Dame Barbara Hepworth

The Artist, by whom gifted to Tim Bennett, 1942
E.H. Ramsden and Margot Eates, London, and thence by descent
Their sale, Christie's London, 9th December 1999, lot 580
Waddington Galleries, London, where acquired by the present owner

Venice, British Pavilion, XXV. Biennale Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia, 1950, cat. no.85, illustrated p.487;
São Paulo, Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, V. Biennial of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, September - December 1959, cat. no.1. 

The board appears sound. The board appears to have been slightly unevenly cut in places, thought to be inkeeping with the artist's working materials. There are one or two slight scuffs to the extreme edges of the board, and the edges are very slightly discoloured in places, visible only when viewed out of the frame. There are some extremely fine lines of scattered craquelure, primarily apparent within the circle, only visible upon extremely close inspection. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in very good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals no obvious signs of fluorescence or retouching. The work is presented in a painted and gilded wooden frame, held under glass. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her kind assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for the present work.

‘Abstract drawing has always been for me a particularly exciting adventure. First there is only one’s mood; then the surface takes one’s mood in colour and texture; then a line or curve, which … has a particular kind of “bite” rather like incising on slate, then one is lost in a new world of a thousand possibilities because the next line in association with the first will have a compulsion about it which will carry one forward into completely unknown territory.’

(The Artist, quoted in Herbert Read (intro.), Barbara Hepworth, Carvings and Drawings, Lund Humphries, London, 1952).

 

Following her move to St Ives with husband Ben Nicholson at the outbreak of war in 1939, Hepworth began to focus on two-dimensional pieces, creating delicately worked and carefully ruled pencil drawings that were not restricted by the same wartime constraints of finding materials as her sculptures. These early renderings, such as Drawing for ‘Sculpture with Colour’ (Forms with Colour) (1941, Tate, London) differed from the working sketches for planned sculptures that the artist would execute speedily on scraps of paper and card. They were carefully considered developments towards the broader themes of space, colour and form.

As Hepworth herself stated: ‘I do spend whole periods of time entirely in drawing (or painting, as I use colour) when I search for forms and rhythms and curvatures for my own satisfaction. These drawings I call “drawings for sculpture”, but it is in a general sense – that is – out of the drawings springs a general influence’ (‘Approach to Sculpture’; Studio, Vol.132, no.643, Oct. 1946, p.101, cited Barbara Hepworth, Tate, London, 2001, p.79).

 

These ‘drawings’ continued to develop in terms of colour and line through the 1960s, and the interplay and overlap between the two serves to conjure up a sense of the free-flowing visual and kinetic energy. In the present work, over the gesso-prepared board the artist applies thinly washed planes of marine blues and greys, with bold intersecting pencil lines and parabolic curves reminiscent of the stringing that she had first introduced in the late 1930s; referencing both the Constructivist Naum Gabo and her British contemporary Henry Moore.

A visually captivating image, Forms in Movement (Circle) serves to identify Hepworth not only as the skilled and accomplished draughtswoman that she was, but also as an adept artist in her use of tone and colour which evoke so wonderfully the atmosphere and surroundings of her St Ives home.