Lynn Chadwick

Marlborough Fine Art, London

Roger & Josette Vanthournout, Belgium (acquired from the above in 1980 and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 7, 2006, lot 75)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

London, Marlborough Fine Art Gallery & Zürich, Marlborough Gallery, Chadwick, Recent Sculptures, 1978, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue

Art International, vol. XXII/1, January 1978, another cast illustrated p. 5

L'Oeil, no. 274, Lausanne, May 1978, another cast illustrated p. 87

Nico Koster & Paul Levine, Lynn Chadwick: The Sculptor and His World/The Artist and his Work, Leiden, 1988, another cast illustrated pp. 95 & 110

Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor. With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 1947-1988, Oxford, 1990, no. 769, another example illustrated p. 296 & pl. 8

Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor. With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 1947-2005, London, 2006, no. 769, another example illustrated p. 327

Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor. With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 1947-2003, Farnham & Burlington, 2014, no. 769, another example illustrated p. 333

Dating from 1977, the majestic Pair of Walking Figures - Jubilee represents one of Chadwick’s most impressive and dynamic large-scale sculptures. The present bronze is also a wonderful example of his depiction of motion, presenting a sense of eminence which the sculptor characteristically bestowed on his mature works. 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 Chadwick, 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., 2006, p. 15).

The present work was one of the very first in the group of bronzes titled Jubilee, a theme Chadwick would continue throughout the 1980s, producing a number of variations on the theme of a cloaked male and female figure, both as maquettes and monumental bronzes. In discussing the development of these figures Dennis Farr explained that “…[Chadwick] evolved striding figures clad in cloaks which, as the idea took hold of his imagination, became ever more voluminous and billow out in the wind behind them, as in Pair of Walking Figures – Jubilee…Chadwick had delighted in contrasting the extravagant curves of the drapery with the gaunt angularity of the bodies they help to define” (D. Farr & E. Chadwick, Op. cit., 2014, p.28).

While in some of the compositions the figures are rendered in a highly stylized, semi-abstract manner, in Pair of Walking Figures – Jubilee they retain recognizable anatomical features, although their heads are reduced to purely geometric shapes – a rectangle for the man and triangle for the woman. An allusion to classicism is particularly evident in the female figure of the present work, whose pleated dress, seen frontally, is reminiscent of a classical column. In a manner also found in Henry Moore’s monumental female figures, the woman’s garment at once covers and reveals the contours of her body, a feature that may have been inspired by the Parthenon relief sculptures at the British Museum.

Two casts of Pair of Walking Figures - Jubilee are at Le Parc du Château, Saint-Priest in Rhône and Museo Ruffino Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo Internacional in Mexico City.