Frederick Edward McWilliam, R.A.

Acquired directly from the Artist by Eugene and Penelope Rosenberg, September 1961

London, Hanover Gallery, F.E. McWilliam: Recent Sculpture, 11th October - 5th November 1949, cat. no.1;
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Decade 40's; Painting, Sculpture and Drawing in Briatin 1940-49, 1st - 26th November 1972, cat. no.161;
London, Warwick Arts Trust, F.E. McWilliam: Early Sculptures 1935-48, With Some Recent Works, 3rd - 30th June 1982, cat. no.15, illustrated;
London, Tate, F.E. McWilliam 1932-1989, 10th May - 9th July 1989, cat. no.33.

'Review of Hanover Exhibition', Evening Standard, 14th October 1949;
The Times, 18th October 1949;
Albert Garrett, Studio, November 1954, illustrated p.142;
Roland Penrose, McWilliam, Alec Tiranti Ltd, London, 1964, pp. 8-9, illustrated no.20 and 21;
F.E. McWilliam, exh. cat., The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1981, illustrated p.27;
John Russell Taylor, 'Review of the Warwick Arts Trust Exhibition', The Times, 8th June 1982;
Denise Ferran & Valerie Holman, The Sculpture of F.E. McWilliam, Lund Humphries in associtation with the Henry Moore Foundation, Farnham, 2012, cat. no.59, illustrated p.106.

Structurally sound. The work appears in excellent overall condition. Housed on a 4cm. high black stone base, with a couple of very tiny nicks and nips visible upon extremely close inspection. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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After graduating from Belfast College of Art and the Slade, McWilliam left Britain; 'when I lived in Ireland I only wanted to get out of it to where the action in the visual arts was - Paris' (McWilliam in conversation with Bryan Robertson, quoted in F.E. McWilliam, exh. cat., Warwick Arts Trust, London, 1982). He became immersed in the avant-garde cultural whirlwind of the French capital becoming good friends with Ossip Zadkine and most importantly, experiencing at first hand the developments of Magritte, Dali, Breton and the French surrealists which were to have a profound effect on his artistic development. His work from the 1930s subsequently developed a distinctly Surrealist tendency, culminating in unique carvings such as Eye, Nose and Cheek (1939) and Profile (1939) both in the Tate Collection, which present a dynamic yet disquieting juxtaposition of dislocated body parts. Belonging to a series known as 'The Complete Fragment', he later explained that these carvings 'are mostly of part or parts of the head greatly magnified and complete in themselves. These concern the play of solid and void, the solid element being the sculpture itself whilst the "missing" element inhabits the space around the sculpture...' (McWilliam, quoted in Ferran and Holman, op.cit., p.17). Although executed nearly 10 years later, the present work belongs to this unique group of early carvings, separated in date due to the Second World War during which McWilliam was in active service with the RAF and produced little work. 

The enigmatic dislocation of mouth, nose, ear and eye is certainly suggestive of a Surrealist vision, and indeed, the separation of elements is perhaps a direct reference to Magritte's earlier fragmented canvases such as L'Evidence Eternelle (1930, Museum of Modern Art, New York). When the sculpture was exhibited at the Warwick Art Trust in 1982, the critic for The Times noted, 'I would defy anyone to see this astonishing show and not come away haunted by, say, the Head in Extended Order of 1948, a group of four separated features which form and re-form in the imagination. Only a major sculptor can work on us in that way....' However, like many of his British contemporaries and in particular, his great mentor Henry Moore, he was not Surrealist in a dogmatic sense; 'I was for Surrealism but not with it' (quoted in Ferran and Holman, op.cit., p.53). When asked what sculpture had inspired him most, he later concluded that it was 'Early to Classical Greek, particularly the sculpture of the Parthenon' that had effected him the most (quoted in Ferran and Holman, op.cit., p.53). The separate elements of Head in Extended Order are certainly reminiscent of traditional art school practice of having students draw from seemingly dismembered casts of Antique or Renaissance heads, limbs, hands and feet whilst the separation of elements is also redolent of Moore and Hepworth's figurative sculptures made of two or three parts and the material, hoptonwood stone, was a favourite of both artists. The overall impact of Head in Extended Order is however, entirely McWilliams's own and when included in his first post-war solo exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in 1949, the sculpture was presented as catalogue no.1. The art critic for the Evening Standard aptly surmised: 'Latest works of ultra-modern sculptor F.E. McWilliam make Henry Moore look almost conventional... most unusual is Head in Extended Order…' (Ferran and Holman, op.cit., p.106). 

It is significant that such an important carving was acquired by Eugene Rosenberg. They had first met in the early 1950s and became close friends. McWilliam was well informed about contemporary architecture having once wanted to become an architect and designed his own home in New Malden in 1937 with his friend the architect H.A. Townsend. He understood exactly what Rosenberg was trying to achieve and in 1956, Rosenberg commissioned the most important public sculpture of McWilliam's career, Princess Macha, a large monumental bronze to sit outside Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry (see lot 101).