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Lot Essay
Elisabeth Frink sought to convey a relationship between humanity and nature in her art, and animals, particularly horses and dogs, were a subject to which she frequently returned throughout her career. As a keen horsewoman, she was familiar with the form of the horse, but the dog fascinated her too `because they’ve been man’s best friend for thousands of years’ (the artist quoted in A. Ratuszniak, op. cit., p. 4).
In 1957, Frink first explored the motif of a blind man following his dog, their tentative movements at the other extreme from her bronzes which celebrate the power and freedom of wild animals. Another early sculpture of a dog followed this work, exhibiting the same sensitivity as the dog's head is held alert, as though sniffing the air. His vulnerability is not displayed as weakness and the creature retains its poise and dignity.
The dog is frequently found in the artist's watercolours and drawings throughout the intervening period, but it was not until the final decade of her career that he reappears in her sculpture. Perhaps this reflected her way of life at Woolland House in Dorset, where her husband Alex Csáky kept a particular breed of gun dog, the Hungarian Vizsla, a red-coated, athletic hound, which bears a close resemblance to her sculpted dogs from the early 1980s, even though Frink considered these pieces to be generic rather than of a specific type.
Frink’s dogs are always friendly creatures and loyal companions, in all their guises. She is never sentimental in her depictions, yet a sympathetic rendering of the interdependent relationship between man and dog is ever present. In this sculpture from 1981, just as Frink had returned to study the animal, the dog is barking but its raised head and body language, on a dynamic torso, show that it is also wagging its tail in greeting.
In 1957, Frink first explored the motif of a blind man following his dog, their tentative movements at the other extreme from her bronzes which celebrate the power and freedom of wild animals. Another early sculpture of a dog followed this work, exhibiting the same sensitivity as the dog's head is held alert, as though sniffing the air. His vulnerability is not displayed as weakness and the creature retains its poise and dignity.
The dog is frequently found in the artist's watercolours and drawings throughout the intervening period, but it was not until the final decade of her career that he reappears in her sculpture. Perhaps this reflected her way of life at Woolland House in Dorset, where her husband Alex Csáky kept a particular breed of gun dog, the Hungarian Vizsla, a red-coated, athletic hound, which bears a close resemblance to her sculpted dogs from the early 1980s, even though Frink considered these pieces to be generic rather than of a specific type.
Frink’s dogs are always friendly creatures and loyal companions, in all their guises. She is never sentimental in her depictions, yet a sympathetic rendering of the interdependent relationship between man and dog is ever present. In this sculpture from 1981, just as Frink had returned to study the animal, the dog is barking but its raised head and body language, on a dynamic torso, show that it is also wagging its tail in greeting.