Dame Elisabeth Frink, D.B.E., R.A.

W.H. Smith, Plc.
Their sale, Phillips London, 9th June 1998, lot 64, where acquired by the Jerwood Foundation

Ragley Hall, Warwickshire (September 1999 to present).

Edward Lucie-Smith, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture Since 1984 and Drawings, Art Books International, London, 1994, cat. no.SC16, illustrated p.9 & 11;
Anthony Thorncroft, 'Jerwood to Return Lottery Cash,' Financial Times, 11th November 1998, illustrated.

Generally the sculpture is in good overall condition. The patina is worn in places and there are a few small spots of staining and debris, which is consistent with the piece being exhibited outside. There are two very small holes in the base. Please telephone the department on +44 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present lot.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

'What I've always said about my figures, and I think it's true, is that they're nothing to do with any known myth... Yet they are mythical - they're part of our past. They're nothing to do with what I'm seeing now or looking at. They're to do with our collective past...'
(The Artist, quoted in E. Lucie-Smith and E.Frink, Frink: A Portrait, Bloomsbury London, 1994, p.126).

Throughout her career, the male figure has been amongst Frink's most significant and enduring subjects. Walking Man belongs to a highly important series of male nudes conceived in the mid-1980s, each depicted walking, standing and running, all of which were first purchased by W.H. Smith Plc for their headquarters in Swindon, Wiltshire (see fig.1). The present work remained in Swindon until it became the first sculpture to enter the Jerwood Sculpture Collection in 1998.

Frink's exploration of the subject during the 1980s was rooted in the development of her style during the period immediately following the Second World War when, alongside the slightly older generation of artists such as Lynn Chadwick, Kenneth Armitage and Reg Butler, she conceived her Warrior series. Herbert Read famously described the work of the young British sculptors exhibited at the 1952 Venice Biennale as evoking a 'geometry of fear' and this feeling is undoubtedly manifested in Frink's work from the same period. However, although her Warriors demonstrate a certain brutality and are suggestive of violence, they are also remarkably noble and respectful figures and it this same tension between two opposing characteristics that is imbued in Walking Man. Frink explained: 'I can sense in a man's body a combination of strength and vulnerability - not as weakness but as the capacity to survive through stoicism or passive resistance, or to suffer or feel...' (the Artist, quoted in B. Robertson, Elisabeth Frink Sculpture Catalogue Raisonne, Harpvale, Salisbury, 1984, pp. 36-37).

Walking Man is also particularly significant as it became the first sculpture in a major new series of four figures known as the Riace warriors and the present work was later retitled Riace I. The genesis for the group was Frink's experience of two fifth-century Greek sculptures of warriors that had been discovered off the coast of Reggio Calabria in 1972: ' I remember reading about the Riace warriors – how they were found in the sea off Calabria and brought up to the surface. Then I remember them being on show in Florence. The original figures are very beautiful, but also very sinister, and that is what they are supposed to be...' (the Artist, quoted ibid, p.125). 

Whilst Walking Man does not demonstrate the defined musculature of classical examples, he retains the contrapposto stance and turned head that gives him an air of movement and alertness. Furthermore, Frink's technique for creating the present work and the rest of the works related to it, was to apply wet plaster by hand to an armature which was carved when dry before being cast in bronze and thus the highly textured surface bears evidence of the artist's hand all over his body which undoubtedly heightens the overall monumental impact of the work.