The Child's Hand

Currently not on view

The Child's Hand

1948

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903–1975)

British sculptor Barbara Hepworth is better known for abstract works in stone, wood, and bronze than for representational figurative drawings. In 1947 she was invited by a surgeon friend to watch operations at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter, where she was also allowed to sketch; she continued to sketch in other operating theaters in Exeter and London through the early 1950s. Hepworth later wrote that she was fascinated by the way that the human beings involved in an operation-with their unity of purpose, concentration, and coordinated movements-induced spontaneous and beautiful compositions in space that coincided with the kind of articulation and animation she had been seeking in her own abstract sculptures.

Currently not on view

Object Details

Title:

The Child's Hand

Date:

1948

Artist:

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903–1975)

Medium:

Graphite and blue and bluish-green washes with traces of blue colored pencil on gesso ground on wood panel

Dimensions:

Other (panel): 12 1/2 x 14 9/16 x 1/8 inches (31.8 x 37 x 0.3 cm)

Classification:

Drawings

Credit Line:

Purchased with the Katharine Levin Farrell Fund and the SmithKline Beecham Corporation Fund for the Ars Medica Collection, 2003

Accession Number:

2003-189-1

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Currently not on view