Dame Barbara Hepworth

(British, 1903-1975)

Lines in Movement 29.8 x 20.4 cm. (11 3/4 x 8 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
C.S. Reddihough

Exhibited
Leeds, Temple Newsam, Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings by Paul Nash and Barbara Hepworth, 24 April-13 June 1943, cat.no.119
Wakefield, City Art Gallery, Exhibition of Sculpture and Drawings by Barbara Hepworth, February–March 1944, cat.no.45; this exhibition travelled to Halifax, Bankfield Museum, March–April
London, The Whitechapel Gallery, Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospective Exhibition of Carvings and Drawings from 1927 to 1954, 8 April-6 June 1954, cat.no.62

Literature
Kathleen Raine, Stone and Flower: Poems 1935-1943, Nicholson & Watson, 1943 (ill.b&w)

Please note there is an unfinished abstract on the verso of the second backboard.

Despite being a two dimensional work, Lines in Movement and other oils and drawings by Hepworth from the 1940s, are clearly the work of an artist entirely comfortable working in three dimensions. However, with the onset of war, materials for sculpting were limited and as a result this period bore an incredibly fruitful time for the artist who made around 250 drawings. Dating to 1942 and executed in St Ives, the present work belongs to an abstract phase that is based on precision, geometry and a close regard for the relationship between space and colour (here a delicate highlight of yellow). As the decade progressed, Hepworth's friendship with the surgeon Norman Capener led to a series of hospital drawings and then a return to sculpture saw her two dimensional work focus on figurative studies. The Reddihough collection has an example from each of these three phases, demonstrating the depth of both his collection and relationship with the artist.

Hepworth was keen to make clear that seldom were these works studies for particular sculptures but rather entirely independent entities. Speaking of the period in 1946 she commented, 'I do, however, 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. Only occasionally can I say that one particular drawing has later become one particular sculpture' (Barbara Hepworth quoted in Approach to Sculpture, The Studio, London, October 1946, vol.132, no.643, p.101). Lines in Movement was one of four works by Hepworth used to illustrate Katherine Raine's Stone and Flower: Poems 1935-43, where it is given the title of Stones and Flowers in Movement.