TEFAF Maastricht 2023

The Artist
Marlborough Fine Art, London
Private Collection (purchased from the above)

William Feaver, Frank Auerbach, published by Rizzoli, no. 428

Frank Auerbach ‘Recent Work’ 13 January – 11 February, 1983, Cat No 31, Marlborough Fine Art, London

Auerbach met Juliet Yardley Mills in 1956, when she was working as a model at Sidcup College of Art. He began to paint her the following year, and continued to do so, at his studio in Camden, every Wednesday and Sunday, until 1997. As with all his repeated sitters, Auerbach developed an acute awareness of posture and mood:

I notice something when people first come and sit and think, they do things with their faces. It’s when they’ve become tired and stoical the essential head becomes clearer. They become more themselves as they become tired. ₁

JYM was an ideal sitter, capable of holding poses for long periods of time. At first Auerbach painted her without identification in his titles, although she is distinguishable from his previous frequent subject, Stella West (EOW). A characteristic pose shows JYM seated, her head against the back of the chair or supported by linked hands. As Robert Hughes notes, she always returns the artist’s gaze, and ‘there is a look – head cocked back, sometimes seen a little from below, a bit quizzical, sometimes challenging – that makes [her portraits] quite recognizable as a series’. ₂

Auerbach’s drawings evolve and assume their final form across weeks of sittings. A day’s work may be scrubbed back, the following morning, to leave an accumulated deposit of charcoal. In some cases the paper wears perilously thin and needs to be patched. The finished drawing represents the last sitting, the most recent thoughts, yet Auerbach feels compelled to retain the accumulated traces as part of a process of securing the image within its own space and atmosphere. ₃

Head of JYM III gazes partially downwards. There is a weight and solidity that derives from the density of charcoal, implying the settled mass of the sitter, at ease, one shoulder higher than the other. The volume of her head is registered through its eye sockets, cheekbones and chin. Through these we gain an intuition of its totality, and how it might feel to follow the head round, past its visible limits.

₁ William Feaver, Frank Auerbach (Rizzoli, 2009), p. 20.

₂ Robert Hughes, Frank Auerbach (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990), p. 80.

₃ Feaver, Frank Auerbach, p. 19.

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, 1997,72, cat.no.58

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

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.

The Artist

Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1960

Osborne Samuel Ltd (purchased from the above)

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

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

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

Irving Goodman, famous trumpet player, LA (purchased in the UK late 1980’s)
Thence by descent
Osborne Samuel Gallery, London

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.

Private Collection (acquired in the 1980s)
Osborne Samuel, London

Denis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, no. C35, p. 363.

Private Collection, Venezuela (purchases 1990’s)
Private Collection, USA (Florida)
Osborne Samuel, London

Dennis Farr and Éva Chadwick,  Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2005,  Lund Humphries, London, 2006, cat.no. C5, p.344

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Oct-Dec 1984 (another cast)

The Artist
Private collection, USA (acquired directly from the artist, 1960)
Thence by descent
Osborne Samuel, London

D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Farnham, 2014, no. 308.

Unique. This was never cast in a bronze edition.

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. 

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

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

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 Artist
White Cube, London
Private Collection, London
Osborne Samuel, London

Unique

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.

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 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) 

Gifted by the artist to the sitter (John Craxton’s aunt), who gifted it to John Craxton

The Estate of John Craxton

Christopher Hull Gallery, London, 1984, exh.no.57 

John Craxton, by 1943

Christopher Hull Gallery, London, 1984, exh.no.55

The Estate of John Craxton

Sir Kenneth Clark, Saltwood (acquired from the artist)
The Honourable Colette Clark, Oxford (gift from the above)
Fischer Fine Art, Ltd., London
Ryda & Robert H Levi (May 1977)
Christie’s, New York, 2016
Private Collection, USA, 2016 (acquired from the above)
Osborne Samuel, London

David Sylvester (ed.) and Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture, 1921-48, vol. I, London, 1990, no.238. (not illustrated)
J. Hedgecoe and H. Moore, Henry Moore, New York, 1968, p. 176, no. 4 (another cast illustrated; plaster version illustrated, pp. 163 and 269; dated 1944).
A. Bowness, ed., Henry Moore, Sculptures and Drawings 1964-73, London, 1977, vol. 4 (terracotta version illustrated, p. 10, pl. A).
B. von Erich Steingrber, Henry Moore Maquetten, Pantheon, 1978 (terracotta version illustrated, p. 24, fig. 23).
R. Berthoud, The Life of Henry Moore, London, 1987, fig. 88 (terracotta version illustrated).
J. Hedgecoe, A Monumental Vision, The Sculpture of Henry Moore, London, 1998, p. 210, no. 239 (another cast)

Other casts are held in the following  collections: Cleveland Museum of Art, USA  (Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection); The Tate, UK; The Henry Moore Foundation, UK.

