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Frederick Edward McWilliam RA HRUA (1909-1992)
Woman with Arms Folded (1939)
Hoptonwood stone, 54.5cm (51½”) high
Provenance: From the Collection of George and Maura McClelland and on loan from them to IMMA from 1999 -
2004; Private Collection Dublin
Exhibited:
F.E. McWilliam
Exhibition, Hanover Gallery London, Feb/Mar 1956, Cat. No. 8;
Britain’s Contribution to Surrealism of the 30’s and 40’s
,The Hamet Gallery London, 1971;
F.E. McWilliam Retrospective
Exhibition, Ulster Museum Belfast, April/May 1981; Douglas Hyde
Gallery,TCD Dublin,May/June 1981; andThe Crawford Gallery Cork, July/Aug 1981; Cat. No. 12;
Northern Artists from the McClelland Collection
Exhibition, IMMA 2004/5, and Droichand Arts
Center 2005;
F.E. McWilliam at Banbridge
, F.E. McWilliam Museum, Sept 2008 - Feb 2009; The Highlane
Gallery Drogheda, Feb/April 2009; and
The Moderns
, IMMA, Cat. No. 66
Literature:
McWilliam,
1964 by Roland Penrose, illustrated no. 18;
F.E. McWilliam
, Arts Council NI, 1981, full page illustration p.19;
The Hunter Gatherer
, IMMA 2005, full page illustration p.115;
F.E. McWilliam at Banbridge,
2008 by Denise Ferran, full page illustration with artist p.35, full
page illustration p.43;
The Moderns
IMMA, full page illustration p.131; and
F.E. McWilliam
2012 by Denise Ferran and Valerie Holman, Cat. No. 34, p.92, also illustrated p.29
McWilliam began this work in 1937 after visiting the Hoptonwood quarry in Derbyshire with sculptors Henry
Moore and AH Gerrard, his professor at the Slade, and taking back several irregularly shaped hunks of stone.
The material is very fine, almost like marble, and is particularly suited to carving. It was around this time that
McWilliam began his association with the British Surrealist group and the sculpture, while working from a fig-
urative starting point, parodies the idealisation of the human torso to be seen in classical busts.The distortion of
the figure’s breasts is unsettling and it is significant that this and related carvings of deformed human heads and
torsos by the artist were made in a period of international crisis, before the outbreak of the Second World War.
He reworked the sculpture in 1939 and again after the war in 1947. In autumn 1949 McWilliam held his first
post-War solo exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in London of 21 works of diverse media including stone, ter-
racotta, concrete, various woods and bronze. Two sculptures in it had been made before the War, one of which
is Woman with Folded Arms.
In 1981, he further shortened the neck. The work remained outdoors in his garden at Holland Park until its
inclusion in the Arts Councils of Ireland exhibition in 1981, and was then dated 1939 by McWilliam. However
it is dated 1937-8 in Robertson 1965.
€30,000 - 50,000
