Lynn Chadwick
English, 1914-2003

Female Walking Figure II, 1977
bronze, edition 3/8
10 7/8 x 6 x 8 1/2 in.

SBMA, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Ronald M. Lawrence
1992.41.1



Lynn Chadwick in undated photograph

“I would like my work to have this attitude or expression that I’m looking for.…The sort of thing I’m talking about is in the Easter Island figures, where there is an enormous feeling of energy.…If only I could do something like that….” (Farr and Chadwick, pp. 1-2)

RESEARCH PAPER

Lynn Chadwick’s “Female Walking Figure II” belongs to a period in the 1970s when he was creating striding figures swathed in great cloaks. It reveals Chadwick's genius for intimating action, for achieving a composition of enormous energy. Though small—just under 11 inches—it is proof of Chadwick's ability to convey monumentality in a small piece. The figure is alert, seemingly positioned to stride forward; yet it remains still, silent. From all sides and every angle, action shimmers, almost ready to burst from within. One can sense the tension of harnessed energy and the “aliveness” of the figure. The armature—that skeleton beneath the taut skin—is evident, particularly along the sides and back of the figure. The network of rigid lines along the surface enhances the nervous intensity. This angularity also defines the figure and leads the eye around the sculpture, drawing attention to the billowing cape that dramatically sweeps away to the back, giving the feeling that a gust of wind has just caught the folds of the cape and fanned the material outward.

Chadwick has modeled the body to suggest its femininity—the slightly full and rounded belly, the prominent breasts, the curve at the hip, the slope of the shoulders. The torso is simple, almost architectural. There is a suggestion of arms, but they are merged into the body—closing this part of the form and heightening the contrast with the opened, flapping cloak. The pyramidal shape for the head, adopted in the 1970s, has become a female symbol in Chadwick's sculpture. (He used the more aggressive square head for the male.) The highly polished bronze of the head contrasts sharply with the unpolished body, and the curves of the drapery of the cloak contrast with the rigidness of the body, particularly along the sides of the figure where the arms vanish into the hips, along the lower skirting, and in the legs which end like sticks thrust into the ground. These sharp contrasts are the vehicles Chadwick uses to avoid a static quality.

The legs that Chadwick gives to this human form seem hardly strong enough to support the weight of the figure. The cloak in fact has become an important part in resolving the problem of balance. It becomes the third leg in a tripod as the counterpoint to both the forward thrust of the right leg and the slightly pitched forward peak of the pyramidal head.

This figure has force but is not fierce. It appears somewhat other-worldly but is not sinister. There is a naturalistic quality to its stride, and the highly polished face becomes expressive as light is reflected from it.

The self-taught Lynn Chadwick belonged to the group of British sculptors including Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, who came into their artistic maturity during the decade after World War II. Lacking any formal art school training, he found fertile ground in the new climate of freedom and individuality and expanded into new methods while exploring new materials.

Lynn Chadwick was born in 1914 in London to parents who, while not artists themselves, were interested in the arts and fostered artistic appreciation in their son. As a young man, Chadwick desired to become a sculptor, but the climate of the 1930’s Depression warned against the uncertainty of an artist's life. He was advised to find a route to a more financially secure profession. At the urging of his parents he studied architecture at the Merchants Taylor School (London). He began work as a draughtsman in 1933 and received training which further strengthened a natural inclination for meticulous craftsmanship. His own temperament, consistently reinforced by his upbringing, valued control and discipline. “He admits that he can never really be taught anything, and in retrospect he is doubtful whether a formal art school training would have done him any good.” (Farr and Chadwick, p. 2)

During World War II he served as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, later returning to architecture in the London office of Rodney Thomas, who wished to be an artist but like Chadwick turned to architecture. Thomas expressed his interest in sculpture by creating balanced shapes made of thin plywood, and these works inspired Chadwick to experiment with thin, two-dimensional shapes suspended in a state of balance, producing his first mobiles in 1946. They were made of balsa wood and aluminum wire and “moved in the slightest current of air.” (Farr and Chadwick, p. 4) (See Comments below.)

In need of greater freedom, Chadwick left Thomas's practice, moved out of London to a country setting and supported himself on free-lance work designing textiles, furniture, and architectural forms. As his mobiles became more inventive and more complicated, it became increasingly difficult to control the form that the moving parts made. He started creating pieces with greater stability and learned to weld. The turning point in his career came in 1952 when he was invited to show with a group of eight British sculptors at the Venice Biennale. Four years later he won the International Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale, catapulting him to almost instant international fame and allowing him independence to explore his materials.

Chance and intuition play an integral part in Chadwick's work. He said he does not analyze his work intellectually. “When I start to work, I wait till I feel what I want to do; and I know how I am working by the presence or lack of a rhythmic impulse.” (Farr and Chadwick, p. 1) He starts with the abstract shape and, although his work is not representational, encourages the allusions to figure or beast or bird to appear.

Among his many works in the 1950s, there are discernible themes: “Birds,” “Beasts,” “Seasons,” “Strangers,” “Watchers,” and “Dancing Figures”. Each unique piece was laboriously constructed; he only began to cast in bronze at the very end of the decade. From 1960 onward there is a shift in his work to standing and seated figures who seem to be either pensively still or engaged in conversation with one another. Then in the 1970s some of his figures became winged, evolving into the walking figures, of which the museum’s piece is a fine example.

