Omega Workshops
Roger Fry
Delbanco Gallery, London
Gifted by Dorothy Elmhirst to The Dartington Hall Trust, 25th March 1965

London, Alpine Gallery, Grafton Group, January 1914, cat. no.46;
Dartington Hall, The Exhibition Gallery, An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture 1900-1947, June 1947, cat. no.34 (as Male Figure);
Dartington Hall, Paintings, Sculpture, Furniture Belonging to Mr & Mrs Elmhirst, 1951, cat. no.75 (as Male Figure);
London, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, 8th December 1956 - 19th January 1957, cat. no.11 (as Male Nude);
Bielefeld Kunsthalle, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 1891-1915, 1969, cat. no.7 (bronze cast);
Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Henri Gaudier-Brzeka Sculptures, 12th August - 10th September 1972, cat. no.29, with tour to Leeds City Art Gallery, and the National Museum of Wales;
Cambridge, Kettle's Yard, Henri- Gaudier-Brzeska, Sculptor, 15th October - 20th November 1983, cat. no.43;
Dartington Hall, High Cross House, c1995 - 2010;
Wakefield, Hepworth Wakefield, May - August 2011.

Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska. A Memoir, London, 1916, p.129, cat. no.30 (as Boy, in plaster);
H.S. Ede,  A Life of Gaudier-Brzeska, William Heinemann, London, 1930, p.196;
Horace Brodzky, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, London, 1933, p.176;
Roger Cole, Burning to Speak: The Life and Art of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1978, cat. no.38, illustrated p.89;
Roger Cole, Gaudier-Brzeska: Artist and Myth, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 1995, p.77;
Evelyn Silber, Gaudier-Brzeska, Life and Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1996, cat. no.56, illustrated pl.75;
Paul O'Keefe, Gaudier-Brzeska; An Absolute Case of Genius, Penguin Books, London, 2004, p.208 and 318;
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska dans les Collections du Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2009, cat. no.21 (bronze cast), illustrated pp.98 and 179 (alabaster), p.99 (bronze cast).

The following condition report has been prepared by Plowden & Smith Limited, 190 St Ann's Hill, London SW18 2RT: The figure is carved from alabaster, the surface is in good overall condition. There is some dirt in the crevices and in the tool marks in the alabaster. There is a surface deposit on the shoulder at the back of the figure and a smaller deposit on the base. These should be easily removed. There are natural fissures in the alabaster, notable in the arm, through the torso and the leg. There are some minor bruises to the base. The penis appears to have been secured using a filler which is dark in colour, this may have discoloured with age. It is thought to be original to when the sculpture was made as the join is so neat. Please contact the department on 0207 293 6424 if you have any questions about the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In 1913 Gaudier turned his primary focus to carving, as prior to this date the majority of his sculptures were modelled in clay. Boy is amongst his most accomplished works of this early period. Gaudier often used plaster as a preliminary carving material in order to work through ideas and forms, and this appears to be the case here, as Pound refers to Boy, in Plaster. Omega shops on page 129 of his catalogue of Gaudier's sculpture. According to Roger Cole, the artist turned to the Omega Workshop for its availability of stone, eventually choosing a nearly translucent and beautifully marbled column of alabaster to carve the final piece. It was in fact his association with Omega which facilitated his invitation to show with the Grafton Group, and Gaudier exhibited five works there in 1914, including both Boy and Redstone Dancer (circa 1913, Tate Gallery, London).

Critiquing the show in The Observer, Paul Konody commented that with these five pieces Gaudier struggled hard to 'emulate the art of the archaic age with his rude carvings in marble, alabaster and red stone' (quoted in Paul O'Keeffe, Gaudier-Brzeska. An Absolute Case of Genius, London, 2004, p. 210.) While Konody was apparently reacting against some of Gaudier's 'explicit' subject matter, he'd also picked up on the fact that Gaudier, like so many British sculptors of the time, was looking to non-western sources for inspiration, such as the African and Oceanic wooden sculptures he had studied in the British Museum.  This interest paralleled those of contemporary international artists in many ways, and one can see particular ties between Boy and the work the Russian sculptor Alexander Archipenko was producing in 1910 and 1911, specifically his Woman and Cat  (fig. 1, 1910, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf im Ehrenhof).  Both sculptures place an emphasis on monumental volume, the bodily forms are rounded and bulky and the rectangular integral stone bases provide a reminder of the blocky shape of the material. In both, the figures' toes and fingers are lozenges indicated by simple regularly spaced grooves, the noses are flat broad planes which continue smoothly from the forehead, the eyes are incised almond shapes and the hair is helmet like and clearly demarcated from the face.  While the two artists did meet at some point, likely during 1910 or 1911 when both were living in Montparnasse and running in the same artistic circles, it is clear that they were both responding and drawing from similar source material.

In the 1983 Kettle's Yard Exhibition on Gaudier, Jeremy Lewison points out the similarity between Boy and the School of Michelangelo Nude Slave, which was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1912 and was illustrated in the Burlington Magazine that August.  While it is unclear whether Gaudier saw this, he was by this time already a great admirer of Michelangelo; in April 1911 he drew from a cast of the artist's Dying Slave at the Victoria and Albert Museum (fig. 2) and made the following notes in his sketchbook:

'draw the main masses within the larger planes,
draw the smaller planes within the larger masses,
draw the smaller masses by the most attentive , accurate study of the planes.
I think working this way leads to splendidly truthful detail always contained within a more imposing composition which is at the same time created by it.' (From the Artist's sketchbook of 1911, quoted in Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska. A Memoir, 1916, p.42)

While Gaudier used the piece as a tool of formal study, he also admired the piece 'for its magnitude, because its heroism, creative energy, [astonished him]...' (The Artist, 19^th May 1911, quoted in H.S. Ede, Savage Messiah, 1931, pp.69-70). Boy incorporates the contrapposto stance, the stretching and bunching of the muscles of the body, and has a similar vitality, a sense of life and energy. Gaudier was fascinated throughout his career by movement and the energy of the body:  'I should have liked to have a model who didn't pose at all, but did everything he wanted to, walked, ran, danced etc.' (The Artist, quoted in H.S. Ede, Savage Messiah, 1931, p.191) and in the present work we see this in full force, in the sense of leverage from one side of the body to the other, in the elegant distribution of weight, a🥂nd in the perfect sense of balance.

Jim Ede wrote to Dorothy Elmhirst in 1964 asking if they would donate the sculpture to the newly formed Gaudier-Brzeska permanent collection of his work at the Musée National d'Art Morderne, Paris. While they could not bear to part with Boy, the Elmhirsts did donate their bronze Torso. Eಌde also asked to cast the present work in bronze, and while this request was initially refused, three casts of the work were produced in December 1968 by Michael Gillespie. One of the casts was kept by Ede at Kettle's ౠYard, another was gifted to the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, and the third was later sold by Roland, Browse & Delbanco.