From the mid-fifties, Reg Butler began working on sculptures of young girls, the theme for which he is arguably most remembered. He made realist drawings of contorted naked female figures from the late fifties onwards, moving away from the non-naturalistic iron sculpture that had previously dominated his work. Butler saw himself working in a tradition of the female nude such as the ‘slant-eye bitches’ painted by Lucas Cranach, and the ‘hairy, sweaty, grainy flesh’ of Pierre Bonnard's naked figures, as he himself stated. In the Townsend Memorial Lecture he delivered in 1980, just a few months before his death, he argued that ‘any artist concerned with making naked ladies must struggle to preserve a balance between lust and compassion – the balance he wants to make his work right for him’. Butler's sculptures of girls are characteristically freighted with eroticism. Many of the girls are in the process of undressing or exposing their genitalia. Butler continued in his lecture: ‘I am often appalled by their submissiveness. I see a mood of exuberance turn in a moment into terrifying dislocation. At the flick of my wrist a leg may be amputated or an arm shifted into an impossible position.’ By the late 1960s Butler was sculpting life-size women in bronze, draped over bases, which he painted white and to which he added real human hair. In 1960, Butler had an exhibition at the Hanover Gallery entitled Sculpture. This exhibition was dominated by sculptures of girls depicted in movement. A common motif throughout the exhibition was that of a girl suspended in motion above a 'wheel' (a circular base), to which she was attached by rods. Amongst these girls was Saint Catherine, a figure from Butler's Saint Catherine group of the late fifties, which overtly suggested Butler's fascination with sadism and the Freudian connection between pleasure and pain. Eroticism manifested itself in Butler's depiction of the distended female form, with extended bodies at the apex of tautness heightening the sensuality of the bronze girls. Butler was commissioned by the London County Council to produce a sculpture for the new Recreational Centre at Crystal Palace, and Girl on a Round Base is a preparatory work for the un-realised public work. In 1963, the Council withdrew their commission, stating that a female nude would be entirely out of keeping with the surroundings. Girl on a Round Base demonstrates Butler's fasciation with the shapes of the female body and the formal qualities of a 'wheel' or 'round base'. The sinuous curves of the girl's body are modelled in the round, with the stretching of the upper torso both sideways and forward, resulting in an accumulation of three-dimensional serpentine angles. Unlike the depictions of pubescent girls in Butler's oeuvre, this girl has a womanly form, with prominent hips, waist and chest. Butler's interest in the part-object or the fragment – another Freudian theme – is also apparent in Girl on a Round Base. As with so many of his figure sculptures, the girl has no feet. Instead, her legs join directly with the base so that the two elements become a uniform whole. The circular base suggests movement, and echoes the curvature of the human body, whilst also encouraging a perambulatory viewing of the sculpture. As the art historian Margaret Garlake has explained, ‘[w]hen a sculpture was ready for casting Butler allocated it a number, preceded by “RB”.’ There are two works by Butler entitled ‘Girl on a Round Base’—RB 215 and RB216. Both were cast in editions of eight. Garlake’s catalogue of Butler’s sculpture includes both works under a single entry (no. 235) owing to their close similarity. This work is RB216. An example of Girl on a Round Base (RB215) is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. * Reg Butler was born in Buntingford, Hertfordshire in 1913, and began making sculpture in 1944 without formal training. He was briefly Henry Moore's assistant in 1948 and he held his first one-man show at the Hanover Gallery, London in 1949. In 1952 he was selected for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and in 1953 he won first prize in an international competition organised by the Institute of Contemporary Art for a 'Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner', over such established artists as Alexander Calder and Barbara Hepworth. Although the final sculpture was never realised, a model is in the collection of the Tate London and the competition established Butler's reputation as amongst the finest British sculptors of his generation, and his inclusion in the 1952 'New Aspects of British Sculpture' positioned him as a promising modernist. Butler returned to a more figurative style form the late 1950s through to the 1960s, particularly taking young women as the subject for his sculptures. Butler was an articulate writer, lecturer and radio broadcaster, and taught at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1951 and 1980. His work can be found in most major public collections. He died in 1981.