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Lot Essay
We are very grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness and Jenna Lundin Aral for their assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for this work. Dr Sophie Bowness and Jenna Lundin Aral are preparing the revised catalogue raisonné of Hepworth’s paintings.
Throughout her career as a sculptor, the birth of Barbara Hepworth’s triplets had a profound effect upon her practice. In 1944, this inspiration took an unusual turn when her daughter was hospitalised with a bone infection and treated at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter. Watching the doctors at work, Hepworth over time built up a friendship with her daughter’s surgeon, Norman Capener. The doctor invited her to witness a variety of surgical procedures at Exeter and the London Clinic, which she eagerly accepted and which was the start a series of remarkable drawings that highlight Hepworth’s abiding interest in both craftsmanship and the subject of the human form.
Capturing the doctors engrossed in their practice, Hepworth identified a shared interest between surgeons and sculptors, whom seek ‘to restore and to maintain the beauty and grace of the human mind and body’ (the artist quoted in ‘Sculpture and the scalpel: Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings’, Tate etc, 25 June 2019’). Just as sculptors carve and bring work into being, Hepworth preferred reconstructive surgery that avoided any element of catastrophe. Hepworth followed in the tradition of artists painting doctors, dating back to Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague). Hepworth’s subjects leave the drama of the operating theatre behind. Her composition for the series detail her intense study of the surgeons, as they simultaneously remain engrossed in their work.
Study for Group is a work that captures the focused concentration of the doctors, in a moment of preparation. The surgeon is helped by a nurse, who in the efforts of sanitation helps him scrub up for an operation. What is largely overlooked in discussion of Hepworth’s hospital drawings is the sense of community. Before the war, the artist largely focused upon single abstract forms. After her series based upon the operating theatre, she moved toward multi-form sculptures; her experience watching the doctors work in harmony was possibly an early inspiration for the change. Hepworth described how she felt ‘enriched as an artist by the experience of watching these various surgeons at work, not only by the visual impact but also by the mental (or shall I say) spiritual, meaning of a group of people working harmoniously for a given purpose’ (the artist quoted Tate etc, 25 June 2019). The shared process is reminiscent of Hepworth’s later relationship with her assistants, working together in creation.
Hepworth was particularly fascinated by the rhythmic movement of hands during the medical procedures unfolding before her. In the present work, scratched into the surface of the board, Hepworth draws particular attention to the hands, that – like the hands of the artist – indicate care and craftmanship. In a contemporary article discussing Hepworth's approach, Herbert Read describes the hospital scenes as ‘powerful and moving in their restraint and intensity’ (H. Read, ‘Barbara Hepworth: a New Phase’, The Listener, 8 April 1948, p. 592). Unlike many other drawings such as Surgeon Waiting or Preparation which capture the moment of preparation where the doctors faces are masked, in Study for Group, the doctor’s entire face is captured in detail which imbues the work a sense of pathos.
With little drama or pomp, the present work beautifully details Hepworth’s interest in the surgical processes, but perhaps more so, the inspiration it gave her. Recalling the effect upon her, she remarked how ‘the abstract artist is one who is predominantly interested in the basic principles and underlying structures of things, rather than in the particular scene or figure before him; and it was from this viewpoint that I was so deeply affected by what I saw in the operating theatre’ (the artist quoted Tate etc, 25 June 2019).
Throughout her career as a sculptor, the birth of Barbara Hepworth’s triplets had a profound effect upon her practice. In 1944, this inspiration took an unusual turn when her daughter was hospitalised with a bone infection and treated at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter. Watching the doctors at work, Hepworth over time built up a friendship with her daughter’s surgeon, Norman Capener. The doctor invited her to witness a variety of surgical procedures at Exeter and the London Clinic, which she eagerly accepted and which was the start a series of remarkable drawings that highlight Hepworth’s abiding interest in both craftsmanship and the subject of the human form.
Capturing the doctors engrossed in their practice, Hepworth identified a shared interest between surgeons and sculptors, whom seek ‘to restore and to maintain the beauty and grace of the human mind and body’ (the artist quoted in ‘Sculpture and the scalpel: Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings’, Tate etc, 25 June 2019’). Just as sculptors carve and bring work into being, Hepworth preferred reconstructive surgery that avoided any element of catastrophe. Hepworth followed in the tradition of artists painting doctors, dating back to Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague). Hepworth’s subjects leave the drama of the operating theatre behind. Her composition for the series detail her intense study of the surgeons, as they simultaneously remain engrossed in their work.
Study for Group is a work that captures the focused concentration of the doctors, in a moment of preparation. The surgeon is helped by a nurse, who in the efforts of sanitation helps him scrub up for an operation. What is largely overlooked in discussion of Hepworth’s hospital drawings is the sense of community. Before the war, the artist largely focused upon single abstract forms. After her series based upon the operating theatre, she moved toward multi-form sculptures; her experience watching the doctors work in harmony was possibly an early inspiration for the change. Hepworth described how she felt ‘enriched as an artist by the experience of watching these various surgeons at work, not only by the visual impact but also by the mental (or shall I say) spiritual, meaning of a group of people working harmoniously for a given purpose’ (the artist quoted Tate etc, 25 June 2019). The shared process is reminiscent of Hepworth’s later relationship with her assistants, working together in creation.
Hepworth was particularly fascinated by the rhythmic movement of hands during the medical procedures unfolding before her. In the present work, scratched into the surface of the board, Hepworth draws particular attention to the hands, that – like the hands of the artist – indicate care and craftmanship. In a contemporary article discussing Hepworth's approach, Herbert Read describes the hospital scenes as ‘powerful and moving in their restraint and intensity’ (H. Read, ‘Barbara Hepworth: a New Phase’, The Listener, 8 April 1948, p. 592). Unlike many other drawings such as Surgeon Waiting or Preparation which capture the moment of preparation where the doctors faces are masked, in Study for Group, the doctor’s entire face is captured in detail which imbues the work a sense of pathos.
With little drama or pomp, the present work beautifully details Hepworth’s interest in the surgical processes, but perhaps more so, the inspiration it gave her. Recalling the effect upon her, she remarked how ‘the abstract artist is one who is predominantly interested in the basic principles and underlying structures of things, rather than in the particular scene or figure before him; and it was from this viewpoint that I was so deeply affected by what I saw in the operating theatre’ (the artist quoted Tate etc, 25 June 2019).