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signed, numbered 5/6 and dated 1964 on the base

bronze with a greenish patina

PROVENANCE

Acquired by family of the present owner in 1971 and thence by descent
EXHIBITED

Otterlo, Rijksmueum Kroller-Muller, Barbara Hepworth Retrospective 1935-1965, 8^th May - 18^th July 1965, cat.no.43, illustrated (another cast);
St.Ives, Penwith Society of Arts Summer Exhibition, August-October 1965, no. 2 of sculpture section, illustrated (another cast);
Turin, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Barbara Hepworth, 1965, no.41, illustrated;
Basel, Kunsthalle, Barbara Hepworth, September 1965 - June 1966 (and travelling to Karlsruhe and Essen), no.33, illustrated (another cast);
London, Battersea Park, Sculpture in the Open Air, May - September 1966, no.17, illustrated (another cast);
New York, Marlborough-Gerson Galleries, Barbara Hepworth, April - May 1966, no.17, illustrated (another cast);
London, Gimpel Fils, Barbara Hepworth, 25^th May - 20^th June 1966, cat.no.4, illustrated (another cast);
Montreal, Expo '67, The Genius of Britain, Summer 1967 (another cast exhibited);
Birmingham, Cannon Hill Park and tour to Norwich and Northampton, Outdoor Sculpture, April- July 1967, no.1 (another cast exhibited);
London, Tate Gallery, Barbara Hepworth, April - May 1968, no.145, illustrated (this cast);
Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden, Barbara Hepworth: Late Works, August - September 1976, no.2, illustrated (another cast);
New York, Marlborough Fine Art, Hepworth, Lipchitz, Moore, December 2000 - January 2001, no.4, illustrated (another cast);
St.Ives, Tate & Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Barbara Hepworth: Centenary, May - October 2003, no.94, illustrated in colour, p.143 (this cast shown at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park)
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Barbara Hepworth & Alan Bowness, Barbara Hepworth: Drawings from a Sculptor's Landscape, Cory, Adams & Mackay Ltd., London, 1966, p.12, illustrated in colour (another cast);
Ronald Alley et al., Barbara Hepworth, Tate Gallery, London, 1968, cat.no 145, illustrated p.38 & p.5 (installation shot of the artist's garden, St.Ives, January 1968);
Barbara Hepworth, Barbara Hepworth: A Pictorial Autobiography, Adams & Dart, Bath, 1970, pp.103 &109, pls. 286 & 301, illustrated (another cast);
Alan Bowness (ed.), The Complete Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth 1960-69, Lund Humphries, London, 1971, no.362, pls. 103 & 104, illustrated (another cast);
Penelope Curtis & Alan G.Wilkinson, Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospective, Tate Gallery Publications, 1994, p.105 & illustrated p.160 (installation shot of the 1956 Otterlo exhibition);
Penelope Curtis, St.Ives Artists: Barbara Hepworth, Tate Gallery Publications 1998, pl.46, illustrated (another cast);
Matthew Gale & Chris Stephens, Barbara Hepworth: Works in the Tate Gallery Collection and the Barbara Hepworth Museum, St.Ives, Tate Gallery Publications, 1999, p.202;
Chris Stephens (ed.), Barbara Hepworth: Centenary, Tate Publishing, 2004, no.94, illustrated in colour, p.143.
CATALOGUE NOTE

Conceived in 1964 and cast in an edition of six.

As her reputation grew in the 1950s, Hepworth began looking towards the possibility of working specifically for casting in bronze, partly in response to the rigours of the increasingly international nature of her exhibiting schedule. In 1956, works such as Curved Form (Trevalgan) [BH213] began to appear, and, as she made clear to the critics, working in this medium allowed her a new scale and openness in her sculpture. Clearly finding it difficult to completely throw off the 'truth to materials' concept she had always stuck to, Hepworth devised for herself a working method by which she could both carve and cast. Using an expanded aluminium armature, she then covered this in large quantities of plaster which could then be carved back. Once cast, the intricately worked surface could be further enlivened with the application of a coloured patina.

The present sculpture belongs to a small group of large works which take the interpenetration of land and sea as their theme, and were based on observations of the coast around Porthcurno, on the far tip of the Penwith peninsula.

Yes, these are all sea forms and rock forms, related to Porthcurno on the Land's End coast with its queer caves pierced by the sea. They were experiences of people - the movement of people in and out is always a part of them. They are bronze sculptures, and the material allows more openness of course. I was a comparative newcomer to bronze, so I used it extravagantly to see how far I could go. There is a stronger sense of participating in the form - you want to go in and out as you look at a sculpture like Trezion or Porthcurno. Maybe its not big enough to do this, but you don't need to be physically entangled if you've got a pair of hands. If you feel something, you know what the experience is. (The artist, in conversation with A.Bowness, op.cit., p.12).

The basic form of the present work, a slightly unbalanced 'shield', is also one which appears in a number of sculptures of this period, most notably the large Single Form, 1961, commissioned for the plaza outside the United Nations Secretariat, New York as a memorial to Dag Hammarskjold, the UN Secretary-General and friend of the artist who was killed in an air crash in 1961. This distinctive shape seems to derive in part from the Neolithic standing stones at the Chun Castle hill fort site in West Cornwall and links in with the artist's propensity for envisaging her sculpture within a landscape.