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French born Sculptor more famous in
England than France and considered a British artist, as
all his mature work was made in England.
Born near Orléans at St Jean de Braye in
October 1891, he was the son of a carpenter. His
schooling started at the village school and at the age
of 12 he gained a scholarship to the Benjamin Franklin
Secondary School in Orléans. In 1907 he won two overseas
scholarships which first took him to England and
Germany. Firstly, he went to Bristol to study
commerce and English at Merchant Venturers College and
then in April 1909 to Nuremberg to study German Business
Studies.
In Bristol Henri Gaudier boarded with the
Smith family and began a friendship with the young
daughter, Kitty, a friendship which continued to the end
of his life. In Nuremberg he lodged with a Dr Uhlemayer
and his family and the doctor remained a correspondent
and confident.
After his studies in Bristol, in the
second part of his English scholarship he worked for a
commercial coal importer and exporter, Fifoot and Ching
in Cardiff . In September 1909 on the completion of his
German scholarship studies in Nuremberg he went to Paris
and found work as a translator for a publishing company:
Armand Colin, editeur. He was not yet 18.
In January1910 Henri met Sophie Brzeska
in the Ste Genévieve Library in Paris, a Polish born
woman twenty years his senior, where both were studying.
They became close and later in January 1911 moved
together to London where they adopted the name
Gaudier-Brzeska declaring themselves brother and sister.
At first in London Henri (although determined to make
his way as an artist) could only find employment with a
Norwegian timber importer in the city and walked there
each day from their lodgings in Fulham, working at his
art by night. After reading an article in The English
Review by Haldane McFall he wrote to him and as a result
met a group of young artists, including Lovat Fraser,
Enid Bagnold and Jacob Epstein. With encouragement from
this group Henri began to receive small commissions and
then to exhibit in a number of group shows, culminating
in the Allied Artists Exhibition in June 1913 where Ezra
Pound first came across his work. This meeting lead to
Pound’s encouragement and in 1914 to the carving
‘Hieratic Head’, Gaudier’s huge portrait in stone of
Ezra Pound. He was a member of the Vorticist Group,
Wyndham Lewis’ Rebel Art Centre, and The London Group.
He contributed to both editions of ‘Blast’ the Vorticist
publication edited by Wyndham Lewis and made work for
Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops.
Sophie Brzeska and Henri Gaudier lived
together until he volunteered for the French army in
1914. He was killed at Neuville St Vaast in 1915 at the
age of 23. Sophie was devastated by his death but with
the help of Pound arranged the Memorial Exhibition of
Henri’s work in 1918.
She had always been unstable and in 1922
became more so and was confined in a Gloucestershire
mental hospital where she died intestate in 1925. In her
possession were sculpture plasters works on paper and
sketchbooks by Henri as well as many papers and letters.
The Official Solicitor offered the work to the Tate
Gallery and the Trustees made a small selection kept for
the nation. The remainder of Gaudier’s sculpture,
drawings, sketchbooks and letters and papers which
comprised Sophie’s estate were acquired
by H.S.Ede who used them for his ‘A Life of
Gaudier-Brzeska’ published in 1930 (subsequently
published as ‘Savage Messiah).
Major work by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska is in
the collections of:
Kettles Yard, Cambridge,
Tate Gallery, London,
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff,
Pompidou Centre, Paris,
Musée de Beaux Arts Orléans,
And
many United Kingdom and U.S. Museums.
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