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William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012) Female 194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high (Conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993) image 1
William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012) Female 194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high (Conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993) image 2
William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012) Female 194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high (Conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993) image 3
William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012) Female 194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high (Conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993) image 4
William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012) Female 194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high (Conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993) image 5
William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012) Female 194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high (Conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993) image 6
William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012) Female 194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high (Conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993) image 7
Lot 85*,AR,TP

William Turnbull
(British, 1922-2012)
Female 194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high

19 June 2024, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £152,800 inc. premium

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William Turnbull (British, 1922-2012)

Female
signed with monogram, numbered and dated '5/6 89' and further stamped with foundry mark 'Livingston Art Founders' (on the base)
bronze with a black patina
194 cm. (75 1/2 in.) high
Conceived in 1989 and cast in 1993

Footnotes

Provenance
With Waddington Galleries, London, 1993, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.S.A.

Exhibited
London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Recent Sculpture, 25 September-19 October 1991, cat.no.10 (another cast)
Caracas, Galeria Freites, William Turnbull, 18 October-10 November 1992 (another cast)
Berlin, Galerie Michael Haas, William Turnbull, 17 October-28 November 1992 (another cast)
London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull, 15 November 1995-7 January 1996 (another cast)
Chatsworth, Chatsworth House, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, 10 March- 30 June 2013, cat.no.66 (another cast)
Munich, Galerie Thomas, William Turnbull: Skulpturen, April-June 2002 (another cast)
London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June-3 July 2010, cat.no.19 (another cast)

Literature
Veronique Jaeger, William Turnbull: Recent Sculpture, Waddington Galleries, London, 1991, pp.24-25, 52, cat.no.10 (ill., another cast)
Amanda Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, Lund Humphries, London, 2005, pp.25, 176, cat.no.265 (ill., another cast)
William Turnbull (ed.), William Turnbull: Beyond Time, Waddington Galleries, London, 2010, pp.58-59, 103, cat.no.19, (ill., another cast)
Patrick Elliott and Clare Lilley, William Turnbull at Chatsworth, Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, Chatsworth, 2013, p.47, cat.no.66 (col.ill., another cast)


'Turnbull, like Giacometti, was more concerned with establishing an arresting, frontal image (as Giacometti once said, you don't walk around a person you meet, so why do it in sculpture?), one which tends to dominate space and radiate out into it' (R. Morphet, William Turnbull sculpture and paintings, London, Serpentine Gallery, 1996, p.34).


William Turnbull was one of the leading sculptors of Post-War British Art and (along with Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth) turned away from the long-established preoccupation with naturalism to uncover a new notion of what sculpture was meant to be and how viewers should interact with it. As a student at the Slade, he was often to be found at the British Museum studying archaic figures as well as ancient tools and weapons. The timelessness of these archaeological and anthropological artefacts appealed and, in addition to a period spent in Paris where he was exposed to the work of Alberto Giacometti and Constantin Brancusi, they were the foundation of the pared down modernity for which Turnbull is so celebrated. And whilst he identified with aspects of many artistic groups of the period, he allied with none, instead offering a staunch independence in both his life and work.

In 1973, Richard Morphet curated a major retrospective of Turnbull's work at the Tate. When the artist saw the extensive exhibition, spanning every part of his career up to that point, he became conscious of the common themes and ideas that had informed his early career. In response to his experience of the Tate show and feeling inspired, he decided to redefine his earlier ideas about sculpture and form. After an interval of about twenty years, in 1979 Turnbull returned to making monolithic figures and developed a new series of idols that would preoccupy him for the rest of his career. The present lot is one such example.

Dating from 1989 Female embodies, quite literally, all the hallmarks of Turnbull's oeuvre – a totemic form, pitted surface and schematic markings – all working in harmony to inform the viewer that this is woman, in her most fundamental form. Breasts, hands and genitals are all delineated with an economy of expression that recalls Turnbull's famous question: 'How little will suggest a head?' (quoted in David Sylvester, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995, p.10). Indeed, the present work suggests the human figure with graceful sparsity - the upright blade which swells and narrows, the functional handles as arms and head, and fingers scoured onto the surface, both designs and anatomy. However, rather than reduce the range of images and interpretations of the work, this simplification intensifies the effect. By reducing any naturalistic element to a minimum, this formal concentration focuses attention on the symbolic flexibility of the works and the archetypal nature of its shape. Female is also unambiguously frontal, in the way that archaic Greek and ancient Egyptian art is with the artist focussed on producing an arresting, anterior image (unlike his aforementioned contemporaries whose concerns were more 'in the round'). The surface is rough much like weathered stone (or skin?) and etched with markings that recall tribal shields, masks and tattoos; the sweep of hair is scraped and grooved like an ancient stele. As ever though, the antiquarian source material is merely alluded to rather than overtly represented.

Standing in space at almost 200 centimetres high, Female is a powerful and poised example by an artist confident in his vision and the figure asserts itself as a enduring statement of modern sculpture at its most avant-garde. Here, Turnbull has successfully navigated the distant past and the immediate present, combining and confronting the two to establish a timeless visual language, that was uniquely his own.

We are grateful to the Artist's Estate for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.

Additional information

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