The Scottish sculptor William Turnbull showed an interest in art from an early age. Although forced to leave school at the age of fifteen in order to find work and support his family, he enrolled in an evening drawing glass at Dundee University. Through several jobs in the media he learned about commercial illustration and was introduced to contemporary European art. After having served in the Royal Air Force during WWII, he enrolled at The Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he soon abandoned painting and turned to sculpture. Here, he met Eduardo Paolozzi, who became a close friend and shared Turnbull’s interest in contemporary art. After a few months of living in Paris, where he met a number of fellow artists and attended parties with the Surrealists, in 1948 he settled in London where he spent the rest of his life. His works were included in the seminal exhibition New Aspects of British Sculpture at the 1952 Venice Biennale, a starting point of Turnbull’s wider international acclaim. He had two retrospective exhibitions in London, in 1973 and 1995.

Turnbull’s sculpture was influenced by a wide range of sources - from ancient Greece and ‘primitive’ art to the older generation of artists he met in Paris, most notably Brancusi and Giacometti. A key member of the ‘Independent Group’, he regularly exchanged ideas with artists and intellectuals associated with London’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Many of these influences are beautifully reflected in Leda. Whilst the title refers to the Greek mythological story of Leda, the Spartan queen seduced by Zeus disguised as a swan, the abstract rendering of the bronze bears more affinity with Cycladic fertility goddesses as well as with the sculpture of Brancusi and Arp. Following in the footsteps of numerous European artists inspired by the image of Leda, Turnbull rejects a traditional rendering of the subject and instead creates a highly stylized image, at once a soft and commanding presence, a totemic monument to the female form.