Dame Elisabeth Frink, C.H., R.A.

David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney, where acquired by the present owner

London, Royal Academy, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings 1952-1984, 8th February - 24th March 1985, cat. no.87 (another cast);
Sydney, David Jones Art Gallery, Elisabeth Frink Sculpture, 10th October - 8th November 1986, cat. no.1.

Edward Lucie-Smith, Elisabeth Frink Sculpture Since 1984 and Drawings, Art Books International, London, 1994, cat. no.SC1, illustrated p.182 (another cast);
Annette Ratuszniak (ed.), Elisabeth Frink, Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries in association with the Frink Estate and Beaux Arts, London, 2013, cat. no.FCR329, illustrated p.163 (another cast).

The bronze is stable. There is some surface dirt in the pitted areas of the sculpture, particularly on the base. On close examination it is possible to see some flecks of oxidation on the figures back, with a further spot on the side of the figure's head and on his stomach. Subject to the above the work is in very good condition. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Frink’s treatment of the theme of horse and rider is both subtle and timeless.  She does not attempt equestrian exactitude - how dull that would be - nor has she used the subject to promote an individual: forget the grand equestrian portraits of Marcus Aurelius, Charles I and Bonaparte amongst many others.  Instead she has chosen to make her figure anonymous.  Naked, and thus shorn of any association beyond the basics of humanity, he is simultaneously strong and yet vulnerable, lifted out of any clearly defined period. By doing so, Frink forces us to address him in a very raw and elemental way, and perhaps it is this intentional resistance to our natural tendency to complicate an image that makes it have such impact.

As a theme, the Horse and Rider had occupied Frink from her earliest days. One of her first recorded sculptures, Horse and Rider, 1950, treats the subject, as do a series of drawings of similar date. The approach is, however, very different. Frink’s early work exhibited a very strong sense of the brutal, which was common to the generation of sculptors who came to prominence during the 1950s, something that was perhaps unsurprising for those who had lived through the war years and its aftermath of nuclear threat. These first works are suffused with am anxiety and violence, yet like the present work, there is also vulnerability. The figures are angular and expressive, the heightened emotional and physical states evident in the poses. Three decades later, Frink returned to the subject, but brought to it a maturing and more rounded vision. Resting Horseman is weary and yet a muscular energy withstands. There seems to be a special sense of survival, of endurance at the heart of the work.

She had ridden as a youngster in Suffolk, but with her move to the south of France in 1967, she discovered the horses of the Camargue and brought a new strand of understanding to her interpretation of the subject. The sense of a timeless connection begins to creep into her sculptures and drawings of man and horse. The warrior element lessens, and the human grows. Commentators recognised this tendency almost immediately, with Terence Mullaly seeing in 1969 a sense of the prehistoric, the timeless, in her latest sculptures (Terence Mullaly, ‘Sculpture with the Power of the Prehistoric’, Daily Telegraph, 8 December 1968, p.9), and indeed Frink recognised this herself; ‘A symbol of a man on a horse, a man riding free and a horse free…intended to be completely ageless. He could come from the past or go into the future. I like to feel that work to’s and fro’s from past to present’ (Frink, in Brian Connell, ‘Capturing the Human Spirit in Big, Bronze Men’, The Times, 5 September 1977, p.5).