$130,000
Estimate: $150,000 - $250,000
Auction: November 17, 2020 12:00:00 PM EDT
Iron and composition.
Executed in February 1955.
height: 26 1/4 in. (66.7cm)
width: 13 3/4 in. (35 cm)
depth: 7 1/4 in. (18.4cm)
Provenance: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Gates Lloyd Sr. and Eleanor "Lallie" Biddle Lloyd.
H. Gates Lloyd III (by family descent in 1993).
The Estate of H. Gates Lloyd.
LITERATURE:
D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick Sculptor, Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2006, no. 153.
NOTE:
We are grateful to Sarah Chadwick for her assistance in cataloguing this work.
The sculpture is illustrated in the catalogue raisonné of the artist with its preparatory drawing, with a note by Chadwick "Sold to Mrs. Gates Lloyd."
Though he had no formal art training, Lynn Chadwick was part of the post-Henry Moore generation that came to prominence in the 1950s in Great Britain. Remarking on his human and animal-like forms, often comprised of bronze, steel, and iron and composition, writer Ken Johnson stated, "In the 1950s [Chadwick] 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." [1] In choosing to execute his sculptures with industrial materials such as cast iron and steel, Chadwick intentionally departed from using more conventional media, including stone, wood, and marble, as well as traditional techniques like carving and modeling.
In the artist's catalogue raisonné, Duet is illustrated by a page in Chadwick's notebook, where he recorded information about his pieces and in this case, the name of Mrs. Gates Lloyd, the patron. Typical of his work at this time, Duet stands as a unique sculpture, a kind of working model as the artist experimented with different forms and materials. Its figures seem to engage in a delicate dance as they perch on pointed feet and reach up toward the sky together while grounding each other in a joined embrace.
[1] Ken Johnson, "Lynn Chadwick, a Sculptor, Is Dead at 88," New York Times, May 4, 2003.