IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 27 MAY 2024 AT 6PM

110 77 Frederick Edward McWilliam RA HRUA (1909-1992) MATRIARCH, 1982 bronze from plaster; (no. 2 from an edition of 3) signed with initials and numbered on base 79 by 27 by 18in. (200.7 by 68.6 by 45.7cm) Exhibited: ‘F. E. McWilliam: Early Sculptures 1935-48, with some recent works’, Warwick Arts Trust, London, June 1982 (in plaster state); ’F. E. McWilliam’, Mayor Gallery, London, 3 May to 3 June 2006; ’McWilliam at Banbridge’, F. E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio, Banbridge, September 2008 to February 2009 (illustrated p. 49 of exhibition catalogue); ’F. E. McWilliam at Banbridge’, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, February to April 2009 After graduating from the Slade School of Art in London and having won the Robert Ross travelling scholarship in 1931 F. E. McWilliam went to Paris with fellow Slade student Beth Crowther. Their intention was to make their lives as artists in Paris but with the subsequent collapse of sterling both could no longer afford to remain in France. After their marriage the following year in March 1932 they rented a house in Chartridge, Buckinghamshire where he concentrated on sculpture, carving from Cherrywood, Beech, Elm and Sycamore, wood which was easily available in the orchard and woodland around their home. The influence of Surrealism is evident in these early sculptures as in Cherrywood Figure,1934, which depicts the human figure in simplified form, where the spaces in the figure are as suggestive as the solids. Matriarch,1935, belongs to this period of figures carved from Cherrywood, where McWilliam’s regard for the material dictates the rounded thighs and knees, the simplified head, the rounded breasts and shoulders with a void in the centre providing movement to the static figure. The human form remains constant in McWilliam’s work, even in his most abstract works. He had moved from Buckinghamshire to Steele’s Road, Hampstead in 1936 close to Parkhill Road Studios where Henry Moore, Herbert Read, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth lived and worked. Roland Penrose and Paul Nash, who became close friends, lived close by as didW.J. Leech in Steele’s Studios. It was an art inspiring area. The following year he visited Hoptonwood Quarry in Derbyshire with his former sculptor tutor at the Slade, A.H. Gerrard and Henry Moore which inevitably resulted in McWilliam carving in Hoptonwood and Portland stone. Later in the year he moved to his newly built home and studio in New Malden where his daughter Sarah was born shortly afterwards and then two years later in 1939, his daughter Bridget was born which can only have reinforced the theme Matriarch. He began his association with the Surrealists and had his first one-person exhibition at the London Gallery, showing sculpture and monoprints which he was introduced to by the Belfast artist John Luke. It appeared that McWilliam was now on a steady path as a noteworthy sculptor, except the outbreak of the secondWorldWar ended that and McWilliam joined the Royal Air Force in which his photography was used to interpret reconnaissance missions. On his return from the war, he returned to his love, sculpture, carving in wood but also in new materials, especially concrete and terracotta but he maintained his ongoing theme, the human figure, as Reclining Figure, in terracotta,1946. He returned to the theme of the Matriarch in a small work, Study Matriarch, in bronze from a plaster edition in 1951. The figure is delineated with crouched legs with an open format of arms and on top a small head. The same year he created Matriarch (Solitary Woman without Children), made of iron and plastic metal which he exhibited at the Hanover Gallery in 1952 and the Whitechapel Gallery in 1953. Again, he produces, in a much larger scale 7ft tall, a similarly depicted figure but with a small figure of an adult holding the hand of a child in the space between the outlined arms. The expression on the face of the woman embraces her longing for a child which she will never have. For whatever reason this work was destroyed but McWilliam produced Matriarch 11 in plaster in 1958, which had a crescent moon shape for a head but with a solid chest instead of the void in the iron and plastic figure of Matriarch,1951. This work he never cast but in 1982 he returned to the same theme, producing Matriarch in plaster which he cast in Bronze Art, Dublin in an edition of 3. The present work, illustrated, is over 6ft tall and similar to Study Matriarch, cast in bronze, 1951. It was exhibited at the Warwick Arts Trust, London but in its plaster state but it was cast in bronze for his exhibition in the Mayor Gallery. This work was included in the inaugural exhibition at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge and at the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda, which I was fortunate enough to curate and to be involved in the design and completion of both galleries in 2008. Dr Denise Ferran, April 2024 €80,000-€100,000 (£68,380-£85,470 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot77