Dame Barbara Hepworth

Marlborough Gallery, New York
Private Collection (sold: Sotheby’s, New York, May 14, 1992, lot 301)
Acquired at the above sale

A.M. Hammacher, The Family of Man - Nine Bronzes and Recent Carvings (exhibition catalogue), Marlborough Fine Arts, Ltd., London, 1970, illustration of another cast

Hepworth completed this monumental figure in 1970, only five years before her death.  As the artist herself admitted, there is a certain poignancy about these late works, as they addressed topics of special significance to her during the last years of her life.  For the present work, Hepworth addresses human history, and the weightiness of the subject comes across in the powerful form of this sculpture.  Stacking horizontal and vertical bronze shapes to construct a towering vertical structure, Hepworth has created a modern-day totem-pole that embodies the spirits of past lives or the “ancestor.”  According to Alan G. Wilkinson, Hepworth's Family of Man series established her as the premiere sculptor of the upright, standing figure.  He explains that "In The Family of Man [...], Hepworth presents us with a twentieth-century recreation of the prehistoric menhirs, quoits, and stone circles that had been a constant source of inspiration since she moved to Cornwall in 1939" (Alan G. Wilkinson, Barbara Hepworth, Sculptures from the Estate (exhibition catalogue), Wildenstein Gallery, New York, 1996, p. 31).

Abstract and decidedly modern, The Family of Man: Figure 1, Ancestor 1 possesses a distinct beauty and sense of timelessness in its solidity and curvilinear formation.  The year that she created the present work, Hepworth wrote about the meaning that she assigned to many of her sculptures: “Working in the abstract way seems to realize one’s personality and sharpen the perceptions so that in the observation of humanity or landscape it is the wholeness of inner intention which moves one so profoundly.  The components fall into place and one is no longer aware of the detail except as the necessary significance of wholeness and unity….a rhythm of form which has its roots in earth but reaches outwards towards the unknown experiences of the future.  The thought underlying this form is, for me, the delicate balance the spirit of man maintains between his knowledge and the laws of the universe” (Barbara Hepworth, Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial Autobiography, Wiltshire, 1970, p. 93).

 

 

Fig. 1.  Photograph of the artist at work