Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist, from whom acquired by
Eric and Wanda Newby, 1991, thence by family descent to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
Dorchester, Dorset County Museum, Elisabeth Frink: Man and the Animal World, 28 June-23 August 1997, cat.no.85 (another cast)

Literature
Edward Lucie-Smith, Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture since 1984 and Drawings, Art Books International, London, 1994, p.190, cat.no.SC57 (ill.b&w, another cast)
Annette Downing, Elisabeth Frink: Sculptures, Graphic Works, Textiles, Salisbury Festival and Wiltshire County Council, Salisbury, 1997, pp.42, 71, cat.no.SC57 (coll.ill., another cast)
Annette Ratuszniak (ed.), Elisabeth Frink: Catalogue Raisonne of Sculpture 1947-93, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2013, p.186, cat.no.FCR388 (col.ill., another cast)

The horse is widely regarded as being Frink's most successful and commercial motif. Emerging during the late 1960s and conceived as both singular entities and with riders, they are largely the result of her time spent in the Camargue region of France, celebrated for its herds of semi-wild horses and rugged landscape. Frink's father had been a keen horseman during her childhood in rural Suffolk and the country life resonated with her, acting as a welcome distraction from the London art scene at the time.

Upon returning to England in 1973 Frink continued to explore and develop the horse theme within her work over the following decades. As with the other animals she chose to sculpt and by her own admission, they are more concerned with representing her emotional response to, and spiritual identification with, the subject in question than with literal physical form. In view of this particularly subjective approach, Frink denied being an animal sculptor in the true sense of the notion, stating her principal interest to lie 'in the spirit of the animal' (Edward Lucie-Smith & Elisabeth Frink, Frink: A Portrait, London, Bloomsbury, 1994, p.123).

At Woolland, there was always a small group of thoroughbreds in the stable yard, Frink's husband was an enthusiastic racing man who had hopes of winning an important event with a horse he had bred. These thoroughbreds were part of Frink's domestic surroundings, but they were not, except in a very general fashion, models for her work. The type of horse which attracted her aesthetically was the beast in its most primitive form. The horses of Camargue, whose resemblance to those in the cave paintings at Lascaux has often been remarked upon, made an indelible imprint on her imagination: she liked their stocky bodies, short necks and large heavy heads. Edward Lucie-Smith notes that it is a Camargue horse which is likely to have supplied the model for First Horse (Elisabeth Frink Sculpture since 1984 and Drawing, London, 1994, p.40).

The former owner of the present work, Eric Newby, was an English travel writer famed for works such as A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, A Small Place in Italy and Round Ireland in Low Gear. He also made travel films for the BBC and was awarded a CBE in 1994. Eric and Wanda formed a close friendship with Frink and the present work is accompanied by a letter from the artist to them dated 26 June 1991, confirming this cast is number 1 from the edition of 6.