Franta Belksy: Sculpture

The late Frantsa Belsky, who was born in Brno in what was then Czechoslovakia, modelled four generations of the Royal Family. His first link with the Royal Family was a model of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1962, and he created a bronze head of the Queen in 1981 for the National Portrait Gallery.

His other works include the Shell Fountain on the South Bank in London and the Triga in Knightsbridge. He completed a series of sculptures of mothers with children, one of which, The Lesson, stands at Bethnal Green.

Belsky was selected by a government panel to create a memorial to Lord Mountbatten of Burma in 1982, three years after he was killed by the IRA. The 9ft statue depicted Mountbatten, the Queen's cousin, in naval uniform as though on the bridge of a ship.

Belsky had also already produced sculptures or portraits of the Duke of Edinburgh and Sir Winston Churchill. His statues of Churchill and President Truman stand in Missouri in the United States.