Details
Dame Barbara Hepworth, O.M. (1903-1975)
The Hands and the Arm
signed and dated lower right Barbara Hepworth 1948, oil and pencil on gesso-prepared panel
11½ x 14½in. (29 x 37cm.)
The Hands and the Arm
signed and dated lower right Barbara Hepworth 1948, oil and pencil on gesso-prepared panel
11½ x 14½in. (29 x 37cm.)
Provenance
Gimpel Fils, London, 1958, where purchased by the present owner's parents
Literature
A. Bowness (intro.), Barbara Hepworth Drawings from a Sculptor's Landscape, London, 1966, no. 27 (illustrated)
A.M. Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, London, 1968, no. 77 (illustrated)
The operation-theatre series painted in 1948 and 1949 came about because of the serious illness of one of Hepworth's daughters. She developed a friendship with the surgeon who realising her interest in anatomy invited Hepworth to watch an operation in progress. This she did, firstly at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter and then at the London Clinic and the National Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter. She made notes with a pen and a sterilized pad and immediately afterwards worked up the studies. In 1952 the artist wrote 'in about the middle of 1947, a suggestion was made to me that I might like to watch an operation in a hospital. I expected that I should dislike it, but from the moment when I entered the operation theatre I became completely absorbed by two things: first, the extraordinary beauty of purpose, a coordination between human beings all dedicated to the saving of life, and the way that unity of idea and purpose dictated a perfection of concentration, movement, and gesture, and secondly by the way this special grace (grace of mind and body) induced a spontaneous space composition, an articulated and animated kind of abstract sculpture very close to what I had been seeing in my own work'
(H. Read, Barbara Hepworth, Carvings and Drawings, London, 1952, chp. 5)
A.M. Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth, London, 1968, no. 77 (illustrated)
The operation-theatre series painted in 1948 and 1949 came about because of the serious illness of one of Hepworth's daughters. She developed a friendship with the surgeon who realising her interest in anatomy invited Hepworth to watch an operation in progress. This she did, firstly at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter and then at the London Clinic and the National Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter. She made notes with a pen and a sterilized pad and immediately afterwards worked up the studies. In 1952 the artist wrote 'in about the middle of 1947, a suggestion was made to me that I might like to watch an operation in a hospital. I expected that I should dislike it, but from the moment when I entered the operation theatre I became completely absorbed by two things: first, the extraordinary beauty of purpose, a coordination between human beings all dedicated to the saving of life, and the way that unity of idea and purpose dictated a perfection of concentration, movement, and gesture, and secondly by the way this special grace (grace of mind and body) induced a spontaneous space composition, an articulated and animated kind of abstract sculpture very close to what I had been seeing in my own work'
(H. Read, Barbara Hepworth, Carvings and Drawings, London, 1952, chp. 5)