Reg Butler

London, Hanover Gallery, Reg Butler, April-June 1954, no.9;
London, Items for Collectors Exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 5 August-4 September 1954, no.12;
New York, Curt Valentin Gallery, Reg Butler, January-February 1955, no.14;
Munich, Kunstverein, Young British Sculptors, November 1955- August 1956 (another cast), British Council touring exhibition to Stuttgart, Freiberg, Karlsruhe, Recklinghausen, Dusseldorf, Germany and the Netherlands.
London, Hanover Gallery, Reg Butler, May-June 1957, no.2 (another cast);
Louisville, Kentucky, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Reg Butler: A Retrospective Exhibition, 22 October-1 December 1963, no.31 (another cast);
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, 11 September-1 November 1981 and 27 November-24 January 1982, no.39 (another cast);
London, Tate, Reg Butler, 16 November 1983-15 January 1984, no.47 (another cast);
London, Tate, Suffering through Tyranny, 1933-1984, December 1984-May 1985 (another cast).

Addison Franklin Page, Reg Butler: A Retrospective Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, 1963;
Tate Gallery Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions 1984-86, 1988
Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, The Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, 2006, no.111, p.134, fig.68, illustrated p.78 and p.15 (illustration of Young British Sculptors exhibition).

There is a small crack where the two lond tendrils divide but it is difficult to decipher whether this is the intention of the sculptor. The work is in good overall condition. Mounted on a wooden block.
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According to a letter from the artist, dated 19th November 1980, the present cast of Circe Head was the first example to be produced in shell bronze. Three further casts were produced in bronze circa 1954-5 by Susse Freres in Paris from a projected edition of eight. It appears that this edition was never completed. Therefore, the present cast may well be the actual example which appears in Butler's own studio photograph of the sculpture, which has been reproduced in virtually all the literature on the artist.

Circe Head is one a group of sculptures from the early years of the decade that feature the raised and thrown back head that is such a strong feature of Butler's work at this time. Following on from The Oracle and Archaic Head of 1952, this group do seem to confirm the link that has been noted by writers between Butler's sculpture and the work of Francis Bacon, and indeed their work had been shown together at the I.C.A., along with that of Germaine Richier, in the London/Paris exhibition in 1950. Both artists also exhibited regularly with the Hanover Gallery in London throughout the decade, and thus there are grounds for such connections.

The anguished face of Circe Head carries a clear message of torment, and seems to derive originally from the screaming figure in the right hand panel of Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (Collection Tate). However, the intentions here seem very different from that in Bacon's work of the period which was demonstrating an ever-increasing tendency towards violence, the sense of mental torture being enhanced by the wires attached to the side of the head. Garlake notes this intensity and suggests it '...evokes the agony of torture through electrocution' (Margaret Garlake, The Sculpture of Reg Butler, HMF / Lund Humphries, London 2006, p.134) and thus carries both the classical theme inherent in the title (Circe was a sorceress who appears in Homer's Odyssey, using drugs to turn Odysseus' men into beasts) and the political one inherent in his earlier works relating to the Unknown Political Prisoner theme. The image was clearly one which Butler found potent as it is incorporated into a number of sculptures at this time, including Study for Third Watcher (G144), The Manipulator (G149) and Head Looking Up (G161).

We are grateful to Margaret Garlake for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.