Chadwick continued to experiment with new figurative poses, and although his forms remained more generalized than individualized, they became increasingly more inventive and dynamic. He also continued to push the limitations of his technique in an effort to explore the possibilities for expressing motion in the solid form.

Chadwick died in 2003 at his home in Lypiatt Park, a 14th-century manor house and estate which he completely restored. It continues to be his family’s home, and in the 2014 centenary year of Chadwick’s birth, the estate was opened briefly to allow the public access to the collection of his works displayed throughout the parkland surrounding the house.

Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Jane V. Deering. March 31, 1994. Revised and edited for the website by Ralph Wilson, September 2014.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bowness, Alan. “Lynn Chadwick.” Art in Progress: a series edited by Jasia Reichardt. London: Metheun, 1962.
Collins, Judith. “Lynn Chadwick: The Collection at Lypiatt Park.” Photographs by David Finn. New York: Ruder Finn Press, 2006.
Farr, Dennis. “Lynn Chadwick.” London: Tate Publishing, 2003.
Farr, Dennis and Eva Chadwick. “Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor, with a Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 1947-1988.” Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
Levine, Paul. “Lynn Chadwick: The Artist and His Work, the Sculptor and His World.” Leiden, Netherlands: Spryut, Van Mantgem & De Dose bv, 1988.
Parry-Crooke, Carlotte, ed. “Contemporary British Artists.” London: Bergstrom & Boyle Books, Ltd., 1979.
Robertson, Bryan, John Russell, and Lord Snowdon. “Private View.” London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., 1965.
Miscellaneous articles
Beaumont, Mary Rose, “Modern British Sculpture,” Art and Artists, 184 (January 1982).
Blakestone, Oswell, “Lynn Chadwick,” Arts Review (9 November 1984).
Mullaly, Terence, “On a Par with Moore,” Daily Telegraph (8 November 1984).
———, “Wit & Warmth from British Sculpture,” Daily Telegraph (13 February 1978).
Russell, John, review of Marlborough Fine Art, New York, exhibition, New York Times (13 December 1985).

POSTSCRIPT

Comparisons have been made between Chadwick's mobiles and those of Alexander Calder, although Chadwick claimed he developed his ideas independently of Calder and in fact was not aware of Calder's work until the mid-1950s. Chadwick saw his mobiles as more architectural than Calder's and very different in actual shape. “Chadwick's mobiles suggest some kind of living organisms, i.e., fish or insects or animals, whereas Calder's mobiles are closer to trees and plants than to birds and insects.” (Bowness)
- Jane Deering

COMMENTS

Obituary from The New York Times, May 4, 2003
Lynn Chadwick, a Sculptor, Dies at 88
By KEN JOHNSON

Lynn Chadwick, a British sculptor whose expressionistic, figurative works in welded iron and bronze earned him international acclaim, died on April 25 at his home in Lypiatt Park in Stroud, Gloucestershire. He was 88.
Mr. Chadwick came of age as an artist after World War II, when a mood of existential anxiety converged with traditions of humanistic representation and Modernist abstraction. In the 1950's he developed a spiky vocabulary of skeletal lines and rough planes organized into generalized images of people or animals that evoked feelings of pain, rage and fear.

In 1956, when he was 41 and just six years into his art career, he won first prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale and, along with that award, international fame and enormous financial success.

In 1964, he was made a Commander of the British Empire.

Lynn Russell Chadwick was born in London on Nov. 24, 1914. After studies at the Merchant Taylors' School, he worked as an architectural draftsman from 1933 to 1939. He served as a pilot during World War II, and then began designing furniture, textiles and architectural projects.

He also began building mobiles similar to those by Alexander Calder, whose work was at first unknown to him. This led to his first solo exhibition, at the Gimpel Fils Gallery in London in 1950.

Mr. Chadwick soon eliminated the kinetic elements of his sculpture, but continued to use construction and assemblage methods rather than carving or modeling.

His first major success came in 1953, when he was among a dozen semifinalists for the Unknown Political Prisoner International Sculpture Competition, and received an honorable mention.

In the 1960's Mr. Chadwick's work was partly eclipsed by increasingly abstract tendencies in modern sculpture, but he enjoyed a lucrative career into the 1980's.

His characteristic sculptures during this period were human figures cast in bronze. Clad in rough drapery with geometric, pyramidal heads, these works blended Surrealism, the angst of Alberto Giacometti and the monumentalism of Henry Moore.

In 1988 Mr. Chadwick was again invited to exhibit in the Venice Biennale. For the occasion he created a pair of seated figures, male and female, titled "Back to Venice."

Mr. Chadwick's first marriage, to Ann Second, ended in divorce. Their son, Simon, lives near Lypiatt Park. He and his second wife, Francis Jamieson, who died in 1964, had two daughters, Sarah Marchant of Oxford, England, and Sophie de Martino of France.

In addition to his son and daughters, he is survived by his third wife, Eva Reiner; their son, Daniel, of Stroud; and nine grandchildren.