FRINK, Dame Elisabeth Jean

1930 - 1993

Elisabeth Jean Frink was born at The Grange, Thurlow, Suffolk on 14 November 1930, only daughter of Herbert Ralph Cuyler Frink (26 August 1899-2 March 1974), a cavalry officer, and his wife, Jean Kathleen née Conway-Gordon (23 October 1909-1997), a colonel's daughter, who met and married at Delhi, Bengal, India on 11 February 1929. Frink's early years were spent travelling with her army father, who was serving with the 4th–7th Dragoon Guards but their home remained at Thurlow and about 1960, they moved to a modern house 'Cuylers' down The Drift at Thurlow where they remained until 1984, when her widowed mother joined her daughter in Dorset. In 1940, her father was stationed at Kingston, Dorset, close to the Purbeck quarries and the magnificent ruin of Corfe Castle; both sites impressed her enough for Elisabeth to make Dorset her home some thirty years later. Frink started to draw when she was thirteen and her subjects were men on skeletal horses rendered in ink and wash, which she called ‘apocalyptic’. At the age of 16, she won a place at Guildford School of Art and in 1947 started in the painting school but moved over to sculpture when the head of department was sculptor Willi Soukop (1907-1995). After two years at Guildford and, following Soukop, applied to Chelsea School of Art in 1949, where she studied until 1953, perfecting her own method of modelling, and carving in plaster of paris, a practice used by the head of department, Bernard Meadows (1915-2005), also by Henry Moore (1898-1986), a visiting tutor. In 1952 she received her first major commission, a figure of St John Bosco, for the new church of St John Bosco in Woodley, near Reading, Berkshire. Her last religious commission was her last work, 'The Risen Christ', for Liverpool Cathedral, unveiled by her son on Easter Sunday, 11 April 1993, a week before her death. In 1953, she won the student prize in the 'Unknown Political Prisoner' Sculpture Competition, and she taught at Chelsea School of Art 1953-1961, at St Martin's School of Art 1954-1962, and a visiting instructor at the Royal College of Art 1965-1967. Her first solo show was at St George's Gallery at 32a George Street, Hanover Square, London in 1955 and first overseas at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York in 1959 and she also exhibited with the Women's International Art Club. Frink married at the church of Notre Dame de France, Leicester Place, London on 25 September 1955, architect Michel Jammet (1921-1972), and their only child, Rene Lin Bree, was born at St Stephen's Hospital, London on 11 May 1958. Frink divorced Michel Jammet in 1963 and the following year, at Wandsworth register office, she married Edward Pool, whose family had a butchery business in Smithfield. In 1967, they sold their Chelsea home and moved to a group of abandoned farm buildings, Le Village, in the foothills of the Cévennes, near Nîmes, France. In June 1973, Frink was divorced from Pool and returned to live and work in England, where she moved into a large apartment at Buckingham Gate, London. In December 1974, Frink married in London, Alexander Csaky, a Hungarian count, and an insurance broker. In 1976, when the lease on her Buckingham Gate studio expired, they purchased Woolland House, near Blandford Forum, Dorset, a large converted stable building with extensive gardens where she had a studio built near the house and there made a life-size horse, commissioned by the Earl of March for Goodwood racecourse. Frink was appointed CBE in 1969 and made a Dame of the British Empire in 1982 and became a Companion of Honour in 1992. A trustee of the British Museum in 1975, a member of the Royal Fine Arts Commission in 1976, and elected a Royal Academician on 1 March 1977. Elisabeth Jean Frink died of cancer at Woolland House on 18 April 1993, two months after Alexander Csaky following a stroke. In Little Thurlow church, is a small model inscribed 'St Edmund by Dame Elisabeth Frink R.A., in memory of her father, Brigadier Herbert Ralph Cuyler Frink DSO, 26 Aug. 1899-2 March 1974'.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from 34 Oakley Street, Southwest London
1954 1359 David - head
from c/o The Waddington Galleries, 2 Cork Street, West London
1972 1089 Lying Down Horse with Head Turned - pencil & wash
         1090 Portrait of a Friend: Metamorphic Man - pencil
         1134 Birdman, 1962 - bronze
         1135 Sentinel II - bronze
         1176Head with Goggles, 1971 - bronze
         1177 Head, 1971 - bronze
from 1303 Munster House, St James's Court, Buckingham Gate, Southwest London
1974 1304 Horse - watercolour
         1306 Horse - watercolour
         1371 Man - bronze
         1373 Bird Mirage - aluminium
1975 1311 Figures in a Landscape - pencil & watercolour
         1312 Horse and Rider - pencil
         1313 Figures in a Landscape - pencil & watercolour
         1365 Wild Boar - bronze
1976 91 Head - watercolour
         94 Head - watercolour
         95 Head - watercolour
         110 Miner's Head - bronze
1977 132 Tribute 1977 - watercolour
         133 Tribute 1977 - watercolour
         1275 Tribute 1977 - plaster for bronze
from c/o Waddington and Tooth Galleries, 2 Cork Street, West London
1978 867 Precursor 1976 - bronze
         868 Standing Man 1978 - watercolour
         869 Running Man 1978 - watercolour
         870 Rolling Horse - bronze
1979 704 Running Man 1978 - bronze
1980 100 Professor Grahae Clark, O.B.E. - bronze
         923 Running Man - watercolour
         945 Lord Zuckerman, O.M. - bronze
         952 Running Man - bronze
         1176 Viscount Eccles, K.C.V.I. - bronze
from Wolland House, Wolland, Blandford, Dorset
1982 715 Lin Jammet - bronze
         1024 Drummer - bronze
         1286 Horse - pencil
         1287 Horse - pencil
1983 1254 Jogger- bronze
         1255 Sir Keith Showerin - bronze
         1256 Rolling Horse - bronze
         1257 Study for Sculpture III - pencil
         1258 Study for Sculpture II - pencil
         1259 Study for Sculpture I - pencil
1984 1484 Seated Man 1983 - bronze
1986 1261 Study for a Sculpture 1986 - collage and pencil
         1262 Study for a Sculpture 1986 - collage and pencil
         1263 Tryptych 1980 - collage and pencil
1989 135 Horse Head 1987 - silkscreen
         1163 Head 1986 - collage
         1179 Easter Head I 1989 - bronze
1991 30 Desert Quartet III 1989 - bronze
         125 Grey Horse Head - screenprint
         129 Man and Horse - screenprint
         1150 Leonardo's Dog 1990 - bronze
         1268 Man and Baboon 1989 - acrylic and chalk
1992 553 Green Man (Blue) - screenprint
         554 Green Man (Red) - screenprint
         555 Green Man (Grey) - screenprint
         556 Green Man (Black) - screenprint
         1042 War Horse 1991 - bronze
the late
1993 637 Bird 1958 - bronze
         638 Harbinger Bird - bronze
         639 Judas - bronze
         640 Goggle Head - bronze
         641 Tribute Head III - bronze
         642 Diace I - bronze

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Works by This Artist