Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

Seated Woman

1914, posthumous cast

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Not on display

Artist: Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 1891–1915
Medium: Bronze
Dimensions: Object: 470 × 343 × 216 mm, 16.4 kg
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Kettle's Yard Collection Cambridge 1966
Reference: T00836

Display caption

Henri Gaudier (who added Sophie Brzeska’s name to his own) carved Seated Woman on the eve of the First World War, though this bronze version was cast long after his death in the trenches. It shows his commitment to a dynamic modernism that made him a key figure in Vorticism in London. The reinvention and simplification of form reflect Gaudier’s view of the modern sculptor: ‘what he feels, he does so intensely, and his work is nothing more nor less than the abstraction of this intense feeling.’

Gallery label, March 2007

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Catalogue entry

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 1891–1915

T00836 Seated Woman 1914

Inscribed ‘3/6’ bottom left.
Bronze, 18½ x 13½ x 8½ (47 x 34.5 x 21.5).
Presented by the Kettle’s Yard Collection, Cambridge 1966.
Repr. H. S. Ede, A Life of Gaudier-Brzeska, 1930, pl. 42 (from a photograph showing the sculptor standing beside the original marble).

No. 3 in an edition of six casts made by H. S. Ede from the original marble, now in the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Paris. Pound’s list of Gaudier’s work in his Gaudier-Brzeska, 1916, confirms that this, the ‘Femme Assise’ of Gaudier’s own catalogue of his work, was one of his last sculptures.

Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1966–1967, London 1967.