The Catapult or Slingboy

Details

SIR WILLIAM REID DICK, K.C.V.O., R.A. (1879-1961)
The Catapult or Slingboy
signed 'Reid Dick'
bronze, dark-brown patina, on Siena marble plinth
the bronze: 12¼ in. (31.1 cm.) high

Provenance

with The Fine Art Society, London, 1978.

Literature

H. Granville Fell, Sir William Reid Dick, K.C.V.O., R.A., London, 1945, pl. 2.
J. Cooper, Nineteenth Century Romantic Bronzes: French, English and American Bronzes 1830-1915, Devon, 1975, pp. 97-8 (another cast). Joanna Barnes Fine Arts ed., exh. cat., Leighton and his sculptural legacy: British sculpture 1875-1930, London, 1996, p. 56, no. 25 (another cast).

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

An early model by Reid Dick, the original bronze of The Catapult, or Slingboy, as it is also known, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1911 (no. 1920; now in Bradford City Art Gallery, Cartwright Hall). The work was subsequently cast by Giovanni Galizia for the Parlanti foundry in two sizes, the present half-size and a larger version. Recalling elements of Leighton's An Athlete wrestling with a Python (1874) and The Sluggard (1890), as well as Gilbert's Perseus Arming (1881-2), The Catapult was described by Granville Fell as a 'well-balanced, tense figure, precise in modelling'. (Granville Fell, pl. 2).

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