Lot 230: William G. Simmonds (1876-1968) Tribute to the Horse, 1956

William G. Simmonds (1876-1968)
Tribute to the Horse, 1956
signed and dated 30cm high, 38cm across, 22cm deep.

Exhibited:
Royal Academy, London, 1956, no.1366.

Provenance:
Arthur Mitchell;
thence by descent.


WILLIAM SIMMONDS (1876-1965)

William Simmonds - the most British of British artists - is one of the great forgotten originals of the Arts and Crafts movement, its silent heart.

Simmonds first won a reputation in the 1920s through his exquisite oak, pine, ebony and ivory carvings of wild and domestic creatures.

After the First World War, he moved to the Cotswolds to work on his sculpture and to document and inhabit an 18th century world whose survival was hanging by a thread, joining his friends in the last wave of the Arts and Crafts movement. His circle was a vividly diverse community, in which the artists William Rothenstein and Charles Gere, the architects Gimson, Detmar Blow, Norman Jewson and Sidney and Ernest Barnsley, the potters and stained glass artists Alfred and Louise Powell and Edward Payne, and the textile printers Barron and Larcher all played their part - a world in which included the poets Tagore, WH Davies, John Masefield, John Drinkwater, and the writers Max Beerbohm, D H Lawrence and the Sitwells and the musicians Lionel Tertis, [Violet Gordon Woodhouse with her "four husbands" at Nether Lypiatt Manor a mile from William Simmonds house, were avid collectors of the sculpture over the years].

As Simmonds' fame as a wood carver grew, he was also becoming a cult figure through his marionette shows. The beauty of Simmonds puppets, unlike any seen before or since, caught the public imagination. Booked annually in London by the Grafton Theatre and the Art Workers' Guild and performing in private drawing rooms, he also travelled with shows into country towns and small villages in Britain and in parts of Europe. His gentle wittily scripted dialogue and brilliant manipulation was accompanied on the spinet and virginals by his wife Eve.

William Rothenstein saw Simmond as "…. a little master in the old German sense" and Mary Greenstead writes that"Simmonds' work has been so treasured by its original owners, that it has rarely escaped into the glare of the commercial art world …. " . However Simmonds pieces are not only private collections but have been bought by Cheltenham Museum, Sheffield Museum, Manchester Museum, Reading Museum and the Tate Gallery. He exhibited at the Royal Academy for over 50 years and each piece was bought instantly.

The Tribute to the Horse is one of Simmonds's last carving in wood and where, unusually, he uses a jigsaw-like effect in blocks to create this little masterpiece.

Throughout his life, Simmonds spent weeks watching and studying carthorses near his home in the Cotswolds. This piece is a homage to these magnificent animals, their strength and their unquestioning loyalty.

The biography of William Simmonds by Jessica Douglas-Home is pencilled in for publication in 2017/18 and will include this current work.

Jessica Douglas-Home, May 2017

We are grateful to Jessica Douglas-Home for helping to catalogue this lot.