The Scottish-born sculptor William Reid Dick (1878-1961) was known for his monumental and highly stylised sculptures and simplified portraits. Dick started his career as an apprentice stone mason at the age of twelve where he stayed for five years, during which time he learned to carve stone such as granite and attended drawing and life classes at night school in his free time. At the age of fourteen Dick worked under the supervision of George Frampton (1860-1928), and later in London took up a position as a studio assistant for Edwin Whitney-Smith (1880-1952).

Dick enrolled at Glasgow School of Art in 1899 to continue his studies in the evening whilst working in the day as a carver for a firm of stone decorators until he received his diploma in 1907, after which he accepted the post of Art Master at Bell's Hill Academy in Glasgow. In just the following year Dick exhibited his work at the Royal Academy for the first time. His prominence as a sculptor rose, seeing him become an Associate of the Academy in 1921 and a Royal Academician a few short years later in 1928. He held the position of Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland to King George VI (1895-1952) and, subsequently, Queen Elizabeth II (191926-2022) until his death in 1961. Dick was a prolific sculptor and was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy, as well as at other private London galleries and across the United Kingdom. He also exhibited in Paris and at the Venice Biennale, and although many of his public sculptures are to be found in London there are examples of his work around the world in countries as far afield as America, India, Africa, and Australia. Dick was President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, on the Royal Fine Arts Commission, and was Trustee of the Tate. He was also an outspoken advocate for his younger contemporaries. Yet despite such a distinguished career, Dick has been defined by art history scholars as one of Britain's lost sculptors.

This bronze was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and at the Royal Academy in separate years under two titles -The Kelpie and Nymph respectively. In the former title we can see a reflection of Dick's Scottish heritage especially since it was also exhibited under this title in his home country, whilst the contemporary influences of Greco-Roman mythology and the New Sculpture movement are evident in the figure itself. Dick's wider work was also inspired by Renaissance trends, the Gothic, and Art Deco, within which he chose predominantly female subjects. The characteristics of his sculptures that appealed to contemporary critics included grace and dignity, simplicity of form, clarity of line, individuality and skill. These qualities were most notably developed, according to Dennis Wardleworth, in his smaller sculptures of the 1920s, of which Kelpie is a very fine early example.

Whilst the choice to exhibit the same piece under different titles is not entirely clear, it is likely related to Dick's Scottish ancestry and his adopted home in England as much as it spoke to maintaining a broad customer base. Yet the symbolic links between their titles are nonetheless intriguing. In Scottish folklore, for instance, the shape-shifting kelpie was represented in either human or horse form, and would lure travellers and children to their deaths. Tales of these water spirits were inspired to instill fear and terror of the lochs, riverbanks and waterways around Scotland, and in this sense they can also be understood to be the personification of the flood. Indeed, the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) warned of the malevolence of the kelpies in his poem 'Address to the Deil [devil]' (1785/86). In common with the folklore surrounding the kelpie, the figure of the nymph from Greek mythology also served as the personification of the features of nature. However, in contrast to the malevolent kelpie, nymphs were benign creatures and associated with fertility and nurture, vitality and balance. Thus it is a commonplace to find nymphs depicted in classical literature and art presiding over natural springs and rivers, forests, meadows and mountains.