, 23 September – 31 October 1954 (another cast)

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Kenneth Armitage, July – August 1959, no. 11, illustrated in the exh. cat. pl. VI (another cast)

Ontario, National Gallery of Canada, Recent British Sculpture, British Council Tour, 1961-64, no. 6, illustrated in the exh. cat., with tour to Auckland City Art Gallery and the State Galleries of Australia (another cast)

Darmstadt, Germany, Zeugnisse der Angst in der Modernen Kunst, June – September 1963 (another cast)

17 & 18 Nassau Street, London
Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, Modern European Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture (Sale 3156, Lot 82), February 11th, 1971
Private Collection, Montreal and Ste. Agathe, Canada, acquired from the above
Osborne Samuel, London 

Tamsyn Woollcombe ed., Kenneth Armitage – Life and Work, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries Publishers, London. cat no KA35, p.143

James Scott, Claudia Milburn and Anthony Gormley, The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage, Lund Humphries, 2016, cat no. 45 (ill. front and back p.101)

Kenneth Armitage: Sculptor – A Centenary Celebration, published by Sansom & Company with the support of the Kenneth Armitage Foundation and The Henry Moore Foundation, 2016, (ill. pl 30, p. 59) 

Butler was a man with two distinct, yet highly accomplished careers. As Cotterell 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; he 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 spring 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, 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 Post-War Society,
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1998

Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore
Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, 2006, cat. no. 176, ill. fig 35,
p. 43 (another cast illustrated)

London, Hanover Gallery, May – June 1957, cat. no. 34

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, February 1959, cat. no. 14

Louisville, J. B. Speed Art Museum, Reg Butler, A Retrospective
Exhibition, October – December 1963, cat. no. 67

Hanover Gallery, London

Private Collection (purchased from
the above, early 1960s)

Private
Collection, UK

Margaret Garlake, The
Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with
Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2006, no. 196, p. 155 (another cast illustrated)

London, Hanover Gallery, Reg Butler: Sculpture,
June – July 1960, cat. no. 28 (another cast)

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Reg Butler: Recent Sculpture, October
– November 1962, cat. no. 12 (another cast)

Cambridge, Arts Council Gallery, The Gregory Fellows; Reg Butler, Martin
Froy, Kenneth Armitage, Terry Frost, Hubert Dalwood, Alan Davie, Trevor Bell,
Austin Wright, February 1964, cat. no. 4 (another cast)

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

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

Reflecting on Short Horn, Gaffé wrote:

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

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

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

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

Joseph Peyré sang it in his Guadalquivir:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia
Osborne Samuel, London

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Osborne Samuel, London

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

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

Knoedler Gallery, New York
Christie’s New York, November, 1989
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, La Quinta, CA, 2003
James Goodman Gallery, New York
Connaught Brown, London (purchased from above in 2011)
Private Collection (purchased from above in 2012)
Osborne Samuel, London

A. Bowness, ed., Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture, London, 1986, vol 3, p. 33, no. 420 (another cast illustrated)

The Artist
Private Collection, UK (purchased from the artist 04/12/1984)

A. Bowness, Henry
Moore Complete Sculpture 1980-1986, vol. 6, London, 1986, no. 911, p. 137 –
138
LH6/911