In 1991 Damien Hirst began to create works consisting of animals suspended in glass-walled tanks filled with the preser­vative formaldehyde. Under the collective title Natural History, the series has included fish, cows, sheep and, most famously, a 6.8-metre-long tiger shark. Sometimes presented whole, sometimes divided or skinned, the languid, floating carcasses can be both fascinating and repellent. In part their impact depends on the sheer physical presence of a dead animal in the artistic context of a beautifully crafted steel and glass vitrine. Influenced by childhood visits to natural history museums, Hirst said that he intended to create a zoo of dead animals, as an alternative to, ‘having living ones pacing around in misery’. He has described the works as sad rather than violent: ‘There is a kind of tragedy with all those pieces.’

Away from the Flock is one of the most powerful and evocative pieces in the Natural History series. Presented in a heavy-framed tank, a sheep is fixed in a position of movement so that it has the appearance of life. Whereas Hirst’s giant shark is a predator, invoking a visceral reaction of fear and menace, the sheep, caught as if in mid-frolic, is utterly benign and gentle. Nevertheless, it is a work that is rich in layers of allusion, ranging from the innocence of nursery rhymes to the banal realities of modern-day farming and the meat industry. The most obvious and immediate association is with religion and the wide-ranging iconography of the lamb in Christian art. The ambiguous and Victorian-sounding title Away from the Flock enhances the suggestion of religious symbolism. It has also invited comparison to a famous painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt, Our English Coasts (‘Strayed Sheep’),1852 (Tate) which shows a flock of strayed sheep feeding perilously close to the edges of a cliff. While acknowledging these general connota­tions, Hirst is non-committal about the choice of title, saying that it ‘gives a lot of the right kinds of meaning’.

Like other pieces in his Natural History series, Away from the Flock plays on con­trasts. These can be visual (the clean, hard lines of the tank against the fluffy textures of the sheep), physical (the highly toxic chemical of the preservative with the organic body) or emotional (our empathy with the animal versus our knowledge of its fate as artistic material). Throughout his career, Hirst has worked in many forms and media, but this direct and deceptively simple work is one of his most moving pieces. Less brutal and more joyous than his other Natural History works, it is still a powerful meditation on the fragility of existence and the silence of death. The artist has described the quiet resonance of the work:

 When I did the sheep I remember thinking that it might not work, because what was good about the fish was that you were putting them into their own habitat, liquid, but then with the sheep, it just had a brilliant sort of tragedy. Or something gentle. That was the thing: it wasn’t a shock, it just had this extra quality. It almost gave it personality, to put it into the liquid. And it didn’t look as if it was drowning, it looked serene.

This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.