Butterfly

Details

Gertrude Hermes, R.A. (1901-1983)
Butterfly
signed 'Gertrude Hermes' (on the underside)
walnut
33 ½ in. (85.1 cm.) high, including the base
Carved in 1937.

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner's father, and by descent.

Literature

Daily Mirror, 29 October 1937.
N. Mitchison, exhibition catalogue, Gertrude Hermes: Bronzes and Carvings, Drawings, Wood engravings, Wood and Lino Block Cuts, 1924-1967, London, Whitechapel Gallery, 1967, no. 21, illustrated.
J. Hill, The Sculpture of Gertrude Hermes, Farnham, 2011, pp. 26, 121, no. 73, fig. 16, illustrated twice and on the back cover.
S. MacDougall and R. Dickson, exhibition catalogue, Uproar! The First 50 Years of the London Group 1913-63, London, Ben Uri Gallery, 2013, pp. 46, 138-139, no. 35, illustrated twice.

Exhibited

London, New Burlington Galleries, The London Group Thirty-sixth Exhibition of Painting & Sculpture, October - November 1937, no. 327.
London, Whitechapel Gallery, Gertrude Hermes: Bronzes and Carvings, Drawings, Wood engravings, Wood and Lino Block Cuts, 1924-1967, October - November 1967, no. 21.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Gertrude Hermes R.A., September - October 1981, no. 24.
London, Ben Uri Gallery, Uproar! The First 50 Years of the London Group 1913-63, October 2013 - March 2014, no. 35.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Sale room notice

Please note that this lot has been requested for inclusion of the forthcoming exhibition : Wakefield, The Hepworth Wakefield, Gertrude Hermes, November 2015 – February 2016.

Lot Essay

‘I tried to show in one complete piece of wood the perfect balance of the butterfly...it is not symmetrical…it is not meant to be.’ Gertrude Hermes

As an artist in the interwar years, Hermes’ style thrived under the tutelage of Leon Underwood at Brook Green School of Art, where she studied from 1921-1925. The influence of Primitivism and artists such as Brancusi and Gaudier-Brzeska is also evident in her work of this period.

Gertrude Hermes was seduced by the natural world from her youth. This is apparent from her early choice of subjects which predominantly encompassed organic matter such as plants, animals, birds and insects. In preparation for the present work, she studied butterflies in the countryside for two years. Butterfly has been selected for several major exhibitions since its debut at the 1937 London Group exhibition. Most recently it was chosen to represent Hermes at the fiftieth anniversary exhibition of the London Group, held at Ben Uri Gallery in 2013-14. Also selected for the back cover of Jane Hill’s monograph on the artist, Butterfly remains one of Hermes’s most accomplished carvings and enduring images.

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