

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.