Mother and Child

The theme of mother and child was a consistent theme for Hepworth. It was with this version that she took the significant step of separating the child from the body of the mother. The child can be viewed as separate and yet still as part of the whole, its surface smooth and round, both as pebble and flesh. These multi part sculptures mark a shift in Hepworth’s practice that saw a move towards a more abstract form.
Writer and artist Adrian Stokes wrote about Hepworth’s carving in relation to the idea of birth, life and maternity.

The stone is beautifully rubbed. It is continuous as an enlarging snowball on the run; yet part of the matrix is detached as a subtly flattened pebble. This is the child which the mother owns with all her weight, a child that is of the block yet separate, beyond her womb yet of her being.