- Artist
- Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903–1975
- Medium
- Bronze
- Dimensions
- Object: 315 × 620 × 285 mm (weight - 54kg)
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the artist 1967
- Reference
- T00954
Catalogue entry
Dame Barbara Hepworth
1903-1975
T00954 Landscape Sculpture 1944, cast 1961
BH 127; cast 7/7 A
Bronze 271 x 655 x 268 (12 1/2 x 25 3/4 x 10 1/2) on a bronze base 39 x 352 x 276 (1 1/2 x 13 7/8 x 10 7/8
Cast inscription on upper surface of base 'Barbara Hepworth 1944 7/7A' rear right hand corner and cast foundry mark on back of base, 'CIRE PERDU | Morris | Singer | FOUNDERS | LONDON', left
Presented by the artist 1967
Exhibited (ý = unidentified cast, ü = other cast):
Penwith Society of Arts in Cornwall Spring 1962, Penwith Gallery, St Ives, spring 1962 (65)
Barbara Hepworth: An Exhibition of Sculpture from 1952-1962, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, May-June 1962 (5ý, repr.)
Sculptors Today and Tomorrow, Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford, May-June 1962 (27)
Penwith Society of Arts 1st Summer Exhibition, Penwith Gallery, St Ives, summer 1962 (162ý)
British Art Today, San Francisco Museum of Art, Nov.-Dec. 1962, Dallas Museum of Contemporary Arts, Jan.-Feb. 1963, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, March-April (111, as Landscape Sculpture I, 1944)
Formes, Université de Paris, Jan.-Feb. 1963 (55, repr.)
Barbara Hepworth: Sculptures and Drawings, John Lewis Partnership, Oxford Street, London, April 1963 (2ý)
Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture and Drawings, Gimpel Hanover Galerie, Zurich, Nov. 1963-Jan. 1964 (3bý, repr.)
Barbara Hepworth, Toronto Art Gallery, March 1964 (3)
Barbara Hepworth, BC European tour, 1964-6, Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, Sept.-Oct. 1964 (5), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Nov.-Dec. 1964 (4), Ateneum, Helsinki, Jan.-Feb. 1965 (4), Utstilling I Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, March (4), Rietveld Pavilion, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, May-July (4), Kunsthalle Basel, Sept.-Oct. (4), Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Turin, Oct.-Nov. 1965 (5), Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Feb.-March 1966 (4), Museum Folkwang, Essen, April-June 1966 (4ü)
Little Missenden Festival Exhibition, Little Misenden, Oct. 1965 (no cat.ý)
Sculpture Contemporaine et Art Africain, Lacaste, France, July-Sept. 1966 (33)
Barbara Hepworth, Tate Gallery, London, April-May 1968 (43, listed but not exhibited)
Exhibition on the Occasion of the Conferment of the Honorary Freedom of the Borough of St Ives on Bernard Leach and Barbara Hepworth, St Ives parish churchyard, Sept.-Oct. 1968 (no cat.ü)
Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture and Lithographs, AC tour 1970-71, Abbotsholme, Uttoxeter, Jan.-Feb. 1970, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Feb.-March, Castle Museum, Nottingham, March-April, Manor House Art Gallery and Museum, Ilkley, April-May, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, May, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, June, Shrewsbury Art Gallery, July, Letchworth Museum and Art Gallery, Aug., Kettering Art Gallery, Aug.-Sept., National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Sept.-Oct., Ede Gallery, Cambridge, Oct.-Nov., Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, Nov.-Dec, Southampton Art Gallery, Dec. 1970-Jan. 1971 (2ý, repr.)
Decade 40s: Painting, Sculpture and Drawing in Britain 1940-49, Arts Council tour, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Nov. 1972, Southampton City Art Gallery, Dec.-Jan. 1973, Carlisle Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery, Jan.-Feb., DLI Museum and Arts Centre, Durham, Feb.-March, Manchester City Art Gallery, March-April, Bradford City Art Gallery, April-May, Aberdeen Museum and Art Gallery, May-June 1973 (155)
Henry Moore to Gilbert and George: Modern British Art from the Tate Gallery, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Sept.-Nov. 1973, as part of Europalia 73 Great Britain
(48, repr. p.61)
Barbara Hepworth: A Selection of Small Bronzes and Prints, Scottish Arts Council tour, Scottish College of Textiles, Galashiels, April-May 1978, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, June, Dundee Museum and Art Gallery, Sept., Lillie Art Gallery, Milngavie, Sept.-Oct., Hawick Museum and Art Gallery, Oct.-Nov., Maclaurin Art Gallery, Ayr, Nov.-Dec. 1978 (4ý)
Barbara Hepworth: A Sculptor's Landscape 1934-74, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and Museum, Swansea, Oct.-Nov. 1982, Bangor Art Gallery, Nov.-Dec., Wrexham Library Art Centre, Dec. 1982-Jan. 1983, Manx Museum, Isle of Man, Feb. 1983 (4ý)
Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Marlborough Gallery, New York, Nov.-Dec. 1986 (17ü)
Literature:
E.H. Ramsden, Sculpture: Theme and Variation, London 1953, p.42
Tate Gallery Report 1967-8, London 1968, p.62
David Fraser Jenkins, Barbara Hepworth: A Guide to the Tate Gallery Collection at London and St Ives, Cornwall, London 1982, p.10, repr. p.26
Michael Tooby, An Illustrated Companion to the Tate St Ives, London 1993, p.39, repr. in col.
