Herbert Haseltine

American, 1877 – 1962

Sudbourne Premier: Suffolk Punch Stallion, 1927

Bronze sand cast. Mercury gilding over a warm brown patina

10 ½ H. x 11 ½ W. x 6 ½ D. inches

Signed left side: © HASELTINE / MCMXXVII

Mounted atop two-tier burgundy marble base, 5 ¾ H. inches

Overall height: 13 ¾ inches

This bronze sculpture is part of Haseltine’s series of twenty British Champion animals, his major body of work in the 1920s.

In 1921, Haseltine began a series, The Champion Domestic Animals of Great Britain, from agricultural shows across Great Britain, using the animals themselves as models. The series included draft horses, a thoroughbred, polo pony, sheep, cattle, and pigs.  Models were cast in bronze and carved in marble and stone. 

Suffolk Stallion, Sudbourne Premier

"The moment I saw Sudbourne Premier, the magnificent stallion of that famous breed of chestnuts, my only thought was to get to work. I placed my stand in the middle of an open space and had him walked round and round, first one way, then the other. Sudbourne Premier was at his best: he stretched his neck and champed his bit, looking intelligently to the right and left, showing a little of the whites of his eyes, which gave more life and expression to his already expressive and classical head. 

The groom braided his mane and tail as was customary to do when he was being shown: this displayed the line of his crest to the best advantage and lent itself to that stylized interpretation to be seen in my finished bronzes, which, subsequently, found their way to the Luxembourg Museum, Paris, the Tate Gallery, London, the Field Museum, Chicago, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art."

-adapted from Champion Animals: Sculptures by Herbert Haseltine, published by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1996



Haseltine's plasticine model of Sudbourne Premier

GRAHAM SHAY 1857

17 E. 67^th Street, No. 1A

New York, NY 10065

212.535.5767

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