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A Sense of Form: Property from a Private British Collection speaks wholeheartedly of a lifelong passion and interest in the creativity of British Art of the 20th century, and will be offered in our Modern & Post-War British Art auction, lots 336-394. At the heart of the collection lies a dynamic group of sculpture by some of Britain’s most innovative artists.
These span from the elegant and sophisticated vision of Barbara Hepworth and her disciples such as Denis Mitchell and John Milne, to a group of work by the new generation of sculptors who were shown together to great acclaim at the 1952 Venice Biennale: Robert Adams, Bernard Meadows, Geoffrey Clarke, William Turnbull, Reg Butler and Lynn Chadwick.
Alongside the sculpture are works on paper and paintings which share a similarly sculptural concern with form. These include a rich group of works by Graham Sutherland, in addition to Henry Moore, Eric Gill, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Ben Nicholson and the St Ives Post-War painters, such as Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, William Scott, John Wells, Roger Hilton and Paul Feiler.
Also represented within the collection are significant examples by lesser known artists including Keith Leonard and Margaret Lovell. Put together with thought and dedication, the collection provides a unique and engaging insight into British artistic practice over the last century.
Lot 339
Dame Barbara Hepworth
Two Forms
Estimate £40,000-60,000
Lot 369
Lynn Chadwick, R.A.
Maquette III, Moon of Alabama
Estimate £30,000-50,000
Lot 342
John Milne
Vertical Form
Estimate £3,000-5,000
Lot 354
Robert Adams
Wave Form No.7
Estimate £3,000-5,000
Lot 346
William Turnbull
Hook Torso
Estimate £25,000- 35,000
Lot 385
John Milne
Bronze Tower
Estimate £3,000-£5,000
Lot 343
William Scott, R.A.
Composition
Estimate £30,000-50,000
Lot 344
Dame Barbara Hepworth
Four Hemispheres
Estimate £25,000- 35,000
Graham Sutherland’s representation of the landscape forms a distinct body of work in 20th-century British art; indeed, it reveals a distinctly British sensibility continuing the tradition set by Samuel Palmer in the early 19th century, whom Sutherland greatly admired. Sutherland does not paint the landscape as he sees it but as he feels it, giving emphasis to forms and colours hitherto unexamined, resulting in mysterious works at once enticing, surreal and romantic. Mostly executed on paper on a small scale, they possess an intense, visionary feeling.
A Sense of Form: Property from a Private British Collection includes several examples which reveal Sutherland’s symbolic excavation of the landscape. This takes a literal turn in Sutherland’s fiery images of a tin miner and blast furnace, which belong to a series of mining pictures he carried out as an Official War Artist from 1940-45. Following the War are other works through to the 1970s, containing anthropomorphic shapes, twisting forms and winding paths rendered in vibrant greens and yellows, leading the viewer beyond the surface.
