Lynn Chadwick regarded his figurative sculptures not as the equivalents of real human bodies but as constructions of shapes. The lively personality of works like Pair of Sitting Figures VIII is supervenient, only emerging once the sculpture was finished and entirely unthought of in the process of preparation. Chadwick explained this process in an interview in 1995. ‘I'm trying to think, "Now, what can I do in the way of sculpture? What shapes can I make?"’

Chadwick’s work belongs to the post-war generation of British sculptors whose keystone was the work of Henry Moore. The darkened patina, faceted surfaces and angular massing of Pair of Sitting Figures VIII are stylistically distinct from Moore’s work, yet the same formal problem was at stake for Chadwick as for Moore: how can the material, non-imitative qualities of sculpture be emphasised while continuing to suggest a figure-like presence? The problem was resolved by maintaining the silhouette of a human figure, while suppressing localised detail and replacing it with flat planes of richly patinated metal.

Pair of Sitting Figures VIII was made using a process and materials that were distinctive to Chadwick and his sculpture. In the fifties he discovered Stolit, a commercially produced construction material composed of gypsum and iron filings. He subsequently used it for the rest of his career, employing it in conjunction with a steel armature to make his models. The malleable plaster allowed Chadwick to create the desired shape with a continuous, smoothed-out surface. In his hands, the Stolit surface was always loaded with textures; pocks, pit marks, ripples and stresses gave it a pregnant, hand-wrought appearance. These effects were then translated into patinated bronze by the foundry. This is a significant aspect of Chadwick’s sculpture in Pair of Sitting Figures VIII and other works. An ingenious play on materials is effected, transforming supple and hand-worked surfaces into the solid, monumental, patinated metal of the finished object.

Pair of Sitting Figures VIII was cast in two editions of eight. In the first edition, the figures’ faces and torsos were polished, whereas the second edition was wholly unpolished. Such material variations suggest the speculative process by which Chadwick developed his work. A series of refinements and formal variations often bound together successive individual works in a sustained sequence of creative progress. Chadwick originated the motif of a winged figure early in his career, especially in a series of five works from 1955 titled Dance. During this formative period he also began using conjunctions of depersonalised male and female figures, as in Encounter (1955), for example. Chadwick relished the ambiguous characterisation and endless potential for formal reconfiguration of these works, and he perennially returned to these qualities over the course of his long career.