Lynn Chadwick

bronze
height: 89cm. & 91cm.
Conceived in 1983 and cast in bronze in an edition of 9.

Private Collection (acquired from the artist in 1984)

Thence by descent to the present owners

Laurent Thierry, ‘Lynn Chadwick’, in L’Œil, no. 335-336, June-July 1983, mentioned p. 82 (tilted Jubilee II)

Nico Koster & Paul Levine, Lynn Chadwick, The Sculptor and His World, Leiden, 1988, another cast illustrated in colour pp. 100-101

Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London, 2006, no. C3, another cast illustrated p. 343

Variegated dark green and black patina. Apart from a few areas of weathering to the patina and some minor marks and scratches consistent with outdoor display, this work is in excellent condition.
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The majestic Maquette Jubilee II, dating from 1983, represents one of Chadwick’s most impressive and dynamic sculptures. The figures exhibit a sense of eminence which the sculptor characteristically bestowed on his mature works. The present bronze is also a wonderful example of his depiction of motion. The monolithic, stately figures stride forward and Chadwick seems not only to have cast their clothing in bronze but the very air that they stir as they move by. Dennis Farr and the artist’s wife, Eva, discuss the importance of movement in his work: ‘Chadwick has always been intrigued by movement, either actual or implied, in his sculpture. From his early mobiles to his dancing Teddy Boy and Girl series of the 1950s to his cloaked walking women with windswept hair of the 1980s, he has explored figures in motion. Sometimes their cloaks and draperies flow out in the wind from behind them, or are caught by a gust and wrap themselves around the figures. This essentially lateral progression gives place to a vertical rhythm in his groups of, usually two, figures’ (D. Farr & E. Chadwick, op. cit., p. 15).

In the 1980s Chadwick executed several maquette versions on the subject of two walking figures titled Jubilee, culminating in the monumental bronze Jubilee IV (fig. 1). Dennis Farr wrote about the present composition: ‘Walking figures, their cloaks or robes blowing out behind them, provided Chadwick with a theme capable of sustaining endless variations, of which Maquette Jubilee II 1983 is a particularly dramatic example. […] In Maquette Jubilee II the robes form an elaborate butterfly-wing shape behind the two figures, supporting them too, but now imbued with a baroque exuberance that transcends the merely practical. Chadwick has enjoyed creating a fantastic shape for its own sake, rather as some of his female figures carry their skirts like a fan-tailed pigeon displaying its plumage’ (D. Farr, Lynn Chadwick (exhibition catalogue), Tate Britain, London, 2003-04, p. 79).

Discussing the artist's mature sculpture, Collette Chattopadhyay writes: ‘Exploring the relation between stasis and movement, solid form and space, Chadwick’s late works of the 80s and 90s continue to explore the nature of collective social identity while manifesting affection for the female torso, which is increasingly naturalistically portrayed’ (C. Chattopadhyay, Lynn Chadwick (exhibition catalogue), Tasende Gallery, Los Angeles, 2002, p. 7). Indeed in Maquette Jubilee II the female figure possesses a more characterised form and assertiveness. Both figures’ heads are gently inclined which gives the whole work a sense of determination. Chadwick expressed the need for his work to possess ‘attitude’, he explained that he would bestow this quality by ‘the way that you make something talk by the way the neck is bent, or the attitude of the head; you can actually make these sculptures talk, they say something according to the exact balance, whereas if they’re absolutely straight… well, I suppose that is saying something too’ (quoted from the British Library project Artists’ Lives, 1995, F 4564-B, p. 333).