Two Doves

William Mitchell was employed by the London County Council between 1957 and 1965. Ho worked alongside other artists, such as Anthony Hollaway, to embellish the new mass housing and to ameliorate against the charges of these estates being ‘concrete jungles’. Budgets were usually constrained and often the materials were limited to those that were being used in the construction of the building to be adorned. This particular sculptural wall in Little Venice (at the end of Warwick Crescent, a GLC block of housing) is credited to Mitchell on the plaque that records its making and dedication to poet Robert Browning. However, Mitchell’s studio was a significant undertaking and he employed up to 30 people during its most commercially successful phase. Amongst those assisting Mitchell was Malcolm Thackwray, to whom this piece is now credited. Mitchell was said to have encouraged Thackwray to enter his designs into a competition for the site, which he won. The Two Doves are intended to symbolise peace, love and learning. In the last years of his life Mitchell pursued alterations to the formal attribution next to the work, to no avail. Regardless, Mitchell’s influence on this work is fairly legible and Thackwray acknowledges that working with Mitchell ‘helped free him from the rules and formalities of a traditional fine art education and opened his eyes to a world of creative possibilities and potentials.’ Thackwray left Mitchell’s studio in 1966 to pursue his own career.