Construction I

In 1966 Hepworth published Drawings from a Sculptor's Landscape (with essays by Alan Bownes), the first work devoted to her drawings. In an autobiographical essay (op. cit., pp. 8-12), the artist set out to explain how landscape had influenced her sculpture, 'Every work in sculpture is, and must be, an act of praise and an awareness of man in his landscape. It is either a figure I see, or a sensation I have, whether in Yorkshire, Cornwall or Greece, or the Mediterranean'.

The artist had moved to St Ives at the outbreak of the Second World War. She commented, 'I have been in St Ives over a quarter of a century. Never, in the time, have I seen two days alike ... Here I can slowly travel to a near-by hill and, with larks singing above the distant sound of the sea and wind and voices carrying from far-away farms, a distant figure is a monument, whilst I myself am cradled in the anatomy of landscape ... whenever I am embraced by land and seascape I draw ideas for new sculptures ... I have included a photograph of St Ives taken for me from the air ... For twenty five years, walking through these streets, I have felt through my feet the geological shape of the place'.

Construction I and Construction II are the largest drawings recorded in the book.