Bernard Meadows

(British, 1915-2005)

Head and Shoulders of Augustus 92 cm. (36 1/4 in.) wide Conceived in 1962-4 in an edition of 6 plus an artist's proof

Footnotes

Provenance
With Gimpel Fils, London
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
Venice, British Pavilion, XXXII Venice Biennale, 1964 (ill., another cast)
London, Gimpel Fils, Bernard Meadows Recent Works, 1995, cat.no.18 (another cast)
Wiltshire, The Salisbury Festival, The Shape of the Century – a Survey of British Sculpture, 1999 (another cast)
London, Gimpel Fils, Modern British Sculpture, 2011 (another cast)
London, Alan Wheatley Art, Modern British Sculpture: Fanning the Flames, 21 June–20 July 2012, cat.no.20 (another cast)

Literature
Alan Bowness, Bernard Meadows: Sculpture and Drawings, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1955, cat.no.BM 89, pl.53 (ill.b&w, another cast)

Please note that another cast from the edition is in the collection of the Arts Council, London.

In 1960 Bernard Meadows ceased teaching at Chelsea and took up the position of Professor of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, generally considered to be the most senior post of its type in the country. It was at this point that the artist stopped making sculptures of birds and crabs, turning instead back to the human figure. The crab motif had exerted a powerful draw during the 1950s and had originated after hours of observation whilst posted on the Cocos Islands with the RAF, which was inundated with different species. The Armed Busts that emerged in 1961 are crab-like in their carapace of armour but essentially human in form, emerging after an informative visit to Italy in 1960.

Whilst touring Florence, Meadows was fascinated by Michelangelo's bust of Brutus in the Bargello who in the words of the Italian master was 'a beast in human form'. In the following period 1961 to 1965, Meadows focused almost exclusively on re-interpreting Renaissance sculptures he had observed, thus creating some twenty bronzes of varying size. The present work, Head and Shoulders of Augustus, is one of the larger amongst the group and depicts the famous Roman Emperor. In the artist's own words, 'the figures are armoured, aggressive, protected, but inside the safety of the shell they are completely soft and vulnerable' (Alan Bowness, Bernard Meadows, Sculpture and Drawings, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1955, p.15).