Full cataloguing for the whole Collection is available to view here
This is a small selection from a much larger collection (full catalogue available here). It represents the finest and most comprehensive collection in private or public hands of The New Sculpture as defined in the late Susan Beattie's pioneering 1983 book of that title, a sleeve note from which described the subject:
Few movements in art have been as persistently ignored and misunderstood as the revolution set in motion in England after the death of Alfred Stevens in 1875. Omitted altogether from art-historical surveys of the period, or variously dispatched as a parochial reflection of France, as the backdrop to Epstein or as the product of one rogue genius, Alfred Gilbert, the New Sculpture has remained mysteriously proof against the recent waves of enthusiasm for Victorian against the recent waves of enthusiasm for Victorian art. [Beattie summed up in her introduction that] Behind every aspect of the New Sculpture movement, from its profound ésprit-de-corps to the individual achievements of its leading figures, lies the shared objective that was its true controlling force, no obedient following of nature but the most turbulent redefinition of sculpture’s role ever to take place in Britain. Whether reaching out into the community as decorators in the service of architecture and industry, or challenging the old, elitist concept of high art in their enthusiasm for the mass-produced, marketable art-object, or investigating, in low relief carving and modelling and the use of colour, sculpture’s affinity with painting, the New Sculptors advanced together upon ground prepared for them by Alfred Stevens. In their passion to express, through the solid, material medium of stone or clay, the intangible, secret forces of human imagination, they justified his agonised struggle for self-determination and the cause of art without boundaries.
It would be impossible now to assemble this collection. The widow of the remarkable man who acquired and curated it, Ellie Packer, herself once a curator (Brighton Museum and Art Gallery) is clear in her mission, in accordance with Robert Freidus' wishes: The object is not to sell it, but is to give the collection in its entirety to an institution that would show and care for it.
Rupert Maas
The Robert Freidus Collection of ‘The New Sculpture’ is the culmination of a lifetime of dedicated and enthusiastic collecting by an incorrigible completist. Robert Freidus (1941-2021) had already assembled, and subsequently found museum homes for, two, very different, important collections before embarking on this, his third and last great project. The first was of 2300 significant twentieth century photographs which was sold to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and is now known as the Parsons Collection. The second is the Robert Freidus Architectural Paper Model Collection, more than 12,000 examples of the genre, which were given to the Victoria and Albert Museum and were the subject of the 2010/11 exhibition at the Museum of Childhood, ‘Cut It, Fold It, Build It With Paper’.
The third collection, of the ‘New Sculpture’, was commenced almost thirty years ago and, expanding in scope as it went along, proved to be of consuming interest right up until Robert Freidus’s sudden and unexpected death. It is this collection which is in search of a future home. Freidus took his cue from Susan Beattie’s indispensable, and not yet surpassed volume, ‘The New Sculpture’ (published 1983) and aimed to own examples of the work of every artist included in her book. As time went on, other considerations arose: a particular interest in the work of women sculptors, able to be trained and earn an independent living as artists for the first time during this period, and also in medals and medallists, many of whom were of course also women. The collection comprises work in many media: bronze, terracotta, ceramic, painted plaster, wax, marble. It is broad as well as deep with the additional aim of demonstrating the breadth of each artist’s production: figures, reliefs, medals, portraits, public and private commissions. It is a significant collection which includes not only fine examples by the major protagonists of the New Sculpture movement but also many beautiful works by less celebrated but perhaps unjustly neglected artists, a significant number of women among them. The period covered extends from the 1870s to just after the First World War and there are almost 700 pieces.
Bob’s desire was that the collection, which he believed amounted to more than the sum of its parts, should remain intact, as far as possible. He wished it to find a home in a public institution, as his gift, where it would be looked after, researched and made available to be seen. He believed that this period of the history of art was the last moment when art and craft were inextricably linked, when eye, heart and skilled hand created works of eternal beauty. The purpose of this present exhibition, so kindly presented by the Maas Gallery, is to make the collection better known. It is to be hoped that this display of a small part of it will begin the process of finding its ultimate abiding place
Ellie Packer (Mrs Robert Freidus)