Sally FestingCritiques

On her death in 1975, Barbara Hepworth was acclaimed as 'the greatest woman artist in the history of art'. This biography describes her Yorkshire childhood, her bohemian days and many years in St Ives, her friendship with Henry Moore, her marriages to sculptur John Skeaping and painter Ben Nicholson, and the tragic early deaths of both her sons. At the base of her art lies her experience of landscape and motherhood. Her corpus has both a classic and poetic quality. Festing gives us a sympathatic moving and truthful picture of the struggle of a woman artist 'paving her way in a man's world'. She gives insights into the loneliness of a creative life. I was very much impressed by the driving forces of Hepworth to create and the conflicts that go with it.

Sally Festing researched this book in the 1970s when the North Sea fishing communities on the Norfolk coast were already in decline. Now the profession is extremely rare and the way of life has changed beyond recognition, so this collection of oral history is an important document preserving memories of superstitions, working practices, domestic life etc. It was first published in 1974 by David & Charles but is now reissued in paperback, revised and reset throughout, with illustrations never before published. Index.