Acquired directly from the artist in the late 1980s

London, Royal Academy, Elisabeth Frink, February - March 1985 (another cast).

Edward Lucie-Smith, Elisabeth Frink, Sculpture since 1984, Art Books International, London, 1994, p.182, illustrated pp.52-53 (another cast).

Dirt has gathered in some of the crevices otherwise the work appears in good overall condition. Please contact the department on 0207 293 6424 if you have any questions about the present work.
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Horses and 🅠horsemen first began to appear in Frink's work𓃲 in the late 1960s, shortly after her move to Camargue, a region in France celebrated for its herds of semi-wild horses. Inevitably, they suggested themselves as subjects to sculpt and after Frink's return to England, the horse became a continuing theme in her work throughout the 70s and 80s.

Frink was a keen rider and understood horses thoroughly, which her sculptures portray in their intimacy and expression. The horse is a longstanding motif in Western art but Frink was keen to express a more personal view in her approach. More than simply a subject, in Frink's animation of the horses - their various lying down and rolling postures - she displays their personality and the enjoyment of their own physicality. Further, in works such as Horseman, Frink shows 𝓰the intimate link with, and dependence on, human be💝ings.

Horseman is quite striking within this period, for during the 80s Frink made far more sculptures of horses with💖out riders and unlike nearly all her previous riders, this one is clothed and his head enveloped in a hood. His features too are more individualised, and sitting confident and alert, one feels in the presence of a real person.

The sculpture may well have been inspired by her third husband, Alex Csaky, who came from an aristocratic Hungarian family. Horseman certainly bears resemblance to a nomadic Magyar rider, roaming the Hungarian plains. In the present work, Frink also perhaps came closest to Mario Marini, the 20^th century Italian artist with whom she had most in common, although she played down the association. Marini's horsemen are said to have been inspired by the riders he saw in the fields of North Italy towards the end of World War II, anxiously scanning the skies for hostile aircraft. These works were simultaneously timeless and contemporary and Horseman shares thi🎐s quality as well as being an intense, deeply felt work.