Ivor Roberts-Jones (1913 - 1996) was one of the finest sculptors working in Britain during the twentieth century. This book is the first in-depth study of this compelling artist who was responsible for the magisterial statue of Sir Winston Churchill which stands in London's Parliament Square. It incorporates a wealth of new research and never before published images of the artist's fascinating and wide-ranging output, including his numerous major public works - such as a haunting figure of controversial painter Augustus John in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, and the doomed World War I poet Rupert Brooke in Rugby, Warwickshire. It also provides the first detailed examination of Roberts-Jones's standing as one of Britain's greatest portrait sculptors for whom a wide array of impressive personalities sat. Finally it explores his significant achievement as a sculptor of wild animals and his lifelong fascination with depicting the blind and visually impaired.

Author Biography

Jonathan Black is a Senior Research Fellow in the History of Art and a member of the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre at Kingston University, London. He has published widely on British Modernism and amongst his previous books are Edward Wadsworth: Form, Feeling, and Calculation: The Complete Paintings and Drawings (2006), and Dora Gordine: Sculptor, Artist, Designer (2008), and The Face of Courage: Eric Kennington, Portraiture and the Second World War (2011) all Philip Wilson Publishers. Dr Sara Ayres has obtained her PhD on the domestic display of paintings by Gustav Klimt from Birkbeck College, University of London in 2011. As an AHRC Postdoctoral Researcher (2012-2013) on the project Public Commemoration and Representation Post-1945: The Sculpture of Ivor Roberts-Jones (1913-1996) and as a member of the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre at Kingston University's Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, she focuses on the cultural mobility of sculpture.