Hans Coper 1920-1981
height (including base): 33cm
Further images
This sculpted head belongs to a small body of work that Coper produced around this time, when the artist was still leaning into his sculptural ideas (when he first arrived at Albion Mews he was originally set on becoming a sculptor) - this included another head of a fellow assistant at the studio (possibly Jupp Dernbach-Mayen) and another version of a portrait of Lucie, which is smaller in scale, and less worked than the present example. An example of this second version has recently been acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
This cast was previously owned by Cyril Frankel - who was a personal friend to Rie and Coper. In 1982 Frankel produced a film on Rie for the BBC, presented by Sir David Attenborough. He wrote extensively on both Rie and Coper – including Modern Pots: Hans Coper, Lucie Rie & their Contemporaries, The Lisa Sainsbury Collection – and promoted their work, and that of their contemporaries through dedicated sales at Sotheby’s and later Bonhams and Phillips. In 1994 he co-curated an exhibition of Rie and Coper at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which was their first major museum showing in North America.
This particular cast was last shown in public in Denmark at the CLAY Museum, as part of the exhibition Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery between October 2024 - March 2025.
Provenance
Cast by Tony Birks, the artist's biographer, from a clay model, c.1988Paul and Adam Birks-Hay
Their sale, Bonhams, London, 13th June 1990, lot 202
Cyril Frankel, acquired from the above
Private Collection, New York, acquired from the above c.2002
Offer Waterman, London
Private Collection, London, purchased from the above, September 2023
Exhibitions
London, Barbican Art Gallery, Lucie Rie & Hans Coper - Potters in Parallel, 1997, cat. no.17.3 (another cast):Denmark, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art, Lucie Rie, The Adventure of Pottery, October 2024 - March 2025, un-numbered exhibition.
Literature
Cyril Frankel et.al., Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and their Pupils, exh. cat., Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, 1990, illustrated p.21 (another from the edition, in the collection of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich);Cyril Frankel, Modern Pots: Hans Coper, Lucie Rie & their Contemporaries, The Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Thames and Hudson, London, 2000, illustrated p.2 (another from the edition, in the collection of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich);
Tony Birks, Hans Coper, Marston House, Yeovil, 2005, illustrated p.32 (possibly another from the edition);
Emmanuel Cooper, Lucie Rie, Modernist Potter, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2012, illustrated fig.44 (another from the edition, in the collection of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich);
Mienke Simon Thomas, The Essential Potness, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2014, illustrated p.26 (another from the edition).
Conceived c.1953, and cast c.1988 under the supervision of Coper's biographer Tony Birks, the present work is one of three bronze casts of the original clay portrait bust made by Coper of Rie at Albion Mews. Another from the edition is in the permanent collection of The Sainsbury Cenre for Visual Arts, Norwich (accession number 1014).
CYRIL FRANKEL
Cyril Frankel (1921-2017) played a pivotal role in Lucie Rie’s life following her arrival in London. He enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a director and filmmaker – and worked on pictures such as Permission to Kill (1975) with Ava Gardener and Dirk Bogarde and Devil on Horseback (1954). He began collecting works by Rie in the 1950s, and built up a close friendship with the artist, often loaning works from his personal collection for retrospective exhibitions. In 1982 Frankel produced a film on Rie for the BBC, presented by Sir David Attenborough. He wrote extensively on both Rie and Coper – including Modern Pots: Hans Coper, Lucie Rie & their Contemporaries, The Lisa Sainsbury Collection – and promoted their work, and that of their contemporaries through dedicated sales at Sotheby’s and later Bonhams and Phillips. In 1994 he co-curated an exhibition of Rie and Coper at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which was to be their first major museum showing in North America.