New sculpture

New Sculpture is a term denoting a tendency in British sculpture of the second half of the nineteenth century, roughly from the 1880s to the early 1900s. It emerged as a reaction against the frozen neoclassicism and static quality of earlier Victorian sculpture. New Sculpture artists sought greater naturalism, psychological expressiveness, poetry, and symbolic content, drawing at the same time on the influence of the French school and the Italian Renaissance. They paid particular attention to surface, movement, detail, and subtle modeling, often combining different materials — bronze, ivory, colored enamels, and precious stones. Leading figures of the tendency include Frederic Leighton, author of the landmark "An Athlete Wrestling with a Python," Alfred Gilbert, Hamo Thornycroft, and Alfred Drury. New Sculpture also promoted the development of the decorative statuette and closely echoed the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau. It substantially renewed British sculpture and prepared the ground for the modernist sculpture of the twentieth century.