Dame Elisabeth Frink R.A.

(British, 1930-1993)

Walking Baboon (Head Down) 40.6 cm. (16 in.) long

Footnotes

Provenance
With The Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames, 1991, where purchased by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, Fischer Fine Art, Elisabeth Frink: Recent Sculpture & Drawings, 5 October-9 November 1989 (another cast)
Washington D.C., The National Museum for Woman in the Arts, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings 1950-1990, 1990, unnumbered (ill.b&w, another cast)
Salisbury, Cathedral and Close, Elisabeth Frink: A Certain Unexpectedness, 1997 (another cast)
London, Beaux Arts, Frink, 5 October-5 November 2011 (another cast)
Bristol, Royal West of England Academy, Wild: Sculpture, Drawings, Original Prints by Elisabeth Frink, 2011 (another cast)

Literature
Edward Lucie-Smith, Elisabeth Frink; Sculpture Since 1984 and Drawings, Art Books International, London, 1994, p.189, cat.no.SC54 (ill.b&w, another cast)
Annette Ratuszniak, Elisabeth Frink; Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2013, p.184, cat.no.383 (ill.b&w, another cast)

Frink first sculpted a baboon after being commissioned by the Zoological Society of London to produce one in 1976. During the 1980s she revisited the theme. Edward Lucie-Smith writes 'had she lived, the theme was likely to have taken a central position in her work...What appealed to her from a purely visual standpoint was the baboon's physical compactness, and most of all its massive skull and head. She once remarked that a baboon was a much better subject for sculpture than a monkey, whose spidery limbs and long tail made it difficult to portray in three dimensions.

As her drawings demonstrated, the underlying theme or allegory is the confrontation of the wholly natural with the human - that is, with an intelligence which has started to disassociate itself from natural things. Her baboons are alert but contemplative. They are also, like her dogs, to a certain degree inscrutable, and she is careful not to endow them with human emotions.' (Edward Lucie-Smith, Elisabeth Frink, Sculpture Since 1984 And Drawings, Art Books International, London, 1994, p.28).

The baboons of the 1980s differ from her earlier foray into the subject. The first baboon of 1976 is much more cautious in its treatment of form, standing still and observing, it is weighted to the ground. In the present lot, Frink has created movement. With the front foot drawn up, the baboon has a sense of purpose and shows Frink's acute observation of these primates at their best.