In 1942 the Royal Academy commissioned Sir William Reid Dick with the task of producing a bust in bronze of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Prime Minister had proved unwilling to sit for the sculptor Claire Sheridan who had threatened ‘to commit suicide on the steps of 10 Downing Street if Reid Dick was granted access’. The Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, suggested joint sittings but warned the PM he would be required to act as arbiter between them. This indeed was an odd proposal with which to burden a Prime Minister who clearly had weightier matters to attend to in the uncertain days of 1942. Churchill remained reluctant to sit for anyone but was finally persuaded by the King to allow Reid Dick access.

The chance to portray Churchill at this time was regarded as a golden opportunity. The portrait painter Alfred Egerton Cooper (1883-1974), having got wind of Reid Dick’s appointment, persuaded him over a game of billiards at the Arts Club in Dover Street, to be allowed to accompany him to 10 Downing Street in the guise of an assistant. As Reid Dick took and dictated Churchill’s measurements to Egerton Cooper, the latter hastily penned a portrait sketch of the PM which ultimately evolved into the painter’s finest work, a portrait exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1943 and that was later published as a morale-boosting poster for the general public.

Reid Dick’s visits to Downing Street continued through September and October 1942 resulting in a finished clay model from which were cast a life sized plaster model (recently in the inventory of Historical Portraits, Dover St, London) as part of the process in casting the life sized bronze which was ultimately presented by Sir Edwin Lutyens, as President of the Royal Academy, to Churchill himself. The size of the signed and finished green-patinated bronze we here offer is close to the fragile plaster maquette given by Reid Dick to his wartime nieghbour, Landreth Harrison of the U.S, State Department, (sold by Bonhams in 2004) and appears superior to a similarly sized bronze head without integral base sold ten years ago by Christies in 1996 for £13800 hammer (£15870).

Sir William Reid Dick, K.C.V.O., R.A.

Sir William Reid Dick (Glasgow 1879 - London 1961) studied at the Glasgow School of Art until 1907, and in London at the City and Guilds School, Kennington. After service in the First World War, he was admitted an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1921 and elected a Royal Academician in 1928. He served as president of the Royal Society of British Sculptors from 1933-1938, and was knighted by George V in 1935. From 1938 he held the appointment of Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland, and as such became a member of the Royal Household in Scotland. As a sculptor of portrait statuary Reid Dick enjoyed the confidence of the establishment and the approval of the wider public during his lifetime, as contemporary comment on his statue of George V (1938) outside the House of Lords testifies. ' Foremost among British sculptors, and representative of the more orthodox or classical school whose mainspring is found in the great traditions of European civilization, is Sir William Reid Dick, K.C.V O., R.A., King's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland … In his work will be found elements absorbed from the Greek, the Gothic and the Renaissance, often quite distinct and clear, and again, in scholarly combination, but with originality and resource and always with a modern accent. It is only through a profound study of "the undying masterpieces of the proven great" that we believe a style can be formed, and Sir William's style is both definite and personal. Such work should satisfy the most exacting tastes and present the least difficulty to the comprehension of the average beholder (Reid Dick, H. Granville Fell 1945).

Other major works by Reid Dick include panels and carvings for the Lord Kitchener Memorial in St. Paul's Cathedral (1925); the memorial to the missing at the Menin Gate, Ypres (1927); the Royal Air Force Monument eagle on Victoria Embankment; the Regent's Park Boy with Frog fountain (1936); a bronze bust of Princess Elizabeth (1946) in the Royal Collection: and the imposing British memorial bronze statue of F.D.R. in Grosvenor Square facing the United States Embassy (1946); Sir William Reid Dick's archives are held by the Tate Gallery and he is buried in St.Paul's.