Dame Elisabeth Frink D.B.E, R.A. | Dead Cock Pheasant 65
Artist: Dame Elisabeth Frink, D.B.E, R.A. (1930-1993)
Title: Dead Cock Pheasant 65
Medium: Watercolour on Paper under Glass
Signed & Dated 65, lower right
Provenance | A unique piece of art from Dame Elisabeth Frink. Painted in 1965 and displaying a Pheasant with full plumage. The painting passed through Sotheby’s on the Wednesday 11th October 1989 (Lot 326) and this painting will be sold with a hard copy of that Sotheby’s catalogue. The painting was with Manya Igle Fine Arts, London, where it was purchased by the previous owner.
Dimensions visible without frame: 74cm x 54cm
Dimensions with frame: 98cm x 76.5cm
Framed and ready to hang
4% Artists Resale Rights (ARR) will be applied at the checkout.
A super watercolour with a good depth of colours and wonderful detail in the shape of the feathers. Frink was painting a selection of individual Pheasants in 1965 but not as studies for a subsequent sculpture. The pale blue around the bird’s mantle and scapular area is of note as are the feathers on the head and soulful closed eye. This Elisabeth Frink painting leaves the viewer with a sense of strength, shape, and grace rather than death. The painting is on paper, framed and is now protected by UV conservation glass. Signed & Dated 65.
About Frink’s Pheasants
In his 1994 book titled ‘Elisabeth Frink – Sculpture since 1984 and Drawings’ printed by Art Books International, Edward Lucie-Smith writes about Frink’s Pheasant drawings on page 106
“Two drawings of dead pheasants, in unwontedly naturalistic style, are worth showing here, in their proper date sequence. They portray victims rather than the makers of victims, and offer relatively rare examples of Frink drawing directly from life. However, these apparently straightforward depictions of still life subjects do have undertones and overtones. Among Frink’s first really characteristic sculptures are the pathetic dead hens (1956 and 1957), forceful representations of the pathos and squalor of death with links to the then much discussed ‘kitchen sink’ school of younger British painters. The dead pheasant drawings of 8 years later are more traditional, less forceful. They look back, perhaps surprisingly, to the pre-Modernist tradition of the Dutch, Flemish and French still life, and suggest comparisons with artists such as Frans Snyders (1579-1657), or even with J. F. Oudry (1686-1755). Yet there is even here, an element of stark pathos.”
Reference Number: 068EF