‘Rasselas and Imlac in the Happy Valley’ is a series of painted and patinated bronze sculptures by Brian Clarke featuring two skulls on a plinth. The series takes its title from the events of Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas from 1759, a philosophical meditation on the elusiveness of earthly happiness.

From a series of sculptures which Clarke calls ‘drawings in the air’, the sculptures were created using the ancient technique of lost-wax casting. Each sculpture exists in an edition of seven.