Charles Wallrock of Wick Antiques who is selling this sculpture of the Queen Mother
A sculpture made following the Queen Mother’s final sitting and completed after her death has emerged for sale.
The breath-taking bronze that depicts the centenarian with her well-known kindly smile has been put up for sale to mark the 20th anniversary of her death.
It was created by Vivien Mallock, an Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, and is being sold by Wick Antiques of Lymington, Hants.
The life-size bronze was commissioned by St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, and three were made.
The second is owned by the Goring Hotel where the Queen Mother enjoyed taking tea – so this is the only one to become publicly available.
It shows the Queen Mother in a hat and wearing a palm leaf brooch that was made for the then Queen Elizabeth by Cartier in 1938.
Vivien, who lives in Thruxton in north Hampshire, said: “I completed it just a day or two after she died. I had two sittings with her at Clarence House and she was wonderful and very, very friendly.
“The commission was from St Mary’s Hospital which she had been president of since 1930.
“The sittings involved a lot of measuring and she couldn’t have been more helpful.
“At one point she asked if I had a portfolio I could show her and she told me to sit down and put my arm around her as went through it because she was a little blind.
“She was very unspoiled and was the great matriarch of the family who really did prize service.”
Charles Wallrock of Wick Antiques said: “It has been 20 years since the Queen Mother passed away and she never got to see the finished sculpture.
“I think she’d have been delighted as it really is exceptional with the smile and eyes giving away her personality.
“The skin, too, is superb with the paper-like texture captured in the bronze.
“Vivien is one of our very best sculptors and her largest work is the memorial to the Royal Tank Regiment that the Queen unveiled in 2,000 in Whitehall Court.
“Her large bronze of the Queen was unveiled in 2013 in Winchester’s Great Hall and her bust of Sir Winston Churchill is in the Pentagon as a gift from the British Government to the US Department of Defense.
“To have this to sell is a great privilege and there are collectors and institutions that would love to own it.”
The sculpture has an asking price of £35,000.
The Queen Mother was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI.
She was the last Empress of India and after her husband died she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother to avoid confusion with her daughter, the present Queen.
She died on March 30, 2002, at the age of 101, seven weeks after the death of her younger daughter Margaret.
The Queen Mother was enormously popular and was an active member of the Royal Family until shortly before her death.
Wick Antiques was established by Charles Wallrock in the early 1980s. Having grown up in the Antiques world Charles developed an extensive wealth of knowledge.
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