Kennington created his first sculptural work during the
1920s. After military service and establishing himself as an Official War
Artist, Kennington returned to London in 1919 where he met artists Wyndham
Lewis, Edward Wadsworth and William Roberts, all of whom were part of the
recently established Vorticist group. While studying the techniques of
avant-garde Cubist and Expressionist artists, Wadsworth and painter/sculptor
Frank Dobson encouraged Kennington to experiment with sculpture, including the
act of direct carving, once championed by Henri-Gaudier Brzeska, Constantin
Brancusi and Amedeo Modigliani.

With clean line and simplistic form Kennington’s innocent
portrayal of a child, created between 1925-28 echoes these modernist
influences revealed to the artist at the time. An exceptionally smooth surface
would have been replicated in the Portland Stone model of the same subject,
which allowed Kennington to purposefully remove any trace of human interaction
or intervention on the materials he used. This work also bears close
resemblance to The Male Child, 1929, modelled on Kennington’s young
son.