The early 1920s saw Frank Dobson developing a distinctive personal style, one which combined the influences of pre-war Jacob Epstein and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska with an awareness of contemporary European work, especially Ossip Zadkine and Pablo Picasso. Dobson had first visited Paris in 1922 with Wyndham Lewis and Charles Rutherston and they immersed themselves in exhibitions and the café culture of Europe’s most vibrant city – evenings were spent with the likes of Ezra Pound and James Joyce and during the day they had access to all the key artists working there at the time. Crucially he witnessed Picasso’s rappel a l’ordre and classicised nudes such as Seated Nude on a Rock (1921, MoMA) at first hand which was to have a wide-ranging impact on the development of his own approach to form. Female Torso is a highly important re-emergence of a major carving by Dobson. The dynamic contrapposto pose looks back to antique prototypes whilst the pared down curvilinear form reflects Dobson’s knowledge and understanding of non-Western art and European modern masters. As listed in the artist's catalogue raisonné, the sculpture is believed to have been owned by Alberto Giacometti: Giacometti was preoccupied with creating images of figures at their most slender, elongated and angular. They could hardly be further removed from the rounded and sensual alternative presented in Female Torso.

Dobson is eager to celebrate the amplitude of a woman in her prime. Although he omits her head, a strong feeling of affection runs through the entire sculpture. And its manifest warmth is accentuated, in the most immediate way imaginable, by the red sandstone which Dobson chose as his carving material. The pose adopted by this figure is equally intriguing. Her nakedness looks natural at first, suggesting that Dobson wanted above all to make his sculpture hail the maturity of this woman’s flesh. Female nudes had played a major role in his work from the outset, and he was clearly obsessed with their forms. At the same time, though, the position of both arms in this particular carving introduces other possible meanings. The woman might simply have reached the final stage of disrobing, and flung the last garment over her left shoulder. But she may equally be about to put on some clothes. We do not know, and Dobson encourages us to speculate about the overall mood of his Female Torso. Is she feeling shy or rapturous about revealing her body to the sculptor’s male gaze?

This carving was probably executed in 1926 - a very memorable year in Dobson’s own life. At the age of 40, he exhibited in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. And his work was also included in a show at Dresden, as well as a touring exhibition which travelled across Canada and the US. Dobson’s professional career was reaching its height, and his personal life became equally momentous. Meeting Mary Bussell, an accomplished 20 year-old dancer, he quickly fell in love with her. Dobson’s wife Cordelia felt so stricken that she developed chronic agoraphobia. Then, in September 1926, he went on holiday with Mary at Le Lavandou in the South of France.

After travelling along the coast and meeting local artists like Jean Cocteau, the two lovers went up to Paris and found a room at Le Royal Hotel in Montparnasse. They visited Andre Derain, Aristide Maillol and Zadkine, among others. Lady Rothermere purchased Dobson’s recent portrait of Mary, and Man Ray kindly lent him a warm mackintosh to cope with the Parisian winter. Among the exhibitions they visited was a powerful survey of African Primitive sculpture, which impressed them both. Dobson had already learned a great deal from the African emphasis on simplification of form. So he felt gratified to be included in a 1927 London exhibition where African sculpture was juxtaposed with work by European practitioners like Jacob Epstein and the young Barbara Hepworth.

Dobson’s career reached a new height the very same year, when the Leicester Galleries in London gave him the most prominent and ambitious solo show he had ever been granted. It included as the centrepiece a carving called Cornucopia, which Clive Bell lauded as:

In his youth, Dobson suffered a considerable amount of poverty and hardship. He recalled that ‘I had not found it as easy as some young artists do nowadays to gain recognition.So he was delighted when the Leicester Galleries exhibition received acclaim, and later declared that ‘it was this show which finally established me.’

Up-and-coming artists like Christopher Wood now regarded Dobson as ‘the best sculptor (with Epstein) in England’, and ‘certainly a great authority and a very nice fellow.’ Praise also came from critics as influential as Roger Fry, who decided that Dobson’s success in pulling through ‘to some kind of recognition is one of the happiest omens for English art of today. For whether we like his work or not, we must admit that it is true sculpture.’ Fry believed

Fry emphasised Dobson’s ability to develop ‘a more vital and sensitive apprehension’, and his Leicester Galleries show impressed many other critics as well. Their acclaim justly recognised the talent of a sculptor who had given his Female Torso carving an immense amount of poise, sensuality and well-judged simplification.

Richard Cork, March 2021