Frederick Edward McWilliam, A.R.A. 1909-1992

London, Hanover Gallery, F.E.McWilliam: Sculpture, February - March 1956 (another cast);
New York, Galerie Chalette, Eleven British Sculptors, Ocotber - November 1956 (another cast);
Leeds, Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, 1956 (details untraced).

Conceived in 1953 and cast in an edition of 3.  One of these casts can be seen in a 1953 photograph of McWilliam's Holland Park studio, displayed on a shelf in the alcove (see Mel Gooding, F.E. McWilliam: Sculpture 1932-1989, catalogue for the Tate Gallery exhibition, 1989, p,20).  

The present work is a study for Eve, one of McWilliam's most successful large scale sculptures from the period after the Second World War, when he began to experiment with new techniques using an internal wire armature to provide support to the overall figure. As the bibilcal mother of humanity, Eve's tall stature is subtly juxtaposed with the swollen lump of her belly symbolic of fertility and of new life to come. The elongated nature of Eve's face and hair also possibly relates to Hindu and Buddhist forms the artist would have witnessed in India during his war service there with the RAF.