British Architectural Sculpture, 1851–1951 John Stewart (Lund Humphries, £45)

SCULPTURE on the exteriors of our grandest city buildings usually passes unnoticed, yet, as John Stewart notes, it can include some of Britain’s greatest works of art. His study begins at the height of Victorian confidence in the aftermath of the Great Exhibition of 1851. To begin with, the architects of imposing public buildings, whether in the Gothic or Classical styles, used firms of architectural sculptors steeped in the stonemasonry tradition, who could be depended upon to produce work of consistently high quality.

The names William Farmer and William Brindley don’t resonate today, but their company was extensively used by George Gilbert Scott, including for the Foreign Office building in Whitehall and the Midland Hotel, as well as by Alfred Waterhouse to produce outstanding statuary for Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum. Richard Lockwood Boulton & Sons’ work on Northampton Town Hall is described as one of the finest and most complete programmes of decorative stone sculpture on any building of the Gothic Revival period.

From the 1870s, Fine Art sculptors, hitherto reluctant to contemplate the loss of artistic independence that architectural collaboration must involve, began to cross the divide. The Royal Academicians Hamo Thorneycroft and Harry Bates, who had started with Farmer and Brindley, were responsible for the exceptional figure sculpture on John Belcher’s Institute of Chartered Accountants building at Moorgate. Edwardian Baroque, influenced by the Belcher building, brought a flood of prestigious new sculptural commissions.

Early in the 20th century, Jacob Epstein was, controversially, producing naked-figure sculptures for the façade of Charles Holden’s British Medical Association building on the Strand. The imaginative forays of Gilbert Bayes (Selfridge’s and the Commercial Bank, Glasgow) and Eric Gill (Broadcasting House) lay ahead, before sculptors beat a retreat in the face of stripped-back Modernism. Well supported by photographs, a key requirement for the subject matter, but a considerable undertaking, this book will be a useful addition to the shelves of anyone interested in British architecture of this era. Jack Watkins

Sculptor Alfred Turner’s early-20th-century work at The Old Bailey