Studio 3 Gallery, School of Arts, University of Kent:<\/p>\n
30 September \u2013 20 December 2013<\/p>\n
The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds:<\/p>\n
15 January \u2013 13 April 2014<\/p>\n
Studio 3 Gallery was delighted\u00a0to host a\u00a0major new exhibition dedicated to the art of one of the leading sculptors of the late Victorian and Edwardian period: Alfred Drury. The exhibition showed Drury\u2019s most important sculptural works on a smaller scale \u2013 including his most characteristic masterpieces Griselda<\/i>, The Age of Innocence<\/i> and Lilith<\/i> \u2013 thanks to generous loans from private collections. The exhibition, which\u00a0then moved to\u00a0The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery in Leeds, is supported by grants from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Henry Moore Foundation and the Leeds Art Fund.<\/p>\n
A fully illustrated catalogue with contributions by Benedict Read, Jolyon Drury, Brian Landy, Jane Winfrey and the exhibition curator Ben Thomas accompanied\u00a0the exhibition, and presented new research on the artist. The catalogue was published thanks to the generosity of the Leeds Art Fund \u2013 Susan Beattie Memorial.<\/p>\n
The aim of the exhibition Alfred Drury and the New Sculpture<\/i> was to review the art and life of Alfred Drury (1856-1944), the formative influences on his sculptural practice, and his role in the New Sculpture movement of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. Drury is due a reappraisal. Recent writing on the New Sculpture has tended to follow the lead of Edmund Gosse\u2019s influential articles in the Art Journal<\/i> of 1894, which saw Frederick Leighton and George Frederic Watts as initiating a reform of British sculpture that reached its zenith in the work of Alfred Gilbert and William Hamo Thornycroft. Gosse barely mentioned Drury, dismissing him as \u2018a mannered Kensington student, somewhat under the influence of Dalou\u2019.<\/p>\n
Arguably, however, Drury was one of the central figures in the New Sculpture movement because he combined in his art the realism of the great French sculptor Aim\u00e9-Jules Dalou (1838-1902), with whom he had a long professional relationship, and the Michelangelo-esque vision of Alfred Stevens (1818-75), whose art he revered and whose drawings he collected. Dalou and Stevens were seen as the key influences in the reform of British sculpture by a slightly later generation of critics to Gosse, including Marion H. Spielmann and Kineton Parkes. Drury was recognised by Spielmann as \u2018one of the most distinguished\u2019 of the group of British artists taught by the exiled communard Dalou, and according to Parkes, Drury\u2019s \u2018adherence to Stevens has never wavered\u2019 so that \u2018in his work he is a direct descendant of the great sculptor-painter-designer, and is therefore in the direct line of English sculptural development\u2019. The neglect of Drury\u2019s art may also have been partly due to its languorous beauty, eschewing muscular heroics and decorative excesses. By contrast with Leighton and Thornycroft, Drury \u2018cares little for vigour, passion or anatomical display\u2019, argued Spielmann, but instead \u2018seeks the graceful, the placid, and the harmonious\u2019.<\/p>\n
Alongside sculptural works by Alfred Drury, the exhibition displayed paintings and medals by the artist, and also documents and photographs from the period. The exhibition included works by Aim\u00e9 Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin, Lord Leighton, and Alfred Stevens.<\/p>\n
A display of drawings by Alfred Stevens \u2013 \u2018England\u2019s Michelangelo\u2019 – from Drury\u2019s collection accompanied this exhibition at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury from 21 September to 1 December 2013:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.canterbury.co.uk\/Beaney\/whats_on\/Canterbury-‘England’s-Michelangelo’-Alfred-Stevens-at-The-Beaney-House-of-Art-Knowledge\/details\/?dms=13&venue=3036870&feature=1148<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A related exhibition on Alfred Drury ran at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds until 20 October 2013,\u00a0The Age of Innocence: Replicating the Ideal Portrait in the New Sculpture Movement<\/i>:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.henry-moore.org\/hmi\/exhibitions\/the-age-of-innocence<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Studio 3 Gallery, School of Arts, University of Kent: 30 September \u2013 20 December 2013 The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds: 15 January \u2013 13 April 2014 Studio 3 Gallery was delighted\u00a0to host a\u00a0major new exhibition dedicated to the art of one of the leading sculptors of the late Victorian and Edwardian … Continue reading Alfred Drury and the New Sculpture<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65798,"featured_media":0,"parent":19,"menu_order":13,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65798"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":605,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/395\/revisions\/605"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/studio3gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}