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Lot Essay
Exquisitely crafted in polished bronze with a sumptuously rich blue pigment applied to the interior and strings radiating to the outer edge, Sculpture with Colour is a beautiful and intimate form which explores Hepworth’s most celebrated preoccupation: the relationship of the figure to the landscape. Originally conceived in plaster in 1940, Hepworth would return to the sculpture casting it in bronze in 1968. The present cast (2/9) was included in her Tate Retrospective in 1968.
With the artist Ben Nicholson, her second husband and the father of triplet children she bore in 1934, Hepworth moved to St Ives, on the northern coast of the Cornwall peninsula, in August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. The only sculpture she took with her was her first sculpture with strings, the coloured plaster maquette made just before the outbreak of the war, Sculpture with Colour, White, Blue with Red Strings (BH 113A). The plaster was broken up and lost when cast in bronze in 1961 (as BH 113 B).
Hepworth and Nicholson moved to Dunluce, the house in Carbis Bay, near St Ives on 27 December 1939, and it was here that she would soon embark on a group of sculptures with strings, each progressively larger in size. The five painted plasters entitled Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red), one of which is in Tate, London (BH 117 B of 1940). This group was completed by the largest version, in painted wood (BH 118, private collection). The relative scarcity and small scale of Hepworth's work between 1939 and 1943 has been seen as the result of the restrictions placed upon her by domestic responsibilities, the lack of a proper studio and a shortage of materials due to wartime restrictions. She wrote to E.H. Ramsden in connection to Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red), 'Material is almost impossible to get hold of - maybe that in itself will produce new ideas and vitality' (see M. Gale and C. Stephens, loc. cit, p. 76).
Sculpture with Colour demonstrates key developments in Hepworth’s practice at the time, notably the use of string and colour. The inclusion of strings invites comparison with Henry Moore’s stringed pieces from the late 1930s, and, more pertinently to Naum Gabo’s use of nylon thread: Gabo and Hepworth shared a mutual interest in mathematical models, and their use of them or artistic purposes reflected a desire for a modernist synthesis of science and art.
Hepworth began incorporating colour into her sculptures after 1939, the use of such a rich and strong blue in the present work is unusual. It is in dramatic contrast to the predominance of white in her work in the mid-late 1930s, and echoed her Nicholson’s move away from the white reliefs towards coloured paintings and reliefs in the same period. This use of strong colour by both artists reveals their debt to Piet Mondrian, whom they had met in the early 1930s and was a close neighbour in Hampstead from 1938 until their evacuation from London in 1939. Colour was certainly used by Hepworth to emphasise the contrast between the exterior and interior surfaces of a work and, in a later interview, she associated it with medieval sculpture. She recalled the unearthing of an Anglo-Norman capital by wartime bombing: 'I was able to see how the cavities of the reliefs had once been coloured with a bright terracotta red, and this was exactly the kind of effect that I too had been seeking from 1938 onwards, in some of my own works'. The sculptures with colour represent the first appearance of the opening-up of the forms which would become such a characteristic of her work from the 1940s onwards' (see ibid, p. 77).
We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for this work. Dr Sophie Bowness is preparing the revised catalogue raisonné of Hepworth’s sculpture.
With the artist Ben Nicholson, her second husband and the father of triplet children she bore in 1934, Hepworth moved to St Ives, on the northern coast of the Cornwall peninsula, in August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. The only sculpture she took with her was her first sculpture with strings, the coloured plaster maquette made just before the outbreak of the war, Sculpture with Colour, White, Blue with Red Strings (BH 113A). The plaster was broken up and lost when cast in bronze in 1961 (as BH 113 B).
Hepworth and Nicholson moved to Dunluce, the house in Carbis Bay, near St Ives on 27 December 1939, and it was here that she would soon embark on a group of sculptures with strings, each progressively larger in size. The five painted plasters entitled Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red), one of which is in Tate, London (BH 117 B of 1940). This group was completed by the largest version, in painted wood (BH 118, private collection). The relative scarcity and small scale of Hepworth's work between 1939 and 1943 has been seen as the result of the restrictions placed upon her by domestic responsibilities, the lack of a proper studio and a shortage of materials due to wartime restrictions. She wrote to E.H. Ramsden in connection to Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red), 'Material is almost impossible to get hold of - maybe that in itself will produce new ideas and vitality' (see M. Gale and C. Stephens, loc. cit, p. 76).
Sculpture with Colour demonstrates key developments in Hepworth’s practice at the time, notably the use of string and colour. The inclusion of strings invites comparison with Henry Moore’s stringed pieces from the late 1930s, and, more pertinently to Naum Gabo’s use of nylon thread: Gabo and Hepworth shared a mutual interest in mathematical models, and their use of them or artistic purposes reflected a desire for a modernist synthesis of science and art.
Hepworth began incorporating colour into her sculptures after 1939, the use of such a rich and strong blue in the present work is unusual. It is in dramatic contrast to the predominance of white in her work in the mid-late 1930s, and echoed her Nicholson’s move away from the white reliefs towards coloured paintings and reliefs in the same period. This use of strong colour by both artists reveals their debt to Piet Mondrian, whom they had met in the early 1930s and was a close neighbour in Hampstead from 1938 until their evacuation from London in 1939. Colour was certainly used by Hepworth to emphasise the contrast between the exterior and interior surfaces of a work and, in a later interview, she associated it with medieval sculpture. She recalled the unearthing of an Anglo-Norman capital by wartime bombing: 'I was able to see how the cavities of the reliefs had once been coloured with a bright terracotta red, and this was exactly the kind of effect that I too had been seeking from 1938 onwards, in some of my own works'. The sculptures with colour represent the first appearance of the opening-up of the forms which would become such a characteristic of her work from the 1940s onwards' (see ibid, p. 77).
We are grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for this work. Dr Sophie Bowness is preparing the revised catalogue raisonné of Hepworth’s sculpture.