The Family Groups are Moore’s most socially-minded sculptures, and considered perhaps the most admired subject in his oeuvre. He conceived this idea for a public commission related to the building of new towns and schools in Britain before the Second World War. It was not until 1944, however, during the height of the war, that it appeared funding for the commission might finally become available. Moore sculpted models of triadic as well as four-figure family groups. The combination of both parents plus two children was capable of generating more varied arrangements and a wider range of emotional expression.
These sculptures celebrated the nation’s anticipated return to peacetime well-being and the pleasures of family life. Moore intended that they should inspire a renewed emphasis on fundamental humanist values, while providing an aesthetic model for community spirit and co-operation, with the promise of progressive social services for all. These sculptures rejoice in the start of new young families. After a half-decade of wartime casualties and a low birth rate, to once again become fruitful and multiply was a crucial requirement for the economic and social revival of Britain during the post-war era.
Moore carried a lifelong dedication to the theme and depiction of family. His very first surviving stone carving, executed in 1922, was entitled Mother and Child (Lund Humphries, no. 3). By 1940, of the more than 150 sculptures he had produced to that date, 22 were versions of the Mother and Child theme. This subject had become something of an obsession for the sculptor; it allowed him to create a formal interaction between two figures—one small, the other much larger—based on their powerful and affecting emotional connection. At the same time, each of the figures contributed their particular weight and volume to form a single, unified, plastic entity.
In 1943, during the early years of the Second World War, Moore was commissioned to carve a Madonna and Child for St. Matthew’s Church in Northampton, England. This project provided the sculptor an opportunity to cast the mother and child theme in a traditional sacred context, in which the figures took on qualities, as Moore described them, “of austerity, and a nobility, and some touch of grandeur (even hieratic aloofness) which is missing in the everyday ‘Mother and Child’ idea” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Berkeley, 2002, p. 267).
The Family Group theme materialized when Moore was asked by Henry Morris and Walter Gropius to create a sculpture for a village college at Impington near Cambridge. The college’s ideal of both child and adult education in a single institution appealed to Moore, who was clearly preoccupied with the link between parent and child. The occasion of a commission for a public sculpture, this time on behalf of an educational institution, encouraged the sculptor to consider the importance of the family as the primary human social unit whose close interpersonal relationships provided an exemplary guide for wider communal values.
Will Grohmann discusses the subject of the family group, “In the years between 1944 and 1947 he [Moore] produced a number of larger and smaller variations in stone, bronze and terracotta, differing considerably from one another, being both naturalistic and non-naturalistic, though never as abstract as the ‘reclining figures’. The theme does not hem him in, but it demands a certain readiness to enter into the meaning of a community such as the family” (W. Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, p. 141).

Brook Street Gallery, London
Roland Collection, London
Private Collection London
Thomas Gibson Fine Art, London
Sir Joseph Hotung, Hong Kong
Osborne Samuel, London

Ionel Jianou, Henry Moore, Arted, Paris, 1968, no. 226, illustrated p. 74 (another cast)
Giulio Carlo Argan, Henry Moore, New York, 1971, no. 77, illustrated n.p. (another cast)
David Sylvester (ed.), Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings 1921-1948, Lund Humphries, London, 1988, Vol I, no. 239, illustrated p. 15 (another cast)
Giulio Carlo Argan, Le Grandi Monografie Scultori d’Oggi Moore, Fratelli Fabbri editori, Milan, 1971, no. 77, illustrated p.37 (another cast)

London, Roland, Browse and Delbanco, Henry Moore, 1948 (another cast)
York, York City Art Gallery, The Roland Collection, 1950, no. 35 (another cast)
Leicester, Museum and Art Gallery, The Roland Collection, 1950, no. 35 (another cast)
Bristol, City Art Gallery, Festival of Britain Exhibition, 1951, no. 43 (another cast)
Southampton Art Gallery, The Roland Collection, 1952 (another cast)
London, Geffreys Museum, Works by Henry Moore, 1954 (another cast)
Leeds, Leeds City Art Gallery, The Roland Collection, 1962, no. 74 (another cast)
London, Camden Arts Centre, The Roland Collection, 1976, no. 82 (another cast)
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Modern Art, One Man’s Choice, 1985, no. 64 (another cast)

From the edition of 7, plus 1. This bronze is recorded with the Henry Moore Foundation as LH 239, cast f.

