ERIC GILL (1882-1940)
MADONNA & CHILD, CIRCA 1913
£4,300
Auction: 13 November 2013 at 11:00 GMT
Description
polychrome painted plaster figure, partially obscured incised initials and edition number E.G./ 78
Dimensions
18.8cm high
Footnote
Provenance: Collection of Marc-André Raffalovich (1864-1934)
Literature: Collins, Judith 'Eric Gill: The Sculpture', catalogue raisonné, London 1990, pp. 79 & 80, cat nos. 32 and 33 illus.
Collins, Judith 'Eric Gill: Sculpture', London 1992, p. 35 illus., p.77 cat no. 13 illus.
Note: Gill made three plasticine figure groups of the Madonna & Child for his own pleasure in 1912-13. He subsequently had plaster editions of twelve made of them all as well as a bronze edition of two of them, including the present example, which numbered six.
The plaster figures were made by Charles Smith & Son, sculptors' moulders in Southcote Road, Holloway and were originally sold for £1 each from Everard Meynell's bookshop near Westminster Cathedral. Gill hoped they would be bought by Catholic worshippers looking for something well conceived and well made which could be enjoyed by a wider audience and sold in an edition. Eventually it was thought that close to 90 were made of the present example.
Each figure was decorated differently, and signed 'E.G.' with an edition number. Examples can be found in the collections of Manchester City Art Gallery and William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles.
Early purchasers for the plaster figures included W.R. Lethaby and William Rothenstein who commented on his purchase 'The lady looked like the divine mother of all the world when I saw her in red wax, but now that you have coloured her in some mysterious way she has become the virgin Mary unmistakably suckling Christ...you have painted her most beautifully and she reigns over my desk above me, my Chinese ivory mother facing her from the other end of the room'