About

This display of the Gallery's holdings of figurative sculptures illustrates the evolution of sculptural approaches to form and space from the late nineteenth century to the modern era. Sculpture up to the late nineteenth century often echoed the poetry, myth and aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome and the Italian Renaissance. A more impressionistic portrayal of form began to emerge at the beginning of the twentieth century, with mass seen in terms of space and light, through the simplification and sometimes even the disintegration of form. Despite these later radical developments, figurative sculpture has endured as a robust and well-loved tradition at the same time as having undergone changes in approaches, materials and methods of exhibition.