Canadian Art

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Lot 62
  • 62

Robert Tait McKenzie 1867 - 1938

Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 CAD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Robert Tait McKenzie
  • Blighty

  • 1916

    signed © R. Tait McKenzie, dated and inscribed ROMAN BRONZE WORKS IN N.Y. on the base

  • bronze
  • 27.9 by 19.1 by 39.4 cm.
  • 11 by 7 ½ by 15 ½ in.

Provenance

Freeman's Auctioneers, Philadelphia, June 22, 2008, lot 71

Private Collection, Montreal

Literature

Christopher Hussey, Tait McKenzie, A Sculptor of Youth, 1930, p. 56, plates 48 and 49, for Blighty, reproduced

Catalogue Note

McKenzie, a medical doctor,  was known for his bronzes of athletic males. Blighty, a "soldier home on leave",  was modelled from life in 1915 when McKenzie saw a group of Seaforth Highlanders on leave enjoying a smoke.  Christopher Hessey comments on a clay maquette of Blighty:

...the figure embodies the spirit which carried England through the early winters of the war, the spirit melodized in those wistful comic songs about "Home Fires Burning"

Blighty is a maquette for The Volunteer, 1923, an 8 foot bronze at the Rosamond War Memorial, Almonte, Canada, commemorating Alec R. Rosamond, head of the Rosamond Woolen Mills, who had volunteered in 1914 and was killed at Courcellette.

A related figure of Blighty is in the Queen's Collection at Balmoral.