DAVE BROWN 2001 Cartoon of Lady Thatcher’s statue placed in the lobby of the House of Commons
Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (b.1925)
'Lady Thatcher’s statue placed in the lobby of the House of Commons' by Dave Brown (British, b.1957)
Ink on paper, signed and dated, Dave Brown 2001
34 x 23.2 (13½ x 9¼in)
Sold for £8,400 inc. premium

Footnotes

  • One of Tony Banks’s most significant acts as Chairman of the House of Commons Works of Art Committee was to commission sculptor Neil Simmons to produce a larger-than-life scale statue of Margaret Thatcher, recognising her political significance as the United Kingdom’s first woman Prime Minister. Controversy surrounded the intended destination of the statue, since it is against convention for a living subject to have a statue in the Lobby of the House, although this was the statue’s intended ultimate home.

    The piece was unveiled by Lady Thatcher at the Guildhall Art Gallery in May 2002, but decapitated in July of that year by a protester. In this cartoon Brown, recognising the awesome qualities of a monumental statue of The Iron Lady, shows it animate and erupting from her trademark handbag to terrify Members of Parliament. The savagery of the representation prefigures his controversial cartoon of January 2003 portraying Ariel Sharon eating a baby based of Goya’s painting 'Saturn devouring his children'.

Category: Fine Art / Portrait Miniatures


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