The Hampstead Figure is an abstract bronze sculpture by F. E. McWilliam. It was commissioned by Basil Spence and was completed in 1964 for the new Hampstead Civic Centre. [1] It was moved in 2019 to its present location on the Adelaide Road side of the Swiss Cottage Library. [2]
The sculpture represents a reclining female figure in abstract form in bronze. [1] It is sited on a plinth. [1] It is inscribed "The Hampstead Figure, 1964" and signed by McWilliam. [1]
The National Heritage List for England listing describes it as forming a "close and complementary grouping" with the civic buildings, which include the Swiss Cottage Library. [1]
The Hampstead Figure was listed at Grade II on the National Heritage List for England in August 1999. [1]
Hampstead is an area in London, England, which lies four miles northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from the A5 road to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the London Borough of Camden, a borough in Inner London which for the purposes of the London Plan is designated as part of Central London.
Hampstead & Highgate was a parliamentary constituency covering the northern half of the London Borough of Camden which includes the village of Hampstead and part of that of Highgate.
Swiss Cottage Library is a public library in the London Borough of Camden housed in an architectural landmark building on Avenue Road. Designed by Sir Basil Spence of Spence, Bonnington & Collins, it was built between 1963 and 1964.
Keats House is a writer's house museum in what was once the home of the Romantic poet John Keats. It is in Keats Grove, Hampstead, toward the edge of inner north London. Maps before about 1915 show the road with one of its earlier names, John Street; the road has also been known as Albion Grove. The building was originally a pair of semi-detached houses known as "Wentworth Place". John Keats lodged in one of them with his friend Charles Brown from December 1818 to May 1820, and then in the other half of the house with the Brawne family from August to September 1820. These were perhaps Keats's most productive years. According to Brown, "Ode to a Nightingale" was written under a plum tree in the garden.
Hampstead and Kilburn is a constituency created in 2010 and currently represented in the House of Commons by Tulip Siddiq of the Labour Party. Glenda Jackson was the MP from 2010 to 2015, having served for the predecessor seat since 1992.
Henry Spencer Moore was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore also produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War, along with other graphic works on paper.
Sir William Goscombe John was a prolific Welsh sculptor known for his many public memorials. As a sculptor, John developed a distinctive style of his own while respecting classical traditions and forms of sculpture. He gained national attention with statues of eminent Victorians in London and Cardiff and subsequently, after both the Second Boer War and World War I, created a large number of war memorials. These included the two large group works, The Response 1914 in Newcastle upon Tyne and the Port Sunlight War Memorial which are considered the finest sculptural ensembles on any British monument.
Leeds Art Gallery in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, is a gallery, part of the Leeds Museums & Galleries group, whose collection of 20th-century British Art was designated by the British government in 1997 as a collection "of national importance". Its collection also includes 19th-century and earlier art works. It is a grade II listed building owned and administered by Leeds City Council, linked on the West to Leeds Central Library and on the East via a bridge to the Henry Moore Institute with which it shares some sculptures. A Henry Moore sculpture, Reclining Woman: Elbow (1981), stands in front of the entrance. The entrance hall contains Leeds' oldest civic sculpture, a 1712 marble statue of Queen Anne.
The London Borough of Camden is a London borough in Inner London, England. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies 1.4 mi (2.3 km) north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 and includes the former Central London borough of Holborn, and St Pancras and Hampstead.
Two-Piece Reclining Figure No. 9 is a bronze sculpture of 1967 by the English artist Henry Moore, which exists in several versions and is catalogued as LH 576.
William George Mitchell was an English sculptor, artist and designer. He is best known for his large scale concrete murals and public works of art from the 1960s and 1970s. His work is often of an abstract or stylised nature with its roots in the traditions of craft and "buildability". His use of heavily modelled surfaces created a distinctive language for his predominantly concrete and glass reinforced concrete (GRC) sculptures. After long years of neglect, many of William Mitchell's remaining works in the United Kingdom are now being recognised for their artistic merit and contemporary historic value, and have been granted protective, listed status.
A statue of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, is situated in the grounds of the Tavistock Clinic, at the junction of Fitzjohn's Avenue and Belsize Lane, in Hampstead, North London. The seated bronze statue on a limestone plinth is a work of the sculptor Oscar Nemon. Freud lived nearby at 20 Maresfield Gardens for the last months of his life; his house is now the Freud Museum.
The statue of George III, Somerset House, formally titled George III and the River Thames, is a Grade I listed outdoor bronze sculptural group depicting King George III and Neptune or Father Thames, located in the quadrangle of Somerset House, London, England. The sculptor was John Bacon, and the statue was erected between 1778 and 1789.
Single Form is a monumental bronze sculpture by the British artist Barbara Hepworth. It is her largest work, and one of her most prominent public commissions, displayed since 1964 in a circular water feature that forms a traffic island at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City, outside the United Nations Secretariat Building and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library. It is also the largest artwork cast by the Morris Singer foundry.
Platforms Piece consists of four bronze sculptures of commuters at Brixton railway station by the British artist Kevin Atherton. The original three sculptures were completed in 1986 with a fourth statue, Joy II, added in 2023.
The Eagle Squadrons Memorial is a Second World War memorial in Grosvenor Square, London. It commemorates the service of the three Royal Air Force Eagle Squadrons from 1940 to 1942, during the Battle of Britain, and in particular their 244 Americans and 16 British fighter pilots, of whom 71 were killed. The bronze sculpture of an eagle which tops the memorial is by Elisabeth Frink.
Newton, sometimes known as Newton after Blake, is a 1995 work by the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. The large bronze sculpture is displayed on a high plinth in the piazza outside the British Library in London.
The Hampstead War Memorial is located in front of Heath House opposite Jack Straw's Castle, on the northern fringes of Hampstead Heath in London where North End Way, Heath Street and Spaniards Road meet. The memorial marks the deaths of local individuals who died fighting in the First World War and the Second World War. It was dedicated on 4 May 1922 by the Bishop of Willesden, William Perrin, in a ceremony attended by Major General Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend. The memorial is a tall thin stone obelisk on a square plinth with a three-step base.
Adelaide Cottage is a house in Windsor Home Park just east of Windsor Castle, in Berkshire. Built in 1831 for Queen Adelaide, it is currently the principal residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Gainsborough Gardens is a private road in Hampstead, in the London Borough of Camden. The road is arranged in an oval crescent around a central garden. It was laid out towards the end of the nineteenth century and influenced by the Bedford Park development in south west London. Many of its houses are grade II listed with Historic England. Notable former residents include the songwriter Gary Osborne, the historian Bernard M. Allen, and author John le Carré.
Media related to The Hampstead Figure at Wikimedia Commons