Women and Bird - front

John Skeaping (1901-1980) studied at three art schools in London, winning the British School at Rome Prize for sculpture in 1924. In 1925 he married the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Together they both practiced direct carving, meaning that they carved directly into stone or wood without the aid of a preliminary model, allowing the natural graining and contours of the material to guide them to find the finished form of the work.

This work reveals Skeaping’s knowledge of Asian, Pacific and African sculpture, which has clearly inspired his approach to capturing the human form. The fleshy, almost translucent quality of the pink alabaster heightens the feeling of peering through and beneath the skin to the veins of the alabaster visible underneath.