Reproduced:
J.P. Hodin, 'Barbara Hepworth et la tradition classique', XXe Siécle, vol.27, no.25, June 1965, p.100
John Spurling, 'Sunlight and Soap', New Statesman, 25 April 1980, p.641
Peter Davies, 'St Ives in the Forties', Artscribe, no.34, March 1982, p.56
This is one of several bronzes of the late 1950s and 1960s, including Single Form (Tate Gallery T00697), which Hepworth cast from earlier carvings. The original Landscape Sculpture
was carved from broadleaf elm and is now on permanent loan from the artist's estate to the Barbara Hepworth Museum, St Ives. Though the wooden version was not painted, the bronze, which may be solid, has a vibrant green patina on its concave face. In both the form is traversed by nine strings, knotted and embedded in holes along the edge of the right hand opening, which converge on a single hole on the left, pass down through the bronze and back up across the left hand aperture to a further sequence of small holes, from where they cross back to the right hand side, through the opening and terminate in a single hole at the back. This arrangement and the age of the strings makes the work fragile despite its weight. The back is marked by fine scratching in a swirling pattern, possibly resulting from earlier abrasive cleaning.
After her relocation to Cornwall at the outbreak of war, Hepworth increasingly discussed her work in relation to the landscape. She longed to see a large version of Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red)
(Tate Gallery T03133), the first wartime piece, sited outside and a number of the carvings after 1943, such as Pelagos
(Tate Gallery T00699), allude specifically to the environment. Of the war years Hepworth later recalled: 'It was during this time that I gradually discovered the remarkable pagan landscape ... which still has a deep effect on me, developing all my ideas about the relationship of the human figure in the landscape' (Herbert Read, Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, 1952, section 4). At the same time, she also sought to relate her earlier work to a similar source. Discussing a photograph of her Single Form, 1937-8 (BH 102, Leeds City Art Galleries, repr. Read 1952, pl.52), taken against young birch trees, she said in 1943: 'I took this photo myself ... because when I conceived Single Form it was born of this particular sort of landscape - all my sculpture comes out of landscape' (letter to E.H. Ramsden, 28 April [1943], TGA 9310). Landscape Sculpture
was one of several works which the artist photographed herself in her Carbis Bay garden in the 1940s (J.P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth, 1961, pl.127).
E.H. Ramsden, who was especially close to Hepworth in the 1940s, was able to associate the work with a specific place. She described it as 'a transcription of the felt "pull" existing between two hills, in Uny Lelant, near the Cornish coast' (Ramsden 1953, p.42). Uny Lelant is close to Chy an Kerris, the house in Headland Road, Carbis Bay, which Hepworth shared with Ben Nicholson and where the sculpture was carved. Ramsden's account echoed Hepworth's own explanation of her use of stringing in many works of the 1940. 'The strings', the artist wrote, 'were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills' (Read 1952, section 4). This conceit was later employed by the artist John Wells when discussing his Relief Construction, 1940 (Tate Gallery T01759), which, he said, 'express[es] (unconsciously perhaps) my deep awareness of the living tensions of the environment of the [Scilly] Islands' (letter to the Tate Gallery, 18 Dec. 1973). Wells was a member of the small group of constructivists exhibiting in Britain during the war and, later, a prominent member of the circle of artists in St Ives. Landscape Sculpture
follows his relief in its use of lateral strings diverging from round or elliptical forms. This was a characteristic of a number of Wells's pieces of the 1940s and derived from his knowledge, largely in reproduction, of modernist paintings and constructions of the 1930s. A comparable use of linear elements may be seen in Hans Erni's work and, put to a different use, in the landscape-based paintings of John Tunnard. After the war, the association of abstract form with landscape became a characteristic not only of Hepworth's work but also of the group of artists in St Ives centred on her and Nicholson.
Chris Stephens
March 1998
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