William Dickey King Signed Clay Terracotta Portrait Bust Sculpture. 2003

  

They came out if a private Long Island New York estate. This sculpture features a likeliness of who we believe to a queen. She is sculpted in profile with a golden crown on here head.

It is titled in the base "SA MAJESTE" which we believe translates to "With Majesty". It is signed and dated by the artist.

This is a rarer piece from King as he mainly worked in steel. It has a superb outsider art appeal to it. Measures 13 1/4" tall x 9" long x 4 thick. King worked in clay, wood, bronze, vinyl, burlap and aluminum. He worked both big and small, from busts and toylike figures to large public art pieces depicting familiar human poses -- a seated, cross-legged man reading; a Western couple (he in a cowboy hat, she in a long dress) holding hands; a tall man reaching down to tug along a recalcitrant little boy; a crowd of robotic-looking men walking in lock step.

But for all its variation, what unified his work was a wry observer's arched eyebrow, the pointed humor and witty rue of a fatalist. His figurative sculptures, often with long, spidery legs and an outlandishly skewed ratio of torso to appendages, use gestures and posture to suggest attitude and illustrate his own amusement with the unwieldiness of human physical equipment. His subjects included tennis players and gymnasts, dancers and musicians, and he managed to show appreciation of their physical gifts and comic delight at their contortions and costumery.

His suit-wearing businessmen often appeared haughty or pompous; his other men could seem timid or perplexed or awkward. Oddly, or perhaps tellingly, he tended to depict women more reverentially, though in his portrayals of couples the fragility and tender comedy inherent in couplehood settled equally on both partners.

King's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, among other places, and he had dozens of solo gallery shows in New York and elsewhere. But the comic element of his work probably caused his reputation to suffer. Reviews of his exhibitions frequently began with the caveat that even though the work was funny, it was also serious, displaying superior technical skills, imaginative vision and the bolstering weight of a range of influences, from the ancient Etruscans to American folk art to 20th-century artists including Giacometti, Calder. The critic Hilton Kramer, one of Mr.

King's most ardent advocates, wrote in a 1970 essay accompanying a New York gallery exhibit that he was, among other things, an amusing artist, and nowadays this can, at times, be almost as much a liability as an asset. A "preoccupation with gesture is the focus of King's sculptural imagination, " Mr. The physical stance of the human animal as it negotiates the social arena, the unconscious gait that the body assumes in making its way in the social medium, the emotion traced by the course of a limb, a torso, a head, the features of a face, a coiffure or a costume - from a keen observation of these materials King has garnered a large stock of sculptural images notable for their wit, empathy, simplicity and psychological precision. William Dickey King was born in Jacksonville, Fla. His father, Walter, was a surveyor and an engineer who moved his family around Florida to accommodate his work.

As a boy, William made model airplanes and helped his father and older brother build furniture and boats. Expected to follow in his father's footsteps, he began to study engineering at the University of Florida, but it was his mother, the former Florence Dickey, a teacher, who recognized his independent streak and encouraged his departure. He later studied with the sculptor Milton Hebald (who died this year) and traveled to Italy on a Fulbright grant. King's work often reflected the times, taking on fashions and occasional politics.

In the 1960s and 1970s, his work featuring African-American figures (including the activist Angela Davis, with hands cuffed behind her back) evoked his interest in civil rights. He continued to work until just a few months before his death. This item is in the category "Art\Art Sculptures". The seller is "upstatetreasures14" and is located in this country: US.

This item can be shipped to United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Estonia, Australia, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Slovenia, Japan, China, Sweden, South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Africa, Thailand, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Bahamas, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Republic of Croatia, Malaysia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Jamaica, Barbados, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam, Bolivia, Ecuador, Egypt, French Guiana, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Guadeloupe, Iceland, Jersey, Jordan, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, Sri Lanka, Luxembourg, Monaco, Macau, Martinique, Maldives, Nicaragua, Oman, Peru, Pakistan, Paraguay, Reunion, Vietnam.

• Time Period Produced: 2000-Now
• Region of Origin: New York
• Material: Terracotta Clay
• Largest Dimension: 12in.

• Original/Reproduction: Original
• Artist: William Dickey King
• Listed By: Dealer or Reseller
• Placement: Table
• Type: Bust
• Subject: Portrait Bust