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Lot Essay
Dogs became an important subject for Frink in the final decade of her life, and were a reflection of the animals who lived around her at her home at Woolland in Dorset. Her husband, Alex Csaky kept Vizlas, Hungarian gun-dogs with golden-red smooth coats whose muscular form lent itself readily to sculpture in bronze. Life size pieces Large Dog (1986) and Dog (1992) depict these creatures as animated hounds who interact and appear to greet the viewer. The two life size versions of the seated hound Leonardo's Dog I, and Leonardo's Dog II were created in 1991 and 1992 respectively after a visit to the Chateau de Cloux near Amboise, the last residence of Leonardo da Vinci, where he died in 1519. Two stone dogs guard the entrance to the chateau and wait for their master to return.
Edward Lucie-Smith records the differences in Frink's handling of these dog sculptures, `Leonardo's Dog, though apparently similar to her earlier dog sculptures, represents an interesting technical development. It is far more solid, more apparently weighty than any of its predecessors. In this sense it bears a strong resemblance to the great War Horse for Chatsworth, also a late work. From a stylistic point of view, it represents the final renunciation of the attenuated forms which had typified her early sculpture. The mood, too, is different. The seated dog waits calmly for whatever time will bring - the anxiety which fills some of the earlier sculpture is here entirely absent.
It is striking how Frink has been able to take such a simple, apparently domestic subject, and endow it with monumental qualities, without stylisation and without distortion. Leonardo's Dog has some of alertness and patience of the famous statue of the seated Ancient Egyptian scribe in the Musee du Louvre, Paris. Like Frink's dog, the scribe waits without impatience for some instruction or event. The forms, though apparently naturalistic, are subtly monumentalist.
Frink's dogs are an excellent example of the way in which she managed to remain a popular, communicative artist at a time when the visual arts, sculpture in particular, were becoming increasingly esoteric. They are not objects which call for interpretations of tortured ingenuity. What they are chiefly about is the world of appearance, and Frink's direct reaction to it. She did not feel called upon to apologise for liking dogs and finding them interesting, any more than she felt called upon to endow them with any quasi-human qualities.
She was also interested in the formal problems created even by such a simple subject. A seated hound makes a satisfying compact shape, almost a kind of pyramid. Leonardo's Dog II has an abstract, solid geometry which underlies an apparently naturalistic surface. Perhaps one reason for this is that the original inspiration came from another sculpture, one made of stone rather than bronze, where the carver had been concerned to keep the beast well with in the confines of the block. Yet there is nothing heraldic or depersonalised about the final result. One of the attractions of the Leonardo piece is the evident alertness of the beast, easiest to see from looking at the sculpture almost frontally to discover the slight twist of the head which conveys the alertness and expectation'.
Edward Lucie-Smith records the differences in Frink's handling of these dog sculptures, `Leonardo's Dog, though apparently similar to her earlier dog sculptures, represents an interesting technical development. It is far more solid, more apparently weighty than any of its predecessors. In this sense it bears a strong resemblance to the great War Horse for Chatsworth, also a late work. From a stylistic point of view, it represents the final renunciation of the attenuated forms which had typified her early sculpture. The mood, too, is different. The seated dog waits calmly for whatever time will bring - the anxiety which fills some of the earlier sculpture is here entirely absent.
It is striking how Frink has been able to take such a simple, apparently domestic subject, and endow it with monumental qualities, without stylisation and without distortion. Leonardo's Dog has some of alertness and patience of the famous statue of the seated Ancient Egyptian scribe in the Musee du Louvre, Paris. Like Frink's dog, the scribe waits without impatience for some instruction or event. The forms, though apparently naturalistic, are subtly monumentalist.
Frink's dogs are an excellent example of the way in which she managed to remain a popular, communicative artist at a time when the visual arts, sculpture in particular, were becoming increasingly esoteric. They are not objects which call for interpretations of tortured ingenuity. What they are chiefly about is the world of appearance, and Frink's direct reaction to it. She did not feel called upon to apologise for liking dogs and finding them interesting, any more than she felt called upon to endow them with any quasi-human qualities.
She was also interested in the formal problems created even by such a simple subject. A seated hound makes a satisfying compact shape, almost a kind of pyramid. Leonardo's Dog II has an abstract, solid geometry which underlies an apparently naturalistic surface. Perhaps one reason for this is that the original inspiration came from another sculpture, one made of stone rather than bronze, where the carver had been concerned to keep the beast well with in the confines of the block. Yet there is nothing heraldic or depersonalised about the final result. One of the attractions of the Leonardo piece is the evident alertness of the beast, easiest to see from looking at the sculpture almost frontally to discover the slight twist of the head which conveys the alertness and expectation'.