Lynn Chadwick

Description

One of only a handful of public commissions undertaken by Chadwick, Stranger III, originally commissioned by the Air League of the British Empire, gave him an opportunity to work on a monumental scale. This sculpture was to commemorate the double crossing of the Atlantic by the Airship R 34 in July 1919, and was to be placed outside the Long Haul Terminal at Heathrow Airport.

The architect of the terminal, Frederick Gibberd, the Royal Fine Art Commission, the Minister of Transport, Harold Watkinson, and the Committee of the Air League were all enthusiastic about the sculpture. However, in 1958 an opposing committee led by Lord Brabazon of Tara, who called the sculpture a 'diseased Haddock', with the Guild of Air Pilots and Aviators behind him, forced the Air League to withdraw the commission. Lynn Chadwick made one cast in 1959 which has since been destroyed. Of the declared edition of four, one is sited publicly in Spoleto, Italy, another is at Colby College, Bixler Art and Music Center in Maine, and a third in a Belgian collection. Sculpture at Goodwood has completed the edition with this cast made at Pangolin Editions in Gloucestershire, from a moulding taken from the piece in Belgium.

The winged figure is a development from the maquette, Stranger II 1958. The maquette shows two figures merging with the heads looking both to the left and right, symbolising the double transatlantic journey, with spread symmetrical wings. In the final figure Chadwick has foreshortened one wing and tapered the other, whilst maintaining a compositional balance.