Dame Barbara Hepworth (British, 1903-1975)
Stringed Figure
signed and dated 'Barbara Hepworth 1966' (lower right); further signed, titled and dated again 'Barbara Hepworth/Stringed Figure 1966' (verso)
oil and pencil on board
76.2 x 61 cm. (30 x 24 in.)
Footnotes:
Provenance
With Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Barbara Hepworth, April-May 1966, cat.no.39 (ill.)
London, Gimpel Fils Gallery, Barbara Hepworth, May-July 1966

Literature
Alan Bowness, Drawings from a Sculptor's Landscape, Cory, Adams & Mackay Ltd, London, 1966, cat.no.71 (ill.b&w)

Stringed Figure was created at a time when Hepworth was at the peak of her career. In 1964, her most important and famous commission was unveiled at the United Nations Secretariat in New York, the monumental sculpture Single Form. In 1965 she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire and also appointed a Trustee of the Tate Gallery, while exhibitions both at home and abroad further celebrated her work, with shows in London and New York, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

It was also however, a time of personal difficulty: she was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue in 1965 and underwent a lengthy and painful treatment for this. She wrote to Ben Nicholson in 1966: 'the last six months have been trying. The treatment (radium) for cancer seems to sap one's vitality & give one terrible fatigue. Even worse I could not eat anything & so got very weak. But I am pulling up now & my surgeon is pleased with me. I have worked – meanwhile - & I think well' (Eleanor Clayton, Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life, Thames & Hudson, London, 2021, p.239). As this statement shows, Hepworth was not one to be deterred by these difficulties, and strove even harder to appreciate the world around her, reflecting that: 'through all these health troubles one learns to live each hour with gratitude & open eyes' (ibid., p. 239). Showing her undaunted spirit when later in June 1967 she broke her leg while climbing aboard a helicopter to visit the Isles of Scilly, she later recalled in 1969 that: 'even breaking my leg was a good thing because it made me extend my arms as far as I could' (ibid., p.239). Clearly, Hepworth was not one to allow her creative drive to be diminished.

Stringed Figure was created, then, when Hepworth was battling even through personal health difficulties to continue her artistic practice. The Cornish landscape continued to be an evergreen source of inspiration for her, the light, stone and sea informing so much of her work. Since first moving down to Cornwall in 1939 with Ben Nicholson and their triplets, and after several moves within Carbis Bay, in 1949 Hepworth bought Trewyn Studio in St Ives, where she lived from December 1950 until her death in 1975.

Many of the paintings and drawings from 1960 onwards were made in Hepworth's Barnaloft studio flat, which had a view of Porthmeor Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. Stringed Figure has a palette which directly references the landscape which she was surrounded by; the tawny light brown of wet sand, the white of pale sand or breaking surf, and the turquoise of the sea and sky, the visible strokes which make up these washes of colour reminiscent of the striations of cloud, the ripples of breaking waves and tide-marks left in the sand. These sweeps of Cornish sea and sand were something she was to write about particularly poetically: 'The incoming and receding tides made strange and wonderful calligraphy on the pale granite sand which sparkled with felspar and mica.' (Barbara Hepworth, Drawings From A Sculptor's Landscape, London, Cory Adams & Mackay, 1966, p.13). The circle in the top right is also a reference to the natural world, being either sun or moon, both of which featured prominently in her work of this time and relate also to the pierced form in her sculpture.

Drawings were for Hepworth a means of capturing new ideas for sculpture, and also – as she was to write in Drawings From A Sculptor's Landscape in 1966, the very year this piece was made – it was a life-affirming act. The above book contained the memorable artistic statement A Sculptor's Landscape from Hepworth, in which she wrote: 'Whenever I am embraced by land and seascape I draw ideas for new sculptures: new forms to touch and walk around, new people to embrace, with an exactitude of form that those without sight can hold and realize. For me it is the same as the touch of a child in health, not in sickness. The feel of a loved person who is strong and fierce and not tired and bowed down. This is not an aesthetic doctrine, nor is it a mystical idea. It is essentially practical and passionate, and it is my whole life' (ibid., p.11). Her use of language at such a testing time is very insightful, and her desire to draw is thus the realisation of this vital spirit, which in her words is 'strong and fierce'.

The medium of oil and pencil is one which Hepworth favoured and the contrast of strong, definite graphite over washes of colour something which she particularly enjoyed. Writing about her method, she noted: 'Abstract drawing has always been for me a particularly exciting adventure. First there is only one's mood; then the surface takes one's mood in colour and texture; then a line or curve which, made with a pencil on the hard surface of many coats of oil or gouaches, has a particular kind of 'bite' rather like on slate; then one is lost in a new world of a thousand possibilities' (ibid., p.19). The swing of curving lines is here contrasted with the twisting tension of the diagonal strings, suspended between two arcs. Hepworth has further worked into the surface of the board with light abrasions which show the white of the primed board beneath, echoing the rough rocky surfaces of the landscape. The present lot is a fine example of her very sculptural way of drawing, and how she used this technique to chart and configure three-dimensional space.

Seen amid Hepworth's great achievements and writings around this time, Stringed Figure is a work by an artist at the height of her career but also one whose depth of feeling was as strong as ever. Able to look back at her achievements and write authoritatively on them as well as her creative ideals – thrown into sharp relief by her recent health difficulties – this work speaks of a freshness and vitality which was constantly renewed by the remarkable landscape around her, especially given that when inspiration struck her first desire was to put pencil and oil to board. As she wrote so evocatively in the year this piece was made: 'A sculptor's landscape is one of ever-changing space and light where forms reveal themselves in new aspects as the sun rises and sets, and the moon comes up. It is a primitive world; but a world of infinite and subtle meaning. Nothing we ever touch and feel, or see and love, is ever lost to us. From birth to old age it is retained like the warmth of rocks, the coolness of grass and the ever-flow of the sea.' (ibid., p.13). Stringed Figure captures this impassioned and timeless love for the elements perfectly.

We are grateful to Jenna Lundin Aral and Sophie Bowness for their assistance in cataloguing the present lot.
This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: AR
AR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium.

Please note that the present work has been examined outside of its glazed frame and under ultraviolet light.

There is some minor surface dirt to the work, and there is some minor discolouration at the extreme edges of the composition, which is not apparent when framed.

Taking the above into consideration, the work appears to be in excellent condition.