Lot Essay
We are very grateful to Sarah Chadwick for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.
High Wind on Stairs II combines two of the most distinctive motifs to emerge from Chadwick's later work, that of the figure descending and ascending the stairs, and the striding female figure whose cloak billows around her as the wind blows at her back. This sense of movement and dynamism pervades his work: 'Chadwick had always been intrigued by movement, either actual or implied, in his sculpture. From his early mobiles to his dancing Teddy Boy and Girl series of the 1950s to his cloaked walking women with windswept hair of the 1980s, he had explored figures in motion. Sometimes their cloaks and draperies flow out in the wind from behind them, or are caught by a gust and wrap themselves around the figures' (D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Farnham, 2014, pp. 33-34).
High Wind on Stairs II combines two of the most distinctive motifs to emerge from Chadwick's later work, that of the figure descending and ascending the stairs, and the striding female figure whose cloak billows around her as the wind blows at her back. This sense of movement and dynamism pervades his work: 'Chadwick had always been intrigued by movement, either actual or implied, in his sculpture. From his early mobiles to his dancing Teddy Boy and Girl series of the 1950s to his cloaked walking women with windswept hair of the 1980s, he had explored figures in motion. Sometimes their cloaks and draperies flow out in the wind from behind them, or are caught by a gust and wrap themselves around the figures' (D. Farr and E. Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947-2003, Farnham, 2014, pp. 33-34).