The Child, 1927

Sir William Reid Dick RA (1878 - 1961)

RA Collection: Art

Although perhaps best known for monumental architectural sculptures, memorials and official portraits, William Reid Dick’s imaginative sculptural compositions ran parallel with public commissions throughout his career. He exhibited his Diploma work ‘The Child’ at the Royal Academy in 1929 two years after exhibiting another statuette of the same title. The statuette emerged as a popular and accessible form of sculpture in the late nineteenth century. Reid Dick, a successor to the New Sculpture Movement, regularly exhibited statuettes at the Royal Academy, perhaps his most famous being ‘The Catapult’ (1911) a cast of which was purchased by Queen Mary in 1915.