Dame Elisabeth Frink

Harbinger Bird IV

1960

Not on display

Artist: Dame Elisabeth Frink 1930–1993
Medium: Bronze
Dimensions: Object: 483 x 213 x 356 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1963
Reference: T00580

Catalogue entry

T00580 HARBINGER BIRD IV 1960

Inscr. ‘Frink 1/9’ b.r. on top of base.
Bronze, 18 (46) high on base, 8×6 3/4×1 1/4 (20·5×17×3).
Purchased from the Waddington Galleries (Grant-in-Aid) 1963.
Exh: Waddington Galleries, June–July 1961 (5, repr.).

The artist wrote to the compiler (24 May 1963) to say that ‘Harbinger Bird IV’ was ‘the final one of that series all done in that year [i.c. 1960]. The Harbinger Birds are a development from the early Birds which one can say fall into three lots - the first of the first lot being the one that you already have in the Tate [N06140]. Then...the second lot which developed from the first, becoming, I think, more abstract and more simple in form with less emphasis on texture - to finally the Harbinger series which are constructed of much more slab-like, solid forms. And this is the way in which I am working at present.’

The Tate Gallery cast is the first of an edition of nine.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I