Hollywood’s favourite artwork

LOS ANGELES — Benedict Cumberbatch has become the latest celebrity to be seduced by an eerie, life-size artwork of a young boy soldier clutching a hand grenade. The Sherlock actor has paid the artist Tristan Schoonraad, who works under the name Schoony, £7,000 (S$14,100) to create a wall panel of the life-cast resin covered in gold metallic paste. Versions of the work, known as Boy Soldier, are also owned by Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as well as Blur frontman Damon Albarn.

Cumberbatch met Schoonraad, who has been working in film special effects on films such as Rambo, Troy, the Harry Potter films and Gladiator, when he starred in the 2013 short film Little Favour, during which the artwork appeared in one of the scenes.

Leontia Reilly, who runs an East London gallery, said the actor “fell in love with the piece when they were making the film together and asked Tristan to make a version of it for him to keep”.

Boy Soldier was first created for a 2011 art installation erected outside the Houses of Parliament as part of a peace campaign. The work was inscribed with the words “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (translated as “it is sweet and right to die for your country”), taken from Wilfred Owen’s World War I poem. Schoonraad started the work in 2009, using his then seven-year-old nephew Kai as the model.

“Sending children to war is horrific and highlighting this injustice is really important to me,” said the artist of the inspiration behind the work. “I wanted to make something alive. My nephew is aged seven in this art piece; the age of some of our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq as they would have been 10 years ago. It is a future I do not want for my nephew.” THE DAILY TELEGRAPH