Reg Butler

André Emmerich Gallery, New York, 1956
Acquired from the above by Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 28th February 1956
By whom gifted to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1966
Their sale, Sotheby's London, 8th March 1995, lot 248, where acquired by David Bowie

London, Hanover Gallery, Reg Butler, 22nd April - 4th June 1954, cat. no.26 (as Boat, another cast);
New York, Curt Valentin Gallery, Reg Butler, 11th January - 5th February 1955, cat. no.23 (another cast);
Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, Sculpture in our Time: Collected by Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 5th May 1959 - 23rd August 1960, cat. no.61, with tour to Milwaukee Art Centre, Milwaukee, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Country Museum of History, Science and Art, Los Angeles, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco and Colorado Springs Fine Art Centre, Colorado Springs.

Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2006, cat no.126, illustrated p.138 (another cast).

The sculpture appears sound and is freestanding. There is a small crack around a repaired break between the figure's left foot and the supporting rod. There are some small areas of rubbing in places. There are a few small nicks and scratches to the metal in paces, most apparent to the figure's right shoulder, her left knee and the back of her left knee, and some further small scuffs elsewhere. There are some very small flecks of dirt and surface matter to the figure and a light layer of surface dirt to the base. There is a very small area of oxidisation to the inside of the figure's right arm. Subject to the above the work appears to be in good overall condition.
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Conceived in 1953 at a pivotal moment in his artistic career, Reg Butler’s Woman on Boat reflects the development of the defining themes and characteristics of the sculptor’s oeuvre during the early 1950s. These included above all his preoccupation with line, tension, and the female form. Butler’s first solo exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in London in 1949 was followed soon after by his inclusion in the British Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1952 and again in 1954. These significant exhibitions alongside his victory in the international competition for ‘Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner’ in 1953 established Butler’s reputation as one of the most promising sculptors of a generation that included artists such as Lynn Chadwick and Kenneth Armitage.

Originally trained as an architect, Butler worked as a blacksmith during the Second World War and his practical understanding of metals informed the forged, cast and welded sculptures that he produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Woman on Boat is an early example of the shell bronze casting technique that he developed in the early 1950s following the wider introduction of the oxy-acetylene torch in the post-war years. As he explained to a patron: ‘Shell bronze aims at likeness and is a workable craft technique. Quite frankly it was developed to enable us to cast our bronzes ourselves’ (the Artist quoted in Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2006, p.63). The artist’s sculpture of this period is intrinsically linked to the process of making as his mastery of ironwork and innovative bronze technique allowed him to create form by thinking manually in three-dimensions.

Butler’s shift in medium resulted in a subsequent progression in style as he moved away from his machine-like iron constructions in search of a sensuous quality achievable in bronze. Softly modelled female forms balanced precariously on metal rods or held within harsh metal frameworks form a large part of his subject matter in this period. The present work exemplifies this tense synthesis of his earlier linear works with an exploration of voluminous figural forms: perched on a horizontal metal bar on a floating craft at once primitive and modernist, the attenuated figure appears discernibly unstable. Arguably referencing the vulnerability of humanity that was an ever-present concern among post-war artists, Woman on Boat demonstrates Butler’s acclaimed early style that attracted international museums and collectors, including MoMA and Peggy Guggenheim; in fact, the present work belonged to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. until 1995 when it was acquired by David Bowie.