Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

Acquired directly from the artist by Mrs E. Kibblewhite, and thence by descent to the present owner.

London, Leicester Galleries, A Memorial Exhibition of the Work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, May - June 1918, cat. no.24;
London, Hayward Gallery, Vorticism and its Allies, 27th March - 2nd June 1974, cat. no.208.

Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska. A Memoir, London and New York, 1916, p.25, illustrated pl.XXVIII;
H.S. Ede, A Life of Gaudier-Brzeska, London 1930, p.200;
Richard Cork, Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age, Volume 2: Synthesis and Decline, Gordon Fraser, London 1976, illustrated p.436;
R. Cole, Burning to Speak: The Life and Art of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Oxford 1978, cat. no.64, p.117;
Evelyn Silber, Gaudier-Brzeska, Life and Art, With a catalogue raisonné of the sculpture, Thames and Hudson, London 1996, cat. no.93, illustrated, pl.139, listed as location unknown.

In excellent original condition. If you have any further queries about this work, please call the department on +44 (0) 207 293 5381.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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The present work belongs to a small group of cut and chiselled brass sculptures that were made in response to a request from T.E.Hulme for a sculptural object that could be carried around in the pocket and was designed to be handled. Gaudier-Brzeska's List of Works gives an original purchase price of 10/- to Mrs Kibblewhite (although family tradition is that it was a gift from the artist), and the piece has remained in the possession of her family ever since.

Not only is this piece therefore amongst the last sculptures on which Gaudier-Brzeska worked prior to his departure for France, but its powerful stylization and high level of abstraction is indicative of the direction in which his work was heading. The synthesis of the mechanistic forms with the organic original concept is most striking, and connects closely with other larger works of the period, such as Bird Swallowing a Fish (Silber 97), but it also sits very much alongside the painted and graphic work of his contemporaries at the frontier of modernism in England prior to the outbreak of WWI.

Although the posthumous casts of Gaudier-Brzeska's works appear on the market with some regularity, virtually all his original pieces are now in public collections. Thus, the reappearance of Fish is a notable addition to our knowledge of the extant corpus of the artist's original works and offers a very rare opportunity to acquire an example worked by the artist himself.

To be sold together with an undated postcard from France from the artist to Mrs E. Kibblewhite, her original copy of Ezra Pound's monograph on the artist (op.cit.), and four period photographs of sculpture including three of T.E.Hulme by Sir Jacob Epstein, of which two show the apparently otherwise visually unrecorded version of this sculpture exhibited as The Officer in 1916. Mrs Kibblewhite is given as the original owner of one of the two bronze casts of this sculpture and this may suggest that it was her cast that was exhibited in this form. Mrs Kibblewhite lived at 67, Frith Street, London where Hulme held a weekly salon which was attended by a wide social spectrum and a roll-call of the leading figures of the avant-garde. Nevinson recalled these events, 'Hulme had the most wonderful gift of knowing everyone and mixing everyone. There were journalists, writers, poets, painters, politicians of all sorts, from Conservatives to New Age Socialists, Fabians, Irish yaps, American bums, and Labour leaders.' 

We are grateful to Richard Cork for his kind assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.