Lynn Chadwick

Exhibited by Osborne Samuel

Material Iron and composition

Dimensions 41 × 61.6 × 20.6 cm

Price Price Upon Inquiry

Status Vetted

About the Work

Mrs Helen Lessore OBE (1907-1994) was a painter and British gallerist. She was, most notably, the director of Beaux Arts Gallery in London from 1951 until its closure in 1965. Having studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (1924-1928), Lessore was an accomplished painter who had a full retrospective exhibition at the Fine Art Society in London in 1987. Her paintings can currently be found in public collections around Britain, including Tate and the Royal Academy of Arts.

Chadwick's, Short Horn, was loaned to Venice for the XXVIII Biennale (1956) by Mrs Lessore, where it was subsequently purchased by the renowned Belgian art critic and collector, René Gaffé.

Reflecting on Short Horn, Gaffé wrote (translated from the original French):

'Leaving aside marble and wood, don't we find every day some great sculptors rushing to work on all kinds of metals, providing they are able to bend them without to much effort according to their needs, and ship them through less expensive means than in the past?... And so, every morning the sun pulls me out of bed, I see the 'Taureau' of Lynn Chadwick, a steel armor covered with colored plaster, and this powerful beast, resigned, stares at me in silence. It doesn't perceive the secret reasons that make me watch its charges, from which it is usually deprived in the arena where it is sentenced to die at five o'clock in the afternoon.'

Joseph Peyré sang it in his Guadalquivir:

Black bull, black bull,

One death on every horn

One sorrow in every drop

Of his tormented blood.'

(R. Gaffé, ,A la verticale: Réflexions d'un collectionneur, Brussels, 1963, pp. 98-99)

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Provenance

Mrs. Helen Lessore O.B.E.
Acquired by René Gaffé at the Venice Biennale, 15th September 1956
Private Collection, The Netherlands
Osborne Samuel, London
Private Collection, Canada

Literature

J.P. Hodin, Lynn Chadwick, Werk, vol. 44 (no. 3), March 1957, p. 113.
Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lypiatt Studio, Stroud, 1997 p. 92, cat. no. 143 (prepatory drawing illustrated, with incorrect dimensions height: 45 cm.)
Dennis Farr & Eva Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor, With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2014, p. 111, cat. no. 143 (ill. b&w)