Women Carrying Sacks, c 1930
Bronze with black patina
One of the two casts taken by Brodzky in bronze in the 1930s from the original plaster relief. There were a further four casts taken by Lady Epstein in 1964.
Reference Silber 40
35.5 x 28.0 x 4.5 cm (14 x 11 x 1¾ inches)

Provenance:
Private Collection

Exhibition History:
'Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by Contemporary Artists', 36 Bridge Street, Cambridge, 1933

Literature:
Brodzky, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, London, 1933, illustrated oppposite, p.44
M. Levy, Gaudier-Brzeska: Drawings and Sculpture, New York, 1965, p.29, pl.74
Roger Cole, Burning to Speak: The Life and Art of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Oxford, 1978, no. 15, p. 62

Notes:
Evelyn Silber in her catalogue raisonné of Gaudier-Brzeska’s work suggests that: ‘the flattening and facetting of the planes in the arms and legs [in Women Carrying Sacks] point to a date in early 1913, when the artist was preoccupied with relief carving.’ This date corresponds with the timing of a likely inspiration for the piece that occurred during a visit the artist made to Jacob Epstein’s studio in November of 1912. Gaudier-Brzeska wrote of this visit: ‘he showed me a little bronze, very beautiful, quite the nicest work of his I have seen - alive and sincere - a seated woman with her arms above her head...’ Here he speaks of Epstein’s Nan Seated from 1911. The figure’s bent-leg stance and arms enfolding the head undoubtedly left a mark in Gaudier-Brzeska’s mind and in addition to incorporating the idea into Women Carrying Sacks he was to use this pose again in another work from 1913; his famous Red Stone Dancer.
Women Carrying Sacks is one of the most explicit surviving examples of a work by Gaudier-Brzeska that tackles the theme of movement. The realistic depiction of motion preoccupied Gaudier-Brzeska at a number of points through his short working life. In part he drew inspiration from Rodin’s modelling of figures in motion but he also used wrestling, boxing and dance to explore ideas on the theme. It was Gaudier-Brzeska’s fascination with movement that first aligned him with the dynamism of the Vorticist group in the years immediately before the First World War.
This cast is one of the edition of two made with a black patina taken by Horace Brodzky in the 1930s. There were four more casts without the patina taken by Lady Epstein in 1964.
POA