Footnotes

Provenance
With Piccadilly Gallery, London, April 1964, where acquired by
E. Sommer
Their sale; Christie's, London, 10 June 2005, lot 103, where acquired by the family of the present owners
Private Collection, U.K.

The present work is catalogued as D 84 A in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Barbara Hepworth's paintings.

The 1940s were the most prolific decade for Hepworth in terms of drawings, for having moved to Cornwall in 1939 with Ben Nicholson and their three triplets, she spent less time carving but made, in her words, 'innumerable drawings in gouache and pencil' (Barbara Hepworth quoted in Alan Wilkinson, The Drawings of Barbara Hepworth, Lund Humphries, Farnham and Burlington, 2015, p.59). Kept busy by the domestic necessities of their three children, the drawings were an important outlet for her creativity, as she wrote in a letter to E. H. Ramsden in 1943: 'If I didn't have to cook, wash-up, nurse children ad infinitum, I should carve, carve, carve. The proof of this is in my drawings. They are not just a way of amusing myself nor are they experimental probings – they are my sculptures born in the disguise of two dimensions.' (Ibid., p.69).

Hepworth was indeed very productive in creating these abstract drawings during this period, a way of overcoming the historic difficulties of juggling motherhood with furthering her artistic career which were hampered yet further by the scarcity of food and materials during the Second World War, with rationing continuing in Britain until 1954. The present lot, created in 1946, stems from this challenging time. Determined and exceptionally hard-working, Hepworth would endeavour to work through illness or difficulty many times in her life, noting too the societal disadvantages that she often had to fight against as a sculptor: 'I am constantly plagued by this 'little woman' attitude'. Not only did these drawings allow her a creative outlet, but they also sold well, with examples bought by close friends who visited her in Carbis Bay, including C.S. Reddihough, Margaret Gardiner, John Wells, Alastair Morton and others. Indeed a letter detailing a visit from Jim Ede in 1944 shows just how desperate times could be: 'Jim was charming - so nice to the children & so refreshing to be with. He enjoyed all the work, the stones, the shells & crystals & he's lent us a delightful deep blue Miro which looks wonderful in the studio with the sculptures. He bought 3 little paintings of Bens & though he may not realise it completely saved our life - we were at bottom & could not pay either school bills or grocer!' (Barbara Hepworth quoted in Eleanor Clayton, Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life, Thames & Hudson, London, 2021, p.112).

Hepworth's approach to these drawings was one of an exploration of ideas, but they were not works that she relied upon for the creation of a particular sculpture, in comparison to Moore's reliance on preparatory drawings. She noted that: 'These drawings I call 'drawings for sculpture'; but it is in a general sense – that is – out of the drawings springs a general influence. Only occasionally can I say that one particular drawing has later become one particular sculpture' (Barbara Hepworth, quoted in Alan Wilkinson, op. cit., p.59). Similarities and ideas stemming from this drawing can be seen however in sculptures such as Pendour, 1947 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC), and Pelagos, 1946 (Tate, London).

The present lot, Forms in Space, has a crispness and definition which is particularly satisfying: a twist of pencil lines convey the tension of strings, tightly radiating out from a curved arc near the centre, which would have been drawn using a ruler and compass. The sculptural shape in the centre of the work emerges from a blue-grey background, flecked and varied, as though the rippling waves of an incoming tide, seen through a veil of mist. Smoothed onto the shapes of the form are shades of white, grey and blue, contrasted with bright areas of sky-blue and yellow. Always intimately connected to the natural world which surrounded her in Cornwall, the sculptures and related drawings of this time had a particularly poetic resonance for Hepworth: 'I used colour and strings in many of the carvings of this time. The colour in the concavities plunged me into the depth of water, caves, or shadows deeper than the carved concavities themselves. The strings were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills'. (Ibid., p.71).

The drawings of the 1940s were for Hepworth then an important outlet, a lifeline for her creative impulses and a vital source of income when domestic duties limited her ability to carve. Always in tune with the landscape around her, she deeply felt and absorbed the inspiration that came to her from the sky, waves, and land that rolled through and around the Cornish peninsula. Independent, finished art works in their own right, these drawings are a special testament to her resolute determination to work whatever the circumstances, and Forms in Space is an important example of this.

We are grateful to Dr. Sophie Bowness for her kind assistance with the cataloguing apparatus for the present work.