Christopher Dawson
Head of Department
Lot 59AR,TP
Emily Young(British, born 1951)Poet Warrior 80 cm. (31 1/2 in.) high (including the stone base)
Amended
29 September 2021, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £131,500 inc. premium
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Emily Young (British, born 1951)
Poet Warrior
Purbeck freestone
80 cm. (31 1/2 in.) high (including the stone base)
Carved in 2000
Purbeck freestone
80 cm. (31 1/2 in.) high (including the stone base)
Carved in 2000
Footnotes
Provenance
The Artist, from whom acquired directly by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.
'Britain's greatest living stone sculptor'
(Financial Times, 2013)
Emily Young was born into a creative family in London, her grandmother was the sculptor Kathleen Scott, a colleague of Auguste Rodin and her uncle Sir Peter Scott started the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in 1961. She began her career as a painter, studying at Chelsea School of Art and Central St Martins in London before travelling extensively, but by the 1980s she had started to carve stone, a medium she has since dedicated herself to for the last forty years.
Young practices 'free sculpture', where she approaches each block of stone with no pre-conceived ideas or preparatory drawings but rather allows the material to speak and guide the form that emerges. Using that most ancient of mediums, her unique vision is at once contemporary and antique. The monumental heads are Michelangelesque in their organic emergence from the rock, part polished, part rough-hewn, with each example wholly individual as the stone itself dictates the final outcome with every fault, vein and split celebrated rather than concealed. The artist's lifelong preoccupation with humanity and our troubled relationship with the planet is clear and these still, dignified forms invite private reflection from the viewer, looking both to our past and our future.
Youngs sculpture is held in many public and private collections around the globe and she has exhibited at prestigious institutions including The Getty, California, the Imperial War Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
We are grateful to the Artist and EY Sculpture UK Ltd for their assistance in cataloguing the present work.
Saleroom notices
Please note that the present work is displayed on a steel plinth loaned by the Emily Young UK Studio.