A cast is held at the Smart Museum, Chicago USA. The terracotta original and a bronze cast is held by the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, UK. The larger version of this bronze, the so-called Stevenage Family Group, are held by the Tate, London, MOMA, New York, Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan, the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena & the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham. 

Before the war Moore was asked to create a work for a large progessive school in Impington. This lead to the idea of the Family Group and Moore made a series of Family Group maquettes, this cast being one of them. Moore discusses at length why this cast differs from the larger version which was eventually realised for the Barclay School in Stevenage:

The main differences between the two are in the heads, especially in the head of the man. In the small version (this bronze) the split head of the man gives a vitality and interest necessary to the composition, particularly as all three heads have only slight indications for features. When it comes to the life-size version, (the Family Group in Stevenage) the figures each becomes more obviously human and related to each other and the split head of the man became impossible for it was so unlike the woman and child. (There is a different connection between things which are three feet from each other, as the large heads are, and things which one sees in the same field of vision only two or three inches apart).

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.

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.

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). 

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)

Private Collection, Chicago (acquired before 1950 & thence by descent)
Private Collection, USA

Ann Garrould (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Drawings, vol.3, 1940-49, Aldershot, 2001, no.AG43.107; HMF 2156, ills.p.196

Stanford, Iris & B Gerald Cantor Centre for Visual Arts, Stanford University, on loan, March 2000

This drawing is reminiscent of a work from the same period Reclining Figures: Ideas for Stone Sculpture, 1944, in which each figure appears in an individual pod in a subterranean setting, recalling the mysterious fascination that caves in hillsides and cliffs held for the artist. 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.

Galerie Patrick Cramer, Geneva (acquired from the artist, 1984
Private Collection, purchased from the above in April 1984.
Private Collection, London.

A. Bowness, ed., Henry Moore: Complete Sculpture, 1980-1986, London, 1988, vol. 6, p. 56, no. 901 (another cast illustrated, p. 57 and pl. 115).

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

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

Original plaster and bronze owned by the Henry Moore Foundation.

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

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.

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

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

Galerie Beyeler, Basel

Austin Desmond Fine Art, London

Private collection, UK

Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Arp, Bissier, Nicholson, Tobey, October – December 1963, cat no.84

Signed, titled & inscribed

Inscribed verso

Exhibition history:

Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Arp, Bissier, Nicholson, Tobey, October – December 1963, cat no.84

Made in his Porthmeor studio in St Ives this exquisite relief transposes the viewer into an independent post-cubist world of linear movement and abstract harmony. Its roller coaster ride of overlapping straight or curved lines identifies a jumble of superimposed jugs and decanters from a classic still life ensemble. These qualities were described by John Russell in 1969 as amounting to a, « crystalline precision which did not exclude evidence of deep feeling and affectionate close scrutiny.» 1 Indeed Nicholson’ s essential skill was to fuse poetic observation with graphic construction and concretion.

This work comes a year after the cultural landmark of the Festival of Britain. Nicholson’ s position as a leader of the modern movement in post-war Britain gave him a springboard from which to launch a successful international exhibition career during the next thirty years. On the domestic front however the artist had recently separated from Barbara Hepworth, the second of his three wives, and he had moved into a new home above St Ives harbour front where he lived until he left for Switzerland in 1958.

The beige and yellow colour scheme forms a planar counterpoint to the linear suggestion of still life. Nicholson therefore evokes his compounded still life / landscape vision through a combination of graphic and chromatic means. This plastic integration was explained by Russell who observed how, « Nicholson began to mix genres… and blend the two with overlapping planes that survived from his first experience of synthetic cubism.» 2

1. Ben Nicholson. John Russell p.31. Thames and Hudson 1969.

2. Ibid.

Helen Sutherland, Cumberland

Gifted to Mrs Nicolette Gray

Her sale, Sotheby’s London, November 1975

Sale, Sotheby’s London, April 1989

Sale, Christie’s London, June 2006

Fine Art Society, London

Private Collection, UK (acquired from the above in 2008)

Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Paintings and Drawings from the Private Collection of Miss Helen Sutherland, March – May 1962, no. 31

Painted circa 1932, Violin and Balalaika marks a highly important pivotal period of development for Nicholson when he was on the cusp of turning to the pure abstraction of his first white reliefs created only a year later in 1933. Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth had travelled extensively to Paris and Northern Europe in 1932 and visited the studios of Mondrian, Brancusi and Arp as well as Picasso and Braque, whose cubist lessons in transforming three-dimensional form into the two dimensional space of analytical and synthetic cubism Nicholson readily absorbed into his own visual language. The confident yet stylised line which simplifies the two instruments to their most pared down form undoubtedly represents a climax of Nicholson’s early style consolidating the influences and lessons he had amassed throughout the previous decade.

