Dame Elisabeth Frink R.A., (British, 1930-1993)

Standing Group (Maquette for The Dorset Martyrs) 32.5 cm. (12 3/4 in.) high

Standing Group (Maquette for The Dorset Martyrs)
signed and numbered 'Frink 7/8' (on the base)
bronze with a brown patina
32.5 cm. (12 3/4 in.) high
Conceived in 1983

Provenance
With Waddington Galleries, London
With Chesil Gallery, Dorset, 1991, where purchased by
Private Collection, U.S.A.

Exhibited
London, Mumford Fine Arts, Art: Is Why I Get Up In The Morning, 2006 (another cast)
London, Beaux Arts, Frink, 7 June-8 July 2006 (another cast)

Literature
Jill Willder (ed.), Elisabeth Frink Sculpture Catalogue Raisonné, Salisbury, 1984, p.197, cat.no.277, (ill.b&w., another cast)
Annette Ratuszniak (ed.), Elisabeth Frink, Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries, London, 2013, p.159, cat.no.FCR315 (col.ill, another cast)

The present work is a maquette for the monumental Memorial to the Dorset Martyrs and was commissioned by the Dorset County Museum with funding from the Arts Council 'Art for Public Places Scheme'. The memorial can be found on Gallows Hill in Dorchester on the site of the gallows where Catholics were persecuted and hung for their beliefs in the 16th and 17th century, a subject that for Frink, as a convent-educated Catholic living in Dorset, was very close to her heart.

'These figures have a political element, because I am preoccupied with the human rights situation in the world... and this preoccupation feeds itself or finds expression in my mankind sculpture'. (The Artist discussing Dorset Martyrs in Annette Ratuszniak (ed.), Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries, London, 2013, p.169).