Virginia Wade, a former No. 2 tennis player who won the U.S. Open, has confirmed that she was the model for David Wynne’s celebrated fountain sculpture by Tower Bridge.
Title: “Girl With A Dolphin” fountain (1973)
Artist: David Wynne, sculptor (1926-2014)
Materials: Bronze
Size: 17 feet tall
Location: St Katherine’s Pier, London
About: Tourists visiting London may be unaware that they have the nude likeness of a former professional tennis player in their camera roll.
The “Girl With A Dolphin” fountain, with its sculpture by British artist David Wynne, sits with Tower Bridge in its backdrop for those walking by St Katherine’s Pier on the north side of the River Thames. It also happens to be a stone’s throw away from Devon House, the main teaching hub on Northeastern University’s London campus.
The sculpture depicts a female diver embracing an arched bottlenose dolphin, with water jetting through their marine dance. As U.K.-based travel photographer Wayne Marinovich writes, the sculpture makes for “a great foreground piece” when photographing Tower Bridge “no matter what time of day.”
The sculpture and fountain were installed in 1973 but it took 50 years for Virginia Wade, a former British women’s No. 2 tennis player — who won both the singles and doubles U.S. Open tournaments — to confirm that she was the model for Wynne’s work.
Wynne had made a bust of Wade and sculpted her on court during her prime in the 1970s. In 2023, she confirmed to The Sunday Times that he later asked if she would be willing to pose for “Girl With A Dolphin.”
The artist and his muse decided not to use her face for the work, but only her body.
“We didn’t go around saying it was me. It was just a girl with a dolphin,” Wade added. But after Wynne’s passing in 2014, Wade was happy to relinquish the secret they both shared, describing the work as “full of joy and life.”
The artist’s fascination with dolphins began, according to his son Edward, when he would visit a dolphinarium in Brighton on England’s south coast. He would sit in the venue’s restaurant where there was a table that allowed him to watch the dolphins play.
To get better acquainted with his subject, Wynne, who initially studied zoology in college and also made sculptures of The Beatles and the late queen, would later swim regularly with dolphins, both in the wild on foreign holidays and at a London aquarium.
The “Girl With A Dolphin” has a twin in the city. In Chelsea, west London, there is a similar statue named “Boy With A Dolphin,” depicting Wynne’s other son, Roly.