Psyche
Francis Derwent Wood, R.A. (1871-1926)
1920
Green bronze
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Wirral, Merseyside
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Lord Lever, at whose expense this gallery was built, was passionate both about building and art collecting. Since the sculptors Edward Onslow Ford and William Goscombe John were among his close friends, his sculpture collection naturally focussed on the New Sculpture, "with its new freedom and variety of precarious and evocative poses facilitated” by the use of bronze rather than marble" — like F. W. Pomeroy's Wood Nymph, Francis Derwent Wood's Psyche is a fine example of the "new and expressive poetry" found in such work, with its "much wider range of imaginative and meaningful subjects in place of the old classical platitudes" (Morris 144-45).
Photograph, caption, and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee, 2009; detail by Robert Freidus
