Reg Butler (1913-1981)

The present work was previously in the collection of the John B. Putnam Jnr Memorial Collection, at Princeton University, where it was installed in 1970.

Bride is considered to be one of the most important and monumental works by the sculptor, standing just under 8 feet high. The artist worked on the piece for over seven years, and Richard Calvocoressi in his article Reg Butler: The Man and the Work, has explained the circumstances around this extended creation period: 'One work in particular, made during this period, illustrated Butler's concept of an 'exploding mass'. The Bride, nearly eight feet high, occupied him intermittently from 1954 to 1961, after which date he began to work in the more organic material of wax. The figure has a top-heaviness reminiscent of the Edinburgh Girl of 1957-58, but the complete absence of arms and a massive build up of modelling around the head give it the shape of a mushroom cloud. Butler worked on The Bride in the yard outside his studio, underneath the overhanging branches of a large tree. He later wondered whether the sculpture's nervously worked surface had not in some way stemmed from his subliminal awareness of the dappled effect of sunlight on foliage. He fully accepted the role of 'creative accident' in making sculpture, especially if it arose from the unpredictable character of the material. Modelling in plaster, as opposed to clay, offered a fluid, rapid approach and the freedom to cut out as well as add. But it was the additive process which instinctively appealed to him, the idea of working outwards, of the sculpture growing in the studio, which the technique of oxy-acetylene welding also permitted' (Exhibition catalogue, Reg Butler, London, Tate Gallery, 1983, p. 28).