Femina Victrix or The Struggle

Details

Sir William Reid Dick, K.C.V.O., R.A. (1879-1961)
Femina Victrix or The Struggle
signed 'W Reid Dick'
bronze, dark-brown patina; on siena marble plinth
8 1/8 in. (20.6 cm.) high, the bronze

Provenance

with Joanna Barnes Fine Arts, London, 1999.

Literature

H. Granville Fell, Sir William Reid Dick KCVO, RA, London, 1945, p. 5, pl. 1 (another cast).
A. Kader, Athletes, Adolescents and Antique Drapery: some critical and sculptural responses to Leighton's sculpture 1890-1930, in Joanna Barnes Fine Arts ed., Exhibition catalogue, Leighton and his sculptural legacy: British Sculpture 1875-1930, London, 1996, p. 16-17, fig. 7 (another cast).

Special notice

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

Lot Essay

An early work, exhibited in plaster at the Royal Academy in 1913, and in bronze the following year, Femina Victrix or The Struggle, as it is also known, placed Reid Dick firmly within the New Sculpture movement. The model was clearly influenced by Leighton's An Athlete wrestling with a Python, a work exhibited nearly forty years prior and an inspiration for a whole new generation of young sculptors.

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