Essay #116: Sean Ketteringham, ‘Anarchist anti-imperialism, modernist domesticity: Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s Maquette for a Large Basin’

In this essay, Sean Ketteringham examines the anarchist and anti-imperial politics which informed the work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), the French modernist sculptor who was based in London for the final and most productive years of his life. By suggesting several new models for Gaudier-Brzeska's Maquette for a Large Basin (referred to until recently as Maquette for a Bird Bath), the essay nuances readings of how anarchist revolutionary principles of direct action and anti-statist transnational solidarity shaped the artist's approach to primitivism, labouring bodies, and classicism.

Sean Ketteringham is Assistant Curator at Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. His first monograph, Architectures of Identity: Imperial Decline and the Homes of English Modernism, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. He will join the University of Birmingham as a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in May 2026.

Thanks are due to the following people for their generous help and feedback in support of this work: Rebecca Beasley, Holly Bird, Jennifer Johnson, Clare O’Dowd, Evelyn Silber and Sarah Turner as well as to the two anonymous reviewers and the editorial staff at Sculpture Journal for the many improvements they suggested to the version of article that appeared in print.

Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Bluesky @anarchismresgroup.bsky.social

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