Still Water | |
---|---|
Artist | Nic Fiddian-Green |
Year | 2011 |
Type | Sculpture |
Medium | Bronze |
Subject | Horse |
Dimensions | 10 m(33 ft) |
Location | Achilles Way, London, England |
51°30′46″N0°09′35″W / 51.51286°N 0.15961°W |
Still Water is a large public sculpture in bronze of a horse's head by Nic Fiddian-Green, dating to 2011. It is located at Achilles Way, near Hyde Park Corner in central London, and was initially installed at Marble Arch. The work remains owned by the artist, and is on loan to Westminster City Council.
As inspiration for the work, the Marble Arch Partnership explains that the artist's "passion for the equine head began in 1983 as a student at Chelsea College of Arts when he was sent on a visit to the British Museum to seek inspiration. He encountered the Elgin Marbles and was struck by the horse of Selene, a remarkably well preserved fifth-century BC carving, which would become the foundational inspiration throughout his career".
Fiddian-Green later reflected that "capturing the skill, vitality, balance and beauty, so evident in these Greek carvings is my continued aim". The artist works in clay, plaster, beaten lead and marble, and oversees the casting of the sculpture into bronze himself.
The 33 feet (10 m) piece was commissioned to replace an earlier and similar, but slightly smaller, work, Horse at Water XV, which was temporarily installed on the site in 2001. That earlier work was moved to Daylesford, Gloucestershire, the home of Sir Anthony and Lady Carole Bamford, who had commissioned it. [1] [2]
In 2012, Fiddian-Green cleaned the sculpture himself, using a cherry picker. [3]
In May 2021 the work was moved to its current location on Achilles Way.
In 2020, Syria installed a similar sculpture in Rawda Square, Damascus. [4]
A small copy of the sculpture stands in the centre of the village of At-Bashy in Kyrgyzstan as the village's name is literally translated as "horse's head" in one of the versions.[ citation needed ]
Marble has been the preferred material for stone monumental sculpture since ancient times, with several advantages over its more common geological "parent" limestone, in particular the ability to absorb light a small distance into the surface before refracting it in subsurface scattering. This gives an attractive soft appearance which is especially good for representing human skin, and which can also be polished.
The Archibald Fountain, properly called the J. F. Archibald Memorial Fountain, is located in Hyde Park, in central Sydney. It is named after J. F. Archibald, owner and editor of The Bulletin magazine, who bequeathed funds to have it built. Archibald specified that it must be designed by a French artist, both because of his great love of French culture and to commemorate the association of Australia and France in World War I. He wished Sydney to aspire to Parisian civic design and ornamentation. The artist chosen was François-Léon Sicard, who completed it in Paris in 1926 but never saw the sculpture be placed in Sydney, where it was unveiled on 14 March 1932 by the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Samuel Walder.
The Marble Arch is a 19th-century white marble-faced triumphal arch in London, England. The structure was designed by John Nash in 1827 as the state entrance to the cour d'honneur of Buckingham Palace; it stood near the site of what is today the three-bayed, central projection of the palace containing the well-known balcony. In 1851, on the initiative of architect and urban planner Decimus Burton, a one-time pupil of John Nash, the arch was relocated to its current site, near the northeast corner of Hyde Park, so that expansion of Buckingham Palace could proceed.
Arturo Di Modica was an Italian sculptor, widely known for his Charging Bull sculpture.
Stone carving is an activity where pieces of rough natural stone are shaped by the controlled removal of stone. Owing to the permanence of the material, stone work has survived which was created during our prehistory or past time.
George Claude Leon Underwood was a British artist, although primarily known as a sculptor, printmaker and painter, he was also an influential teacher and promotor of African art. His travels in Mexico and West Africa had a substantial influence on his art, particularly on the representation of the human figure in his sculptures and paintings. Underwood is best known for his sculptures cast in bronze, carvings in marble, stone and wood and his drawings. His lifetime's work includes a wide range of media and activities, with an expressive and technical mastery. Underwood did not hold modernism and abstraction in art in high regard and this led to critics often ignoring his work until the 1960s when he came to be viewed as an important figure in the development of modern sculpture in Britain.
Sir George James Frampton, was a British sculptor. He was a leading member of the New Sculpture movement in his early career when he created sculptures with elements of Art Nouveau and Symbolism, often combining various materials such as marble and bronze in a single piece. While his later works were more traditional in style, Frampton had a prolific career in which he created many notable public monuments, including several statues of Queen Victoria and later, after World War I, a number of war memorials. These included the Edith Cavell Memorial in London, which, along with the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens are possibly Frampton's best known works.
Henry Spencer Moore was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore also produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War, along with other graphic works on paper.
A stone sculpture is an object made of stone which has been shaped, usually by carving, or assembled to form a visually interesting three-dimensional shape. Stone is more durable than most alternative materials, making it especially important in architectural sculpture on the outside of buildings.
Edward Alfred Briscoe Drury was a British architectural sculptor and artist active in the New Sculpture movement. During a long career Drury created a great number of decorative figures such as busts and statuettes plus larger monuments, war memorials, statues of royalty and architectural pieces. During the opening years of the 20th-century he was among the foremost architectural sculptors active in Britain and in that period created the series of works in central London for which he is perhaps now best known. These include the figures on the Old War Office building in Whitehall, elements of the facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum and four of the colossal statues on Vauxhall Bridge.
Batu Siharulidze, is a Georgian artist naturalised in the United States, most widely known for his abstract figurative sculptures. He now lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is an associate professor of art at Boston University.
Abdul Rahman Mowakket is a contemporary sculptor from Syria.
Morris Singer is a British art foundry, recognised as the oldest fine art foundry in the world. Its predecessor, Singer was established in 1848 in Frome, Somerset, by John Webb Singer, as the Frome Art Metal Works.
The statue of George IV in Trafalgar Square, London, is a bronze equestrian statue by Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey. It depicts the King dressed in ancient Roman attire and riding bareback. The sculpture was originally designed to sit on top of the Marble Arch at the entrance to Buckingham Palace, but was placed in its current location following the King's death.
Helidon Xhixha is a contemporary artist born in Durrës, Albania, in December 1970. Xhixha is known for his stainless steel sculptures, which is often fused with other mediums such as marble or brass.
Nic Fiddian-Green is a British sculptor, who specialises is making lifelike models of horses' heads, both smaller and larger than life-sized.
Large Arch is an outdoor sculpture by British sculptor Henry Moore. It was installed in 1971 and is located in the outdoor plaza of the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library in Columbus, Indiana. Xenia and J. Irwin Miller commissioned the sculpture and gave it to the library. The sculpture is nearly 20 feet tall and is made of sandcast bronze that has been patinated.
The Messenger is a statue by the English sculptor David Wynne, OBE of a horse and rider. It was installed in the town centre of Sutton in Greater London, England in 1981.
River Legend is an outdoor 1976 basalt sculpture by American artist Dimitri Hadzi, located outside of the Edith Green – Wendell Wyatt Federal Building in Portland, Oregon.