This website has been commissioned by the family of Ronald Pope. In many ways it goes against the grain of Pope’s life – it is doubtful he would have enjoyed this level of publicity.
Unfortunately, needs must, if we are to preserve his work in a modern world. However, in his memory, we have tried to keep the website simple, with no marketing, and no overly expressive descriptions of sculptures, drawings, or paintings.
Description of Sculptures
Names
Pope was not keen on expressive, or ‘flowery’ terms or names for his work. Many are simply called ‘Duo’, or ‘Crowd’, with only a numerical sequence to differentiate sculptures in the series.
We have included the name and sequence number Ronald Pope gave to a sculpture, but be cautious, we cannot track all names or sequencing back to his choosing – over the years, owners, galleries and institutions have added or changed names, or altered the sequence of a series. Some sculptures do not have a name we can trace.
Hopefully this website will, by acting as a central reference point, help to make the names of sculptures more stable.
We have given each sculpture a ‘code’. Each code is simple and unique, and helps to identify not only the sculpture, but also the location (if known) of the sculpture. We hope that the ‘catalogue’ format of the codes does not detract from the quality of the sculpture.
Size
Wherever possible we have given all three dimensions, and stated separate sizes for the sculpture and base, where we have that information. Much of this data has been provided by owners, galleries and websites.
We hope to add missing information, but we have not yet had a response to all our queries.
Organisation
On this website, Pope’s work is first set out by decade. However, his style does change frequently, more or less every 10 years, his work cannot be exactly identified by any given decade. He was not only a very prolific sculptor, he was also a very adaptive one, frequently moving into new territory. Some attempt at encapsulating his differing styles seemed necessary – and why not decade by decade?
Pope also crossed into almost every sculptural genre – Abstract, Figures, Murals, Church sculpture, to name but a few, and worked in a huge variety of materials – steel, bronze, wood, stone etc. We have therefore built in an option to find sculpture by genre, but if you cannot find what you are looking for, please contact us.
Who is this website for?
We hope for everyone.
We have tried to combine a facility for public enjoyment with a resource for academic research, and everything in between. However, the website has been put together by the Pope family, who have little artistic knowledge, and have not followed in his vocational footsteps, so we may not fulfil everyone’s expectations. If you feel we have omitted anything, please let us know.