Lynn Chadwick, R.A.

Acquired directly from the Artist by Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection, New York
His sale, Sotheby's New York, 1st March 1972, lot 35, where acquired by the previous owner
Private Collection, U.S.A.
Their sale, Christie's London, 8th June 2007, lot 140, where acquired by the present owner

Oxford, Black Hall, Seven British Contemporary Artists, May 1952, cat. no.36 (as Inner Fish No.2);
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Twentieth-Century Art from the Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller Collection, May - September 1969, un-numbered exhibition.

William S. Lieberman and Alfred H. Barr, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection: Masterpieces of Modern Art, New York, 1981, p.151, illustrated as Maquette for Inner Eye, IV;
Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor, Aldershot, 2006, cat. no.76, illustrated p.79.

The following condition report has been kindly prepared by Amy Anderson, Senior Conservator at Plowden & Smith Ltd., London This piece was examined in studio lighting and under UV light in Sotheby's work rooms. The piece appears to be in very good, sound condition. No breaks or repairs were detected. There are a number of white accretions on both of the front legs consistent with having been scraped against a painted or plaster type surface. This should not be difficult to remove should it be required. The moving element containing the glass is in sound condition and is moving freely. There are signs of residue of sticky labels on the back of the piece, these could be removed if desired. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Maquette IV, Inner Eye is one of five works that Chadwick made in preparation for the monumental sculpture, The Inner Eye, 1952 which was purchased by MoMA, New York in 1955.  This physically impressive and iconic work which stands well over two metres high, and the group of maquettes related to it, demonstrate a key development in Chadwick’s early work. These sculptures form part of a small but extremely important group of sculptures that Chadwick produced in the 1951-53 period which are extremely complex both in terms of their construction and content and demonstrate Chadwick’s concern at this time with both form and material.

Compared with the mobile structures which populated his first show at Gimpels in 1951, there is an obvious shift in the construction to a more solid structure. The mobile element is still incorporated in this work: the piece of rough clear glass is tenderly held by curling iron claws. This section is delicately balanced, enclosed by a rib-cage of attenuated jagged iron, whilst the whole is partially surrounded by a solid shield-like sheet of welded iron with a central hole. The shape and rough forged surfaces bear a similarity to protective shields used by welders or more chillingly, as seen in the period photographs of observers of the nuclear tests that were taking place at the time. There is a fragile tension to the work which like so much of Chadwick’s sculpture at this time feels very much a creation of the nuclear age, made in the shadow of the Cold War and the threat of the bomb. The critic Robert Melville commented `the effect of this dramatic juxtaposition of substances – the one opaque, the other filled with light – is to increase the construction’s awareness of danger and capacity for fear, for the gob of glass seems to operate as an organ of sense’ (quoted in E. Lucie-Smith, Chadwick, Stroud, 1997, pp. 16-7).  However, Chadwick refers to the work as being inspired by a dream of a 'curious mobile fish with pieces of crystal in its segments' (ibid. pp.16-17). Hence the title Inner Fish in the 1952 exhibition.

In the same year that Maquette IV  was conceived, Chadwick was included in an important group exhibition, New Aspects of British Sculpture, in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale alongside Robert Adams, Reg Butler, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull. This work captures the new and threatening forms that were so much part of the vocabulary of this generation of artists. Indeed, one of the other maquettes for the Inner Eye was included in this show [check]. The Biennale was to launch this new generation of British sculptors on to the international sculpture stage with Herbert Read endorsing their work in the accompanying catalogue and giving them the name they would come to be known by: `These new images belong to the iconography of despair, or of defiance… Here are the images of flight, of ragged claws "scuttling across the floors of silent seas", of excoriated flesh, frustrated sex, the geometry of fear … they have seized Eliot’s image of the Hollow Men, and given it an isomorphic materiality. They have peopled the wasteland with their own iron waifs’.  The British Pavilion was described in the reviews as  `the most vital, the most brilliant, and the most promising in the whole Biennale' (quoted by Richard Calocoressi, British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century,  London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1981, p.143).

There was an immediate critical recognition of a new aesthetic in British Sculpture, and all of those exhibiting were to go on to major international successes throughout the decade and after. Chadwick went on to win the international Sculpture Prize at the 1956 Venice Biennale, beating Giacometti into second place. Maquette IV Inner Eye formed part of the collection of the noted art collector Nelson A. Rockefeller who took this work with him when he was appointed as governor of New York in 1959.  He placed the work in the sitting room at the Executive Mansion, Albany, alongside works by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.  Alfred H. Barr, jr. commented on the works chosen for the Executive Mansion, `such things had never been seen before in Albany, and it took singular boldness to confront the state legislators with such strange and daring works’ (W.S. Lieberman and A.H. Barr, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection: Masterpieces of Modern Art, New York, 1981, p.24).

Sotheby’s sold another maquette for Inner Eye - Maquette I Inner Eye earlier this year in these rooms for £458,500.