Franta Belsky

The present work is a plaster maquette for the full size statue by the same artist in Horse Guards Parade.

Belsky first studied in his native Czechoslovakia before coming to London in 1950 to enroll in the Royal College of Art where his teachers were Frank Dobson and John Skeaping. During the next forty years he established himself as a leading monumental sculptor. He created the monument to Admiral Cunningham in Trafalgar Square and the statue of Churchill fir Fulton, Missouri. In 1976 he was awarded the Otto Beit Medal by The Royal British Society of Sculpture.

There was an understandable move to commemorate Mountbatten following his assassination supported by Mrs Thatcher, the armed forces, and the public. The Queen chose the site on what is now called Mountbatten Green and during the unveiling ceremony on 2nd November 1983 she said: "The vitality and force of his personality combined with an astonishing range of abilities. He could be far-sighted with enormous breadth of vision yet he could also concentrate in the minutest detail of any problem. He was a perfectionist who always mastered his subject".