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Dame Barbara Hepworth

Sculpture with Colour and Strings

On Loan
The Ingram Collection Of Modern British Art
$0.00 USD
Sale

B.1903 | D.1975

signed with the artist’s monogram and numbered ‘1/9’
bronze with a light brown and light green patina and string
height 24.8 cm (9 3/4 in.)
Conceived in plaster in 1939 and cast in bronze in 1961, this work is number 1 from an edition of 9 plus 1 artist’s proof.

Provenance

Mr and Mrs Wilfred Gilchrist, Leeds (acquired through the Whitechapel Art Gallery in August 1962 and thence by descent)

On loan from their granddaughter Claire to Leeds City Art Gallery (1992 or 96-2005)

The Ingram Collection, United Kingdom

Exhibited

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Art in Britain 1930–40 Centred Around Axis Circle Unit One (similar version illustrated, no. 46)

Woking, Lightbox Gallery, 2D:3D – Discover the Art of Sculpture: Sculpture & Sculptors’ Drawings from The Ingram Collection, 1 February–1 March 2008

London, Sotheby’s, Sculpture and Sculptors’ Drawings from The Ingram Collection, 10–21 January 2011 London, Royal College of Art, A Perfect Place to Grow, 16 November 2012–3 January 2013

Woking, Lightbox Gallery, The Road to Abstraction, 21 May–24 July 2016

Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016–8 January 2017

London, Business Design Centre, London Art Fair Museum Partner, Ten Years – A Century of Art, 18–22 January 2017

Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Land | Sea | Life: A British Art Collection, 20 October 2017–17 February 2018 Bristol, The Royal West of England Academy, In Relation: Nine Couples who Transformed Modern British Art, 16 June–9 September 2018

Woking, Lightbox Gallery, Parallel Lines: Drawing and Sculpture, 22 June–25 August 2019

London, Science Museum, The Art of Innovation: From Enlightenment to Dark Matter, 25 September 2019–26 January 2020

Woking, Lightbox Gallery, Collector’s Favourites, 1 June–1 September 2020 (online)

Woking, Lightbox Gallery, Redressing the Balance: Women Artists from The Ingram Collection, 11 August–20 September 2020

Hastings Contemporary, Seaside Modern: Art and Life on the Beach, 27 May–31 October 2021

Bulleen, Melbourne, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Barbara Hepworth: In Equilibrium, 5 November 2022–13 March 2023

Woking, Lightbox Gallery, A Spirit Inside, 23 September 2023-14 January 2024

Compton Verney, Landscape and Imagination: From Gardens to Land Art, 21 March-16 June 2024 Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, Beyond The Canvas: A Celebration of British Sculpture from The Ingram Collection, 1 March-7 June 2025

Literature

Art in Britain 1930-40 Centred Around Axis Circle Unit One, exh. cat., Marlborough Fine Art, London, 1965, no. 46 (another cast illustrated)

Herbert Read, Barbara Hepworth Carvings and Drawings, London, 1952, pl. 60a (plaster version illustrated) Alan Bowness and J. P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth, Neuchâtel, 1961, no. 113, p. 165 (plaster version illustrated)

A. M. Hammacher, Modern English Sculpture, London, 1967, p. 81 (another version illustrated)

A. M. Hammacher, The Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, New York, 1968, no. 55, p. 78 (another version illustrated)

Jo Baring, ed., Revisiting Modern British Art, London, 2022, fig. 45, p. 71 (illustrated, p.70)

Condition Report

Available upon request

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Essay

Hepworth conceived this sculpture in 1939, the year she settled in St Ives, Cornwall, with her husband, painter Ben Nicholson, and their children. With little opportunity to carve during the war years, she instead developed abstract stringed forms in a series of colour drawings. The sculpture's sinuous, pierced shapes and taut strings distil her lifelong response to the Cornish coast: the shifting blues and greys of the sea, the rhythm of tides, and light striking rock and water. Hepworth described the strings as embodying "the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hill," while colour within the hollows evoked depths of water and shadow. The strings also define internal space, giving the work its distinctive fluidity.

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