Horse

Details

William Turnbull (b. 1922)
Horse
signed with monogram, dated and numbered '46 3/4' (on the back)
bronze with a dark grey patina
27 in. (68.6 cm.) high

Provenance

with Waddington Galleries, London, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

R. Morphet, exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, London, Tate Gallery, 1973, p. 22, another cast illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull, London, Waddington Galleries, 1987, p. 13, another cast illustrated.
B. Cohen, 'William Turnbull: Painter and Sculptor', Modern Painters, Winter, 1995, p. 30, another cast illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, London, Serpentine Gallery, 1995, p. 11, another cast illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull, London, Waddington Galleries, 2001, p. 5, another cast illustrated.
A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, Aldershot, 2005, pp. 12, 78, no. 2, another cast illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 1987, no. 1, another cast exhibited.
London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 2001, no. 1, another cast exhibited.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis. 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.

Lot Essay

Patrick Elliott comments, 'One of his [Turnbull's] very first sculptures, Horse, made at the Slade in 1946, is remarkably prophetic of work the artist would make forty years later. At the time Paolozzi was making sculptures in cement - a very unusual method which contrasted with the traditional approach of modelling in clay favoured at the Slade - and Turnbull adopted a similarly direct method, modelling with wet plaster on a metal armature. The Horse was made by this method; originally it bore fine, engraved marks over the surface and was painted yellow. On the other hand this work owes something to Cubism with its interlocking flat planes that could almost be disassembled, and on the other it shows the clarity and lucidity of form that would characterise Turnbull's entire oeuvre' (see exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, London, Serpentine Gallery, 1995, pp. 13-4).

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