Bronze, Signed Hamish Mackie
Numbered edition of 12
Dated 2022
147cm long x 35cm wide x 102cm high
(58″ x 14″ x 40″)
Sculptures can be shipped world wide at cost, no VAT payable on exports outside the EU.
£40,000 inc VATAfter spending many happy hours in the Ardennes studying wild boar, Hamish has created two life size wild boar sculptures as well as a family group of boar (known as a sounder).
“Each age and sex of wild boar move and behave in a very different way. I have enjoyed putting these differences into my sculptures, the boar having a much heavier gait than the lighter young. When a sounder is running past, it is hard to distinguish the age and sex of the boars. I have incorporated the telltale signs in these sculptures, right down to tail hair length.”
Working from a culled European wild boar, Hamish has sculpted two young males (keiler) Wild Boar Life Size Legs Under 2022 and Wild Boar Life Size Legs Out 2022. The keiler is the most dynamic and characteristic of wild boar in terms of age and sex, being distinguishable just by visible tusks and a prominent hair ridge along the spine.
The wild boar has been used as an emblem since antiquity. The earliest known depiction of a wild boar was drawn 45,500 years ago. The most well known is Il Porcellino, a bronze fountain of a boar with a polished nose in Florence. It was sculpted around 1634 as a copy from a Hellenistic marble original.
Wildboar are one of the most wide ranging mammals in the world, listed by the World Conservation Union as one of the most invasive species. They number more than ten million in the EU alone. After man, the grey wolf is the main predator of wild boar.
Before starting his life size sculptures of wild boar, Hamish sculpted the sounder of seven smaller boar to get the subject ‘in his head’. (He has used this technique when sculpting a range of wildlife, including Lions in Kenya, Camels in Dubai and Albatross in the Falklands).
