
Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
Sold for £37,500 inc. premium
Our Modern British & Irish Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistHead of UK and Ireland
Head of Department
Director
Head of Ireland & Northen Ireland
Provenance
The Artist, from whom purchased by the present owners in the 1960s
Private Collection, U.K.
Exhibited
New York, Bertha Shaeffer Gallery, Elisabeth Frink, 30 October-18 November 1961, cat.no.6 (another cast)
London, Waddington Galleries, Elisabeth Frink, 11 October-4 November 1972 (another cast)
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Elisabeth Frink, Sculpture and Drawings 1952-1984, 8 February-24 March 1985, cat.no.19 (another cast)
Washington, The National Museum for Women in the Arts, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture and Drawings, 1950-1990, 1990 (another cast)
Literature
Jill Wilder, Elisabeth Frink Sculpture, Catalogue Raisonné, Harpvale, Sailsbury, 1984, p.152-53, cat.no.274 (ill.b&w, another cast)
Annette Ratusniak, Elisabeth Frink, Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries, London, 2013, p.77, cat.no.FCR91 (col.ill., another cast)
During her student days at the Chelsea School of Art in the early 1950s, Dame Elisabeth Frink was tutored by Bernard Meadows (1915-2005). At this time a prevalent theme in his oeuvre was the cockerel, and throughout the decade Meadows would regularly produce various bronzes of this domesticated bird. It is no surprise therefore that from 1956 onwards Frink produced a handful of sculptures using her own interpretation of both the hen and cockerel. Some showed the birds prostrate and moribund whilst the present work, apparently the largest of the group and executed in 1961, depicts the bird standing upright.