Violin and Balalaika belongs to a series of related musical still lifes executed at the time including

1932 (violin and mandolin), illustrated fig. 78 in Lyton
1932 (still life – violin), illustrated front cover of Lewison
1933 (guitar), Tate Collection
1932/3 (musical instruments), Kettle’s Yard, illustrated fig. 1 below
1933 (still life with mandolin), illustrated fig. 41 in Lewison
1932 (violin and balalaika ii), the present work
1932 (guitar), 
1932 (head with guitar / Avignon)
1933 (guitar), Kettle’s Yard
1933 (fiddle and Spanish guitar)
1932 (still life with violin / violin and compass)
1933 (coin and musical instruments), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The curvilinear structure of each instrument clearly appealed to the artist’s sense of form and in particular, the pyramidal body of the balalaika, a Russian instrument with three strings whose circular void of the music box made a pleasing contrast to the vertical emphasis of the strings themselves. The sophisticated simplicity of each instrument is enhanced by their position facing each other which alludes to Nicholson’s series of double portraits of himself with Hepworth (fig.2) who he had begun sharing a studio with in London in Spring 1932, around the time the present work was painted.

The distinctive surface of Violin and Balalaika is also important. The underlying ground is clearly visible beneath the multi-layered paint surface and as such, draws attention to the physical nature of the canvas itself. Winifred Nicholson highlighted that it was Christopher Wood who introduced her and Ben to the technique of ‘painting on coverine…it dries fast, you can put it over old pics’ (W. Nicholson, Kit, unpublished memoir, Tate Gallery Archive 723.100, p.25). It created a firm painting ground which was visible beneath the painted image. In the present work, the textured paint surface takes on an additional three dimensional quality as the elements of each instrument have been literally incised into the paint, almost punctuating the canvas itself.

It is significant that the first owner of Violin and Balalaika was Helen Sutherland (1881 – 1966), one of Nicholson’s earliest and most enduring patrons who he had met on 5^th November 1925 through the artist Constance Lane. Both of her homes, Rock Hall in Northumberland and later Cockley Moor in Cumbria with renovations designed by Leslie Martin, became a refuge for Nicholson and many of his contemporaries. Sutherland was singularly adventurous in her support for the most avant-garde artists at the time acquiring works by Mondrian, Gabo, Hepworth and Moore long before they became recognised by a wider collecting community and crucially, she collected without hierarchy, as likely to support Brancusi as she was the Ashington group of artists who were former miners.

Desmond Coke
Sotheby’s London, 23 July 1931
Christie’s London, 12 November 1987
Geoffrey Beene
His sale; Christie’s New York, 24 May 1994
Private Collection, U.K.
Osborne Samuel, London

Andrew Gibbon-Williams & Ruth Artmonsky, William Roberts & Jacob Kramer, The Tortoise and the Hare, Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art, London, 2003, ill.p.10

Leeds, University Gallery, William Roberts and Jacob Kramer: The Tortoise and the Hare, 30 April – 20 June 2003; toured to London, Ben Uri Art Gallery, 7 July – 7 September 2003, ill.p.10

The original owner of Bathers, Desmond Coke (1897-1931), was a British writer commissioned into the 10^th (Service) Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment in October 1914. At the Western Front, as Adjutant of the Regiment, he was responsible for writing up the Battalion diary. Eventually invalided out of the army after contracting trench fever in May 1916, he went on to write adventure stories for boys under the pseudonym Belinda Blinders. He also collaborated with the artist John Nash, who illustrated his 1921 book, The Nouveau Poor. Coke may well have been friends with William Roberts and will certainly have been aware of the latter’s significant World War I commissions received from the Canadian Memorials Fund and the British Ministry of Information. 

Drawn in 1923, it has been suggested (by the William Roberts Society) that Bathers was probably exhibited in Roberts’ first one-man exhibition, Paintings and Drawings by William Roberts at the Chenil Gallery, London in November 1923. An untraced work from this show, titled Sea Frolic, would seem to match Bathers, and further drawings in the exhibition are known to be inscribed with titles which are not consistent with the exhibition catalogue. 

Following Coke’s death in 1931, Bathers was offered for sale at Sotheby’s where it disappeared into an unknown collection, until it re-appeared again at auction, in the 1980s. The drawing then entered the collection of Geoffrey Beene (1924-2004), one of New York’s most famous fashion designers in the 1960s and 1970s, who was recognised for his artistic and technical skills. Latterly, it was in the collection of Ruth Artmonsky, gallerist and curator of William Roberts & Jacob Kramer, the Tortoise and the Hare, staged at Ben Uri Gallery, London, and the University Gallery, Leeds, in 2003, in which Bathers featured (cat.no.16).

