Sculptor and graphic artist Elisabeth Frink studied at Guildford and Chelsea Schools of Art. She worked mainly in bronze and executed numerous public commissions and portrait busts, as well as making prints and drawings. She exhibited extensively with the WIAC, also serving twice on the selection committee (1953, 1957). Soldier’s Head II is a portrait of her second husband, Ted Pool, presented as a shell-shocked soldier. Frink’s rejection of classical ideals in her male figures are evident in the protruding jaw, large chin and tiny forehead of this head, with its gouged eyes, broken nose, cauliflower ear and shrapnel injuries highlighting the brutality of war.