Lynn Chadwick

Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection, New York
Sale, Sotheby's New York, 11th December 1980, lot 145, where acquired by Philip and Muriel Berman
Their Sale, Sotheby's New York, 3rd November 2005, lot 334, where acquired by the present owner

Venice, New Apects of British Sculpture, XVVI Biennale, June-October 1952;
New York, Museum of Modern Art, The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors, 10th May - 7th August 1955, unnumbered catalogue, illustrated p.71, with tour to Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Art;
Endicott, New York, Harpur College, Paintings from the Collection of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1960;
Rochester, New York, Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Paintings and Sculpture from the Collection of Governor and Mrs. Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1961;
Waterville, Maine, Colby College Art Museum, Seal Harbor Collection of Governor and Mrs. Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1961;
Atlanta Art Association, Paintings from the Collection of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1962;
Plattsburgh, New York, State Universtiy College, College Gallery-Feinberg Library, Paintings and Sculpture from the Collection of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1964;
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Twentieth-Century Art from the Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller Collection, 1969.

Herbert Read, Lynn Chadwick, Artists of Our Time, 1958, Bodensee-Verlag, Amriswil, Switzerland, illustrated pl.2;
Josef Paul Hodin, Chadwick, Modern Sculptors, A. Zwemmer Ltd., London, 1961, illustrated pl.2;
W.S. Liebermann & A.H. Barr, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection: Masterpieces of Modern Art, 1981, illustrated p.151;
Paul Levine and Nico Koster, Lynn Chadwick: The Sculptor and His World, SMD Informatief Spruyt, Van Mantgem & De Does BV, Leiden, 1988, illustrated p.60;
Dennis Farr and Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, Lund Humphries, Aldershot,  2006,  cat. no.65, illustrated p.74.

There are a few areas of rust and there is an old Rockefeller label attached the underside of the tail and a small spot of surface matter which may be an old piece of tape to one side of the teeth. There is some red paint to one or two areas, which appears to read 25-57.3C. Otherwise the work is in good overall condition. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Barley Fork is something of an icon in the early work of Lynn Chadwick. Part of a small but important group of sculptures that Chadwick produced in the 1951-53 period, which incorporated mobile elements into sculptures which drew largely on abstracted animal forms for their inspiration, it was also included in the key exhibition that marked the emergence of a new generation of British sculptors, New Aspects of British Sculpture at the Venice Biennale of 1952.

As major figure on the international stage, Henry Moore had been the immediate champion of British sculpture straight after the end of WWII, with large exhibitions at MoMA, New York in 1946 and at Venice in 1948. However, the decision by the British Council to present an exhibition of sculptors who were then largely unknown outside Britain, and in some cases actually still little-known there, was a brave statement of intent and future possibility. New Aspects of British Sculpture was exceptionally perspicacious in its choices of artists, the eight sculptors being Adams, Armitage, Butler, Chadwick, Clarke, Meadows, Paolozzi and Turnbull, all of whom would go on to great successes throughout the decade and beyond, and was to provide an important platform not only for the particular artists but for the wider body of British sculpture. Whilst there was a considerable variation in the styles, working methods and aims of the eight sculptors, the concept of a Jungian collective unconscious tendency within the work of the artists shown was propounded by Herbert Read in his catalogue introduction to the show, which also coined the oft-quoted phase, 'the geometry of fear' under which these artists and many of their contemporaries have often been grouped. Whilst Read's position has been much questioned by art historians and critics since, what is undeniable is that during the 1950s, a new generation had emerged onto the international sculpture stage.

Chadwick had previously made a number of large-scale mobile sculptures, such as The Fisheater and Dragonfly (both Tate Collection) but this development of the anthropomorphic elements of these smaller stabile sculptures necessitated that the mobile component assisted in the creation of the overall character of the piece, and indeed the jagged, interlaced teeth of the moving iron parts help to create a tension that is key to the success of this group of sculptures. In Barley Fork, the mobile element, formed from two counterbalanced iron pieces, each massive and jagged, is in complete contrast to the thin and excoriated lines of the 'body'. The weighting of the mobile section causes these parts to turn with an almost whip-like movement, reminiscent of the pouncing of those amphibians which fire out a tongue or limb to capture their prey. The rotation of these parts has a machine-like quality too, suggestive of endlessly spinning blades of a combine harvester or mowing machine. The intentionally rough forged surfaces of the metal also further the feeling that this is something timeless, like a blade found under the earth, perhaps dulled but still dangerous. Indeed the title of the piece itself suggests these same agricultural associations, the forms hinting at the long thin tines of the tool of the same name.

Whilst it is easy to see sculptures such as Barley Fork as in part responding to the age of threat and uncertainty that the developing Cold War engendered, and this is certainly how Herbert Read saw them in his introduction to the 1952 Venice exhibition, it is also possible to see them as a natural growth from the explorations of an older generation of artists. The anthropomorphism inherent in these sculptures, the feeling that odd, old offcuts of metal have assembled themselves on the workbench into these emaciated skeletons that now run amok is not dissimilar to the way in which Graham Sutherland's twisted branches and thorn bushes become totemic figures, and one should particularly recall his transformation of the twisted, burnt and broken steel lift shafts and warehouse skeletons into threatening, elemental brutes rearing up. One could even look back further, to Paul Nash's constructions of assembled objects, or indeed his own photographs of fallen trees or broken machinery. Indeed Nash's images of wrecked and dismantled German aircraft, such as Totes Meer, feel very much like the precursors of Chadwick's scuttling beasts.