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Lot Essay
Created in 1976, during an intensive period of religious commissions from English churches, Protomartyr belongs to a series of works in which Frink articulates the vulnerability of people and animals, and man’s inhumanity to man. Protomartyr, symbolises the first Christian martyr, St Stephen, an archdeacon in the early church in Jerusalem who was tasked by the apostles with providing food and aid to the poorer members of the community. His teachings about Christianity were alerted to the authorities as acts of blasphemy. The Acts of the Apostles records that he was tried by the Sanhedrin who sentenced him to death by stoning. His feast day is 26 December and the site of his martyrdom in Jerusalem is now marked by the 20th century Catholic church of St Etienne.
In the present work, the figure of the Protomartyr indicates his suffering and anguish with a tilted head and closed eyes, linking him with Frink’s Tribute Heads and In Memoriam heads in which their closed eyes and turned heads tangibly convey stoic suffering amidst intolerable pain and anguish.
Discussing Frink’s work from this period, Annette Ratuszniak remarks ‘Her approach remained expressive, not in the sense that the artist’s emotional stirrings culminated in an artwork, but conversely that the artwork plays on the viewer’s sensitivity. Her highly versatile modelling, which is still thoroughly in keeping with Rodin’s modèle, gives rise to a dual perception. On one level is the perception of the entire sculpture as a (not necessarily realistic) three-dimensional body without a predetermined frontal view, a factor that impels any viewer who pays attention to it to move around it. From a distance Frink’s sculptures never give the effect of a ‘picture’ which, incidentally, explains the problems of photographing her work. The second level is a physical perception, conveyed through the sense of touch, of individual curves and traces on the surface of the sculpture at close range. The nearer the viewer gets to the figure, the more alive it appears – not in the sense implied by realism, but as a living presence. The two levels of perception cannot be neatly separated, but the borderline can be located roughly where it would theoretically be possible to touch a sculpture. Distinctions between effects observed at a distance and those at close range belong to the standard repertoire of the European tradition; Elisabeth Frink was notable for incorporating her own accents. So the actual theme of her sculpture could be a certain presence: the fact that a viewer perceives not just a formed material reminding him or her of nature, but something more – a form shaped in such a way as to suggest life. What can be concluded from this difference, above all, is that a viewer must ‘experience’ these works in reality and not just ‘see’ them, mediated by photographs. A statement like that pushes at the limits of traditional art history, but for Frink’s work it seems necessary to build such a phenomenological level into any description of it’ (op. cit., pp. 30-31).
In the present work, the figure of the Protomartyr indicates his suffering and anguish with a tilted head and closed eyes, linking him with Frink’s Tribute Heads and In Memoriam heads in which their closed eyes and turned heads tangibly convey stoic suffering amidst intolerable pain and anguish.
Discussing Frink’s work from this period, Annette Ratuszniak remarks ‘Her approach remained expressive, not in the sense that the artist’s emotional stirrings culminated in an artwork, but conversely that the artwork plays on the viewer’s sensitivity. Her highly versatile modelling, which is still thoroughly in keeping with Rodin’s modèle, gives rise to a dual perception. On one level is the perception of the entire sculpture as a (not necessarily realistic) three-dimensional body without a predetermined frontal view, a factor that impels any viewer who pays attention to it to move around it. From a distance Frink’s sculptures never give the effect of a ‘picture’ which, incidentally, explains the problems of photographing her work. The second level is a physical perception, conveyed through the sense of touch, of individual curves and traces on the surface of the sculpture at close range. The nearer the viewer gets to the figure, the more alive it appears – not in the sense implied by realism, but as a living presence. The two levels of perception cannot be neatly separated, but the borderline can be located roughly where it would theoretically be possible to touch a sculpture. Distinctions between effects observed at a distance and those at close range belong to the standard repertoire of the European tradition; Elisabeth Frink was notable for incorporating her own accents. So the actual theme of her sculpture could be a certain presence: the fact that a viewer perceives not just a formed material reminding him or her of nature, but something more – a form shaped in such a way as to suggest life. What can be concluded from this difference, above all, is that a viewer must ‘experience’ these works in reality and not just ‘see’ them, mediated by photographs. A statement like that pushes at the limits of traditional art history, but for Frink’s work it seems necessary to build such a phenomenological level into any description of it’ (op. cit., pp. 30-31).