Drawing for 'Icarus', by 1925

Maurice Lambert RA (1901 - 1964)

RA Collection: Art

A pencil drawing for Lambert's sculpture 'Icarus', showing the figure from the front. This is quite close to the design of the finished work which is also known as 'Bird Boy' and was exhibited at the Goupil Gallery in 1925 to much acclaim.

According to Vanessa Nicolson 'Icarus offers a highly imaginative interpretation of the Greek myth. Historically, painters have tended to choose the dramatic moment of the boy's fall after flying too close to the sun, while sculptors traditionally represented the legend by showing his father Daedalus in the process of making or attaching the wings before he tries to fly. This was the moment Lambert's teacher Derwent Wood had chosen to represent, thirty years earlier, and for which he had been awarded the gold medal and travelling scholarship from the Royal Academy Schools. Lambert's interpretation shows the boy with the wings already attached, apparently growing out of his shoulders but also held in place by his hands. Icarus' face peers out from under a huge beak with an expectant and concentrated expression, while his arms and feet are posed in anticipation of take-off. The line of the arms and the tiptoeing feet balanced on the rock imbue the work with movement, giving it a dynamism that is lacking in traditional representations of the subject. Most of all, its greatest originality lies in the metamorphosis of boy and bird conveyed through the neck of the bird merging seamlessly into the boy's body. Viewed from above one sees only the figure of a large bird, with no sign of the boy trapped inside. In terms of the story this is entirely fanciful: Icarus never turns into a bird. The work symbolises the boy's identification of himself as a bird: the reason he flew too close to the sun' (see references).

Nicolson also points out that this sculpture led some to associate Maurice Lambert with the British Surrealist movement. However, while he anticipated the Surrealist's interest in myth she concludes that it nevertheless seems unlikely that Lambert had any particular knowledge of or interest in Surrealism.

Further reading

Vanessa Nicolson and Klio K. Panourgias, The Sculpture of Maurice Lambert, Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, 2002, pp. 23-24, fig. 10 and cat. no. 16, p. 100