Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving. He was born in Saint-Jean-de-Braye near Orléans. In 1910, he moved to London to become an artist, even though he had no formal training. With him came Sophie Brzeska, a Polish writer over twice his age whom he had met at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, and with whom he began an intense symbiotic relationship, annexing her surname although they never married. (According to Jim Ede the linking of their names was never more than a personal arrangement.) During this time his conflicting attitudes towards art are exemplified in what he wrote to Dr. Uhlmayr, with whom he had lived the previous year:

"When I face the beauty...