Bernard Meadows 1915-2005

The Artist
Chappel Galleries, Chappel, whence acquired by the present owner, 2001

Chappel, Chappel Galleries, Bernard Meadows: Drawings and Sculpture, March - April 2001, no.53.

The present work does not appear in the catalogue raisonne of the artist’s work, but appears to be closely related to an undated but highly finished drawing illustrated as pl.17 in Alan Bowness, Bernard Meadows: Sculpture and Drawing, Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, London, 1995. The crab motif was an important theme in Meadows’ work of the 1950s and is best seen in Black Crab of 1951-2 (BM18), and relates to his own experience of those creatures observed during his service in the Cocos Islands during WWII. The highly polished finish of the present piece is closely related to Crab 1985 (BM128), but is significantly larger and displays clear evidence of extensive hand working, very much in keeping with Meadows’ studio practice.  We may thus deduce that this work is an uneditioned and therefore possibly unique sculpture that may demonstrate a late career return to either a previously uncast maquette or which draws heavily on the ideas of a key theme of the artist’s early oeuvre.