BY SIR WILLIAM REID DICK (1879-1961), CIRCA 1930

Boy with frog dates from the early 1900s when Reid Dick showed deference to the leading lights of the New Sculpture movement, notably in his Femina Victrix which is a homage to Leighton’s Athlete Wrestling with a Python. Boy with Frog was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1910 ‘N°1916 The Frog – statuette, bronze’ and again in 1931 ‘N° 1642 ‘Model for Fountain in bronze’. The latter being the example cast for the fountain in Queen Mary’s Gardens, Regent's Park, where it remains today. A portrait by Philippe Ledoux of Sir William Reid Dick in his studio exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1934 shows a version of Boy with Frog beside the sculptor himself – which could be the present lead example as it looks to be light grey in colour. The reputed provenance dates the present lead statue to the 1930s. A stone version was commissioned in the 1950s by the American millionaire and art collector Huntington Hartford (D. Wardleworth, William Reid Dick, Sculptor, Surrey, 2013, p. 178).