Dame Barbara Hepworth

(British, 1903-1975)

Maquette for Walk-In 24.7 cm. (9 3/4 in.) high Conceived in 1970 and cast by Morris Singer in 1971

Footnotes

Provenance
With Gimpel Fils, London, February 1972, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, South Africa

Exhibited
West Bretton, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Barbara Hepworth: Centenary, 17 May-14 September 2003 (unnumbered, another cast)
Wakefield, The Hepworth Wakefield, Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life, 21 May 2021-27 February 2022 (unnumbered, another cast); this exhibition travelled to Edinburgh, National Galleries Scotland, 9 April 2022-2 October 2022, St Ives, Tate, 26 November 2022-1 May 2023

Literature
Sophie Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth, The Plasters: The Gift to Wakefield, Lund Humphries in association with The Hepworth Wakefield, Farnham, 2011, pp.57 & 154

The last two decades of Hepworth's life were marked by ill health and heartbreak. The death of her eldest son Paul and the ending of her second marriage to the artist Ben Nicholson, were exacerbated by a diagnosis of tongue cancer, a broken leg, and an increasingly aging body. And yet, in spite of all this she continued to develop her work in more and more innovative ways, incorporating new methods and materials. She went as far as to say in 1970 (the year that the present work Maquette for Walk-In was conceived) in an interview with her son-in-law Alan Bowness that "even breaking my leg in 1967 was a good thing because it made me extend my arms as far as I could", shedding light on the sculptor's urge to create and innovate in the face of hardship (in 'Alan Bowness: Conversations with Barbara Hepworth', included in The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, 1960-69, Alan Bowness (ed.), Lund Humphries, London, 1971, p.14).

Hepworth first began working with bronze in 1956. After initially believing that the material was at odds with her practice, and her search for 'truth in material', she soon became enamoured with the possibilities that bronze provided. As a carver first and foremost, the discovery of a way in which to bring together carving and casting in her work saw a distinct shift in her practice. Not only was she able to explore a more monumental scale, but it also meant that she was able to increase her output in response to demand for her work, through the production of multiples. But working in bronze meant collaborating with foundries. Over the course of her career, Hepworth worked with four different foundries to produce her sculptures, but it was Morris Singer who she would choose to work exclusively with from 1963 until her death in 1975. She established a very close working relationship with the foundry and its manager, Eric Gibbard, which became fundamental to the success of her bronzes and the casting process.

The art historian and close friend of Hepworth, Abraham Hammacher, noted of the artist's later works, particularly those conceived in the last seven years of her life, that it was "the tension in the form; the structures; the verticality which remained dominant...; the vigour in the stacking of elements; the ever-varying, constantly renewed experience of piercing volume, with the piercing itself more than anything the hallmark of her spatial sense and sensations; the resumption of group compositions after a long interval; the dual character of her surfaces, firstly as the enclosing element of three-dimensional spatial forms and secondly as 'surface as such', accentuated in some manner (linear inscription, 'scratches', low relief, colour)". (Abraham Marie Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, Thames and Hudson, London, 1998, pp.195-6)

The present work, Maquette for Walk-In, was conceived in 1970 after the monumental sculpture Three Obliques (Walk-In), arguably one of Hepworth's most impressive works in bronze. The sculpture is made up of three pierced and interconnecting monoliths, reminiscent of the standing stone monuments that Hepworth was familiar with, such as Avebury and Stonehenge, as well as those closer to home in Cornwall, perhaps Mên-an-Tol (meaning 'holed stone' in Cornish), located to the south of St Ives. Of her later sculptures, Hepworth observed that she envisaged them as "objects which rise out of the land or the sea, mysteriously" (in 'Alan Bowness: Conversations with Barbara Hepworth', included in The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth, 1960-69, Alan Bowness (ed.), Lund Humphries, London, 1971, p.14). The circular piercing in each block contributes to the expansion of space within the work, revealing new perspectives, and inviting the viewer to participate directly with the sculpture. Hepworth increasingly found in her work that it was impossible to have one without the other; to think of the landscape without also thinking "about the human figure and human spirit inhabiting the landscape. For me, the whole art of sculpture is the fusion of these two elements" (Barbara Hepworth in her essay 'A Sculptor's Landscape', included in Barbara Hepworth: Drawing from a Sculptor's Landscape, Cory, Adams and Mackay, London, 1966, p.10). Even the title of this work implies an invitation to the viewer to 'walk-in' to the work, to experience its totality, which whilst literally true of the monumental cast of the work, also rings true for the maquette. Moving around the sculpture, moving closer and further away, the viewer is afforded glimpses of the work in new configurations and observations. As the decades progressed, Hepworth became more explicit about the way in which she sought to encourage physical engagement between the viewer and the sculpture. She noted in 1968, that "there's no fixed point for a sculpture, there's no fixed point at which you can see it, there's no fixed point of light in which you can experience it, because it's ever-changing and it's a sensation which cannot be replaced by words or colour or anything else at all, and your view of approaching a sculpture is totally different from a view where you walk backwards" (Barbara Hepworth in conversation with Edwin Mullins, included in Barbara Hepworth: Writings and Conversations, Sophie Bowness (ed.), Tate Publishing, London, 2015, p.213). And yet, Hepworth often used colour to emphasise the contract between spaces, interior and exterior, and to highlight the texture of the form as is visible here. The blue-green patina of the wide, expansive surfaces of Maquette for Walk-In is complimented by the caramel-golds of the polished edges, which peek through the pierced forms as the viewer moves around the sculpture, taking it in from every angle, as the artist suggests. Indeed, the benefit of her table-top works as opposed to the monumental 'walk-through' sculptures, is that these allow the viewer to take in the work all at once, to experience the form in its totality.

We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.