Commenting on the artist’s Chenil Gallery exhibition in 1923, Gibbon Williams states, ‘Roberts’ first solo exhibition was a heavyweight spectacle. It comprised nearly sixty works – paintings, drawings and prints…Muirhead Bone’s catalogue introduction was especially perspicacious. It pinpointed the very qualities that marked Roberts out from the generality of his contemporaries: his “boldness”, “mordant irony” and “sense of design”. “A strong love of character at it raciest” Bone wrote, “especially where it shades into the grotesque – he presents to us his memories of life in a sharp manner, odd, vivid, and quite his own, whose foundation is a really sterling draughtsmanship.”’1

Whilst Bathers has been lightly squared for transfer, it is possible Roberts abandoned the oil painting. An oil on canvas, titled The Bathers and dated to circa 1925 bears little resemblance to this drawing, in which all of the figures are standing, and appear to be engaged in a loose and joyous procession or dance around the central figure, not dissimilar in compositional design to the right-hand side of The Dance Club (The Jazz Party) painted in the same year and now with Leeds Museums and Galleries, City Art Gallery, Leeds. Whilst it is tempting to draw parallels with Cézanne and his bathers, Roberts doesn’t depict the group of nude figures as a formal exercise as Cézanne would have, but as was often the case with Roberts there seems to be an underlying narrative idea, although intriguingly one that is not explained. That the figures in the drawing are unclothed seem to give Bathers a Dionysian element. However, considering the tailpiece drawings that Roberts produced for Seven Pillars of Wisdom in 1925–26 several of them such as A Reluctant Shepherd and Male and Female feature unclothed figures where the nudity seems to be driven purely by design elements rather than any relevance to the narrative. The bodies, arms and legs of the eight figures depicted in Bathers are entwined in a complex arrangement of angles and curves, with a heavy use of pencil and subtle shading, which recalls the artist’s own earlier forays in Cubist experimentation, as seen in his studies on paper for the now lost Two Step (1915).

Referring to Roberts’ work dating from the early 1920s, Gibbon Williams remarks, ‘While fidelity to the visual truth of a specific event is rarely sacrificed to formal requirements, his drawings and paintings of this period are an example of Cubism being manipulated with realistic intent.’2 It is this quasi-Cubist aesthetic which Roberts embraced during the early 1920s which makes Bathers, and other drawings from his significant 1923 Chenil Gallery show so appealing. 

1.    Andrew Gibbon William, William Roberts, an English Cubist, Lund Humphries, 2004, p.68
2.       op. cit. p.60

Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin
Private Collection, Switzerland acquired from the above in 1997
Offer Waterman, London

Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, cat no.244, illus. b/w, p.169
Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries in association with Turnbull Studio, London, 2022, illus. colour p.362

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 7946-62, 7985-87, 28 October – 21 November 1987, unknown cast, cat no.24, illus. colour, p.61
Sculpture at Goodwood, group exhibition, 1996-97, p.84 illus. colour p.85
London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Bronze/dais and Untitled Paintings, 15 November 1995 – 7 January 1996, another cast, pl.51 illus b/w p.71, in accompanying publication: David Sylvester (intro.), William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995
West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 7946-2003, 14 May – 9 October 2005, illus. colour inside back cover
Bakewell, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March- 30 June 2013, cat no.49, unknown cast, illus. colour pp.47 & 85
London, Offer Waterman at No.9 Cork Street, William Turnbull: Centenary Retrospective, 29 June, 20 July 2022, cat no.30, various views illus. colour pp.98-99, installation image illus. colour pp.72-73

I used texture to invoke chance, to create random discoveries, not to elaborate the surface, but to accentuate that it was a skin of bronze. (William Turnbull, 1960)

William Turnbull’s ‘Idol’ sculptures, representations of divine beings that are made to be worshipped, are powerful, vertical and freestanding – never reclining. He made this expanded body of work (and their related Standing Female Figure and Female Figure works) from the mid-1950s and into the early 2000s.
Turnbull’s works during the 1980s focused, for the most part, on heads, masks, tools and upright figures, such as the anthropomorphic Paddle Venus 2, which also contains reference to a human implement. The archaeological, ‘dug-up’ look of many of the earlier works were extended during this later decade through a number of blades and spades – some small, others large – that carried the aura of previous cultures and the ground beneath them.

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).

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

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, vertical in structure whose curves undulate softly and 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