A LEAD FOUNTAIN FOUNTAIN GROUP OF A BOY WITH A FROG

Boy with frog dates from the early 1900s when Reid Dick showed deference to the leading lights of the New Sculpture movement, notably in his Femina Victrix which is a homage to Leighton’s Athlete Wrestling with a Python. Boy with Frog was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1910 ‘N°1916 The Frog – statuette, bronze’ and again in 1931 ‘N° 1642 ‘Model for Fountain in bronze’. The latter being the example cast for the fountain in Queen Mary’s Gardens, Regent's Park, where it remains today. A portrait by Philippe Ledoux of Sir William Reid Dick in his studio exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1934 shows a version of Boy with Frog beside the sculptor himself – which could be the present lead example as it looks to be light grey in colour. The reputed provenance dates the present lead statue to the 1930s. A stone version was commissioned in the 1950s by the American millionaire and art collector Huntington Hartford (D. Wardleworth, William Reid Dick, Sculptor, Surrey, 2013, p. 178).