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Lot Essay
The architect Henry Gilbert, the well-known St Ives figure, designed a number of important buildings in the town including Piazza and Barnaloft (where artists including Bernard Leach and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham lived). As architect for the Penwith Council, he was also involved in restoration work to historic buildings such as the chapel of St Nicholas on the Island at St Ives. For many years he ran the Wills Lane Gallery and was a close personal friend of Hepworth's. He is credited with encouraging her to work with slate as a material for carving. The present bronze was given to Gilbert by Hepworth on 23 September 1968 on the occasion of the commemorative lunch conferring the Honorary Freedom of the Borough of St Ives, in thanks for his support and encouragement towards her.
Horizontal Form, (BH 468) from 1969, is most closely related to a similarly-scaled bronze, again with a highly polished surface, Vertical Form (St Ives), (BH 495, see fig. 1) which was conceived in 1968 and cast in 1969, as with Horizontal Form, by the Morris Singer Foundry.
Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens discuss these two works, 'The original Vertical Wood Form [BH 464, from 1968, (private collection)] is of lignum vitae, a very hard wood which had been especially favoured by the artist since the 1920s. It may be coupled with Horizontal Form [BH 462, again from 1968, (private collection)], which is the same size, though horizontal, and has a similar shape. Like the vertical piece, Horizontal Form was also carved from lignum and the pattern of the grain suggests that the two works may have been opposing halves of a single block. This would be consistent with the artist's preference, especially at that time, for an economy of means and materials ... the bronze cast from it reflects the gradual simplification of some of Hepworth's sculpture during the 1960s. In particular, she abandoned the spiralling hole ... for a simple cylindrical opening ... [which] unites the spaces in front of and behind the sculpture' (see M. Gale and C. Stephens, Barbara Hepworth Works in the Tate Gallery Collection and the Barbara Hepworth Museum St Ives, London, 1999, p. 243).
In conversation with Alan Bowness regarding ancient Cornish standing stones, the pierced stone of Men-an-tol and whether such cult objects are to be regarded as sculpture, Barbara Hepworth commented, 'It's curious, I had never seen them before I came to Cornwall in 1939 - Desmond Bernal talked about the Men-an-tol and about neolithic menhirs in his foreward to my 1937 show, but at that time I'd never heard of Cornwall, and knew nothing about dolmens and cromlechs and the like. All it did coming here was to ratify my ideas that when you make a sculpture you're making an image, a fetish, something which alters human behaviour or movement. Now I've come to love this landscape and I don't want to leave it. Any stone standing in the hills here is a figure, but you have to go further than that. What figure? And which countenance? To resolve the image so that it has something affirmative to say is to my mind the only point. That has always been my creed. I like to dream of things rising from the ground - it would be marvellous to walk in the woods and suddenly come across such things. Or meet a reclining form' (see A. Bowness (ed.), The complete sculpture of Barbara Hepworth 1960-69, London, 1971, p. 13).
We are very grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Horizontal Form, (BH 468) from 1969, is most closely related to a similarly-scaled bronze, again with a highly polished surface, Vertical Form (St Ives), (BH 495, see fig. 1) which was conceived in 1968 and cast in 1969, as with Horizontal Form, by the Morris Singer Foundry.
Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens discuss these two works, 'The original Vertical Wood Form [BH 464, from 1968, (private collection)] is of lignum vitae, a very hard wood which had been especially favoured by the artist since the 1920s. It may be coupled with Horizontal Form [BH 462, again from 1968, (private collection)], which is the same size, though horizontal, and has a similar shape. Like the vertical piece, Horizontal Form was also carved from lignum and the pattern of the grain suggests that the two works may have been opposing halves of a single block. This would be consistent with the artist's preference, especially at that time, for an economy of means and materials ... the bronze cast from it reflects the gradual simplification of some of Hepworth's sculpture during the 1960s. In particular, she abandoned the spiralling hole ... for a simple cylindrical opening ... [which] unites the spaces in front of and behind the sculpture' (see M. Gale and C. Stephens, Barbara Hepworth Works in the Tate Gallery Collection and the Barbara Hepworth Museum St Ives, London, 1999, p. 243).
In conversation with Alan Bowness regarding ancient Cornish standing stones, the pierced stone of Men-an-tol and whether such cult objects are to be regarded as sculpture, Barbara Hepworth commented, 'It's curious, I had never seen them before I came to Cornwall in 1939 - Desmond Bernal talked about the Men-an-tol and about neolithic menhirs in his foreward to my 1937 show, but at that time I'd never heard of Cornwall, and knew nothing about dolmens and cromlechs and the like. All it did coming here was to ratify my ideas that when you make a sculpture you're making an image, a fetish, something which alters human behaviour or movement. Now I've come to love this landscape and I don't want to leave it. Any stone standing in the hills here is a figure, but you have to go further than that. What figure? And which countenance? To resolve the image so that it has something affirmative to say is to my mind the only point. That has always been my creed. I like to dream of things rising from the ground - it would be marvellous to walk in the woods and suddenly come across such things. Or meet a reclining form' (see A. Bowness (ed.), The complete sculpture of Barbara Hepworth 1960-69, London, 1971, p. 13).
We are very grateful to Dr Sophie Bowness for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.