Alfred Drury’s (1856-1944) body of work locates him as a leading figure in the New Sculpture movement, yet his position as an innovator and conduit between British and European artists has gone unacknowledged. Drury’s formidable output serves as a reminder of his influence in raising the profile of British sculpture during the early twentieth century.
The current exhibition is an important and rare opportunity to survey the private collection of the Drury family. This exceptional collection draws on three generations of unbroken provenance, with many of Drury’s sculptures being brought to the market for the first time having only previously been exhibited at museums. The Drury family’s collection will be exhibited alongside key works by Thomas Brock (1847-1922) and Hamo Thornycroft (1850-1925), as well as Aimé-Jules Dalou (1838-1902) and Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), and will trace the echoes of continental influence during this pivotal time in the development of British sculpture. Drury’s personal art collection will also be available to view, which includes works by Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) and Alfred Stevens (1817-1875).
Drury was an ambitious, passionate, and highly-skilled sculptor, whose modelling expertise were recognised during his time at the National Art Training School in South Kensington in the 1870s. It was at this point in his career that Drury studied under Dalou, with whom he later became a long-term friend after spending four years in Paris working with him on the monumental sculpture The Triumph of the Republic (1899). By 1900 Drury had also met Rodin, whose work he held in high regard. The legacy of Dalou’s instruction is evident in Drury’s early sculptures as is his admiration of Rodin, but in the years that followed he established an identity, style, and technique that set him apart from his European counterparts. Drury’s body of work also testifies to the interconnection between British and French sculpture at this time in ways that informed and continued to resonate across the New Sculpture movement.
In a career spanning over sixty years Drury achieved considerable professional success, completing several important public architectural and monumental commissions, including a statue commemorating the polymath Joseph Priestly in Leeds (1899), Queen Victoria in Bradford (1904), his colossal allegorical masterpieces at Whitehall in London (1904-1905), and a sculpture of Sir Joshua Reynolds which has stood outside London’s Royal Academy at Burlington House since it was unveiled in 1931. Examples of Drury’s works are held in collections at Tate Britain and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.