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Sculpture 1945 - 1979

Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: William Turnbull, Pegasus, 1954

William Turnbull 1922-2012

Pegasus, 1954
bronze
35 x 17 1/2 x 29 1/4 inches
88.9 x 44.5 x 74.3 cm
stamped with the artist’s monogram, dated and numbered 2/4 from an edition of 4 plus 1 AC
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The origins of Pegasus date back to William Turnbull’s second recorded sculpture, Horse, 1946, which he made while still a student at the Slade. Amanda Davidson describes how ‘this piece...
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The origins of Pegasus date back to William Turnbull’s second recorded sculpture, Horse, 1946, which he made while still a student at the Slade. Amanda Davidson describes how ‘this piece forms a horse's head from a series of interlocking planes, both three-dimensional, flattened and frontal, exploring Cubist ideas of simplifying subjects to elemental shapes in a sculptural form.’ 1 At the time, Turnbull was a regular visitor to the British Museum, which was only a short walk from the art school. The strong profile and arched neck of Horse, 1946, is typical of classical Greek sculptures in the museum’s collection, such as The Horse of Selene, c.438 – 432 bc, a fragment from the Parthenon where only the horse’s head and neck have survived.
Turnbull made three further works on this subject in the early 1950s: Horse, 1950 (coll. Tate Gallery), which was made in Paris and presents a standing horse, its thin, splayed legs reminiscent of a child’s toy; Horse, 1954 (coll. Tate Gallery), which again focuses on the horse's head and neck, reviving elements of his first ‘Cubist’ horse; and Pegasus, made in the same year. Pegasus continues the feeling of movement in Horse, 1950, its form built up in much the same way, with Turnbull constructing a branch-like metal armature, but this time ‘filling in’ some of the shapes to arrive at a more solid form ‘thrust into space in several directions, from a long spine.’ 2 Its open, twisting form suggests, without explicitly describing, the dynamic movement of a rearing horse and, indeed, Richard Morphet has compared this sculpture to Eugène-Louis Lequesne‘s spectacular Renown holding back Pegasus on the roof of the Opéra National de Paris. As such, it demands to be viewed in the round, unlike many of Turnbull’s later sculptures, which present flat figures with an obvious front and back view.
Turnbull created this bronze’s distinctive ribbed texture by pressing corrugated paper into his still wet plaster model – an effect we see repeated across other works. Art curator Toby Treves notes that ‘while he determined where to apply the paper, the precise details of the marks were not foreseeable. The immediacy and unpredictability of this method greatly appealed to Turnbull.’ 3 Writing in 1960, Turnbull stated ‘I used texture to invoke chance, to create random discoveries, not to elaborate the surface, but to accentuate that it was a skin of bronze.’ 4

1 Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, London, 2005, p12
2 The artist in conversation with Tate curators published in The Tate Gallery Report 1970 – 1972, London, 1972
3 Toby Treves, Tate Gallery website: www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turnbull-horse-t01381
4 The artist cited Tate Gallery website, Ibid
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Provenance

Estate of the Artist

Private Collection, London

Offer Waterman, London

Exhibitions

London, Tate Gallery, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting, retrospective, 15 August - 7 October 1973, cat no.15,

illus b/w p28, AC

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Sculptures 1946 – 62, 1985 – 87, 28 October – 21 November 1987, cat no.3, illus colour p17, AC

Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Scottish Art Since 1900, 17 June – 24 September 1989, cat no.334, pp79 & 167, illus colour, cast 1/4

London, Serpentine Gallery, William Turnbull: Bronze Idols and Untitled Paintings, 15 November 1995 - 7 January 1996, pl6 illus b/w p17, unknown cast

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Horses – Development of a Theme, Other Sculptures and Paintings, 22 June – 20 July 2001, p49, cat no.3, illus colour p9, cast 1/4

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull, 2004, illus colour p11

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull Paintings 1959 – 1963, Bronze Sculpture 1954 – 1958, 24 November – 22 December 2004, cat no.14, illus colour unpaginated, cast 2/4

West Bretton, Wakefield, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, William Turnbull Retrospective 1946 – 2003, 14 May – 9 October 2005, p5, not illus, AC

London, Waddington Galleries, William Turnbull: Beyond Time, 9 June - 3 July 2010, cat no.9, artist's cast illus colour, p.33

London, Offer Waterman, William Turnbull: New Worlds, Words, Signs, 29 September – 3 November 2017, illus colour p25, cast 1/4

London, Offer Waterman at No.9 Cork Street, William Turnbull: Centenary Retrospective, 29 June – 20 July 2022, cat no.52, illus colour full page detail p184 & illus colour full page p185

Literature

Richard Morphet (intro.), The Alistair McAlpine Gift, Tate Gallery, London, 1971, p106, not illus

Patrick Elliott, ‘William Turnbull: A Consistent Way of Thinking’, in William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings, David Sylvester (intro.), Merrell Holberton in association with Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995, pl6, illus b/w, p17, unknown cast

Amanda A. Davidson, The Sculpture of William Turnbull, Henry Moore Foundation in association with Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, pp72 & 88 (cat no.37), illus b/w p29 (fig.13), unknown cast

Jon Wood (ed.), William Turnbull: International Modern Artist, Lund Humphries, London, 2022, p.91, cast 1/4 illus colour

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