Lot Essay
We are very grateful to Sarah Chadwick for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.
'There's an architectural conceit in the series of figure sculptures Chadwick began in 1991, in which two female figures respectively descend and ascend a set of stairs. Moore had sometimes placed seated figures on a set of steps, but Chadwick's incorporation of contrary motion into a single sculpture drew deep on his own life's work. It's there in Fisheater and Bullfrog in the 1950s and in the Jubilee couple, who stride forwards as their robes billow out behind. All Chadwick would say of his new series was: 'I thought I'd contrast the movement of legs going up and down stairs, so you get the legs, the knees bending one way, then the other way ... I was really thinking, 'How else can I do these curious figures of mine? How can I do them? What shall I do with them? ... How can I use the human body? What can I do with it?'' (M. Bird, Lynn Chadwick, Farnham, 2014, p. 169).
'There's an architectural conceit in the series of figure sculptures Chadwick began in 1991, in which two female figures respectively descend and ascend a set of stairs. Moore had sometimes placed seated figures on a set of steps, but Chadwick's incorporation of contrary motion into a single sculpture drew deep on his own life's work. It's there in Fisheater and Bullfrog in the 1950s and in the Jubilee couple, who stride forwards as their robes billow out behind. All Chadwick would say of his new series was: 'I thought I'd contrast the movement of legs going up and down stairs, so you get the legs, the knees bending one way, then the other way ... I was really thinking, 'How else can I do these curious figures of mine? How can I do them? What shall I do with them? ... How can I use the human body? What can I do with it?'' (M. Bird, Lynn Chadwick, Farnham, 2014, p. 169).