Publisher's Synopsis
British artist Eric Kennington (1888-1960) was a highly regarded stone carver, whose achievements were ranked in the 1920s and 1930s alongside those of his contemporaries Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and Frank Dobson. His work has since fallen into neglect: Jonathan Black attributes this unjust neglect to Kennington's position between sculptural traditionalists and avant-garde artists in England. Kennington was an Official War Artist during World War I, and carved a number of war memorials in the 1920s. His later work is characterised by public architectural sculpture carved directly into the exterior surface of a building, and his public commissions include five relief panels for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford upon Avon (1930-32); models/plans for the Pan American Columbus Memorial Lighthouse, Santo Domingo (1930-4); and the stone relief for the Harold Cohen Memorial Library, University of Liverpool (1937-8). During the last 15 years of his life, Kennington concentrated on producing works for the interiors of churches. This volume includes a complete catalogue of the artist's sculpture, and an essay which sets the work in the wider context of 20th-century British art.
