Lot 45: Joseph Higgins (1885-1925) Woman and Child (1920)

Joseph Higgins (1885-1925) Woman and Child (1920) Bronze, 40cm (16") high Signed and dated 1920 Exhibited: Irish Art 1900-1950, Cork Rosc exhibition 1975-76 Literature: "Joseph Higgins - Sculptor and Painter" by Peter Murray and Orla Murphy, illustrated on front cover and on pages 12 (full page illustration), 19, 56 (twice) and 57 (full page illustration) When Joseph Higgins died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-nine in 1925, he left behind a small but substantial body of work, of which nineteen sculptures survive. However these works were never cast in bronze within his lifetime, due to the expense of the material. Following Higgins' death Seamus Murphy, fellow Cork sculptor who married Higgins' daughter in 1944, cast them in bronze. This Woman and Child is one of three casts of this sculpture by Murphy, who said of Higgins' work "it has delight for everyone who looks at it, but a fellow craftsman gets even more than that. He sees how the material was respected, how the problem of design was solved, the masses arranged in relation to one another, the shapes broken up by shadows skilfully placed as accents of light."