Eye, Nose and Cheek
- Artist: F.E. McWilliam
- Date: 1939
- Medium: Hoptonwood stone
- Dimensions: object: 889 x 870 x 286 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the “Eye, Nose and Cheek” by F.E. McWilliam, created in 1939 from a block of hoptonwood stone. The piece belongs to his series called *The Complete Fragment*, which he began after seeing the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936. The carvings are selective parts of an enlarged human head: the eye, the nose and a cheek, each shown with clean, semi‑abstract lines that leave much surface blank.
McWilliam had worked in Paris from 1931 to 1933, then returned to London where he kept an independent practice while staying close to artists like Henry Moore and Paul Nash. In these carvings he played with the relationship between the solid volume of stone and the open spaces around it. The viewer is invited to fill in the missing parts mentally, creating a dialogue between sculpture and imagination.
The stone measures about 35 × 34½ × 11¼ cm (roughly 889 × 870 × 286 mm). It was purchased by the Tate in 1966 from the artist through Waddington Galleries. This work is displayed in Room 14 of the “Historic and Modern British Art” exhibition, showing how McWilliam’s stone sculptures combine figure, abstraction and surrealist influence into a single, compelling form.
See it in person
Eye, Nose and Cheek is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
