Private collection, UK

1924: The British Empire Exhibition, Wembley. London (another version).

Anon, The New Sculpture Movement: Searching for the Ideal (London: Bowman Sculpture, n.d), pp. 131-133.

Francis Derwent Wood (1871-1926) was a sculptor, caricaturist, printmaker and wood engraver, watercolour and oil painter. He was a proponent of the New Sculpture Movement, which was the dominant style in Britain from around 1880-1910 and which emphasised expressive naturalism, spirituality, myth, desire, and eroticism. This movement reinvigorated British sculpture by turning away from didactic motifs focussing, instead, on symbolism to convey meaning. The movement coincided with the increase in a wealthy middle class, which created a demand for smaller sculptures and statuettes for domestic pleasure as they were keen to spend their disposable income on art. 

With much of Derwent Wood's early bronze work devoted to sculptures of Greek and Roman mythology or famous literary characters, Venus follows the same inspiration and is thus an exemplar of the New Sculpture Movement. This piece references Botticelli's Birth of Venus (1485), and is one of the goddesses Derwent Wood returned to multiple times in his career. In contrast to Botticelli's Venus, however, the composition moves her right arm to behind her back where she casually holds her forearm to emphasise the fish she grasps in her left hand. Her identity can be discerned by the presence of this fish, which in Graeco-Roman mythology was a symbol of her status as a deity as well as representing fertility, birth and abundance. 

Derwent Wood had envisioned a larger four-part series of female Roman deities, which were to be put on display at Shipley Hall in Derbyshire. Evidence of this series is recorded in the Royal Academy collection with photographs of his earlier Venus (1903) and Juno (1903), which alongside Ceres and Diana were intended to complete the series. The symbolism from all four of these deities corresponds respectively to birth and fertility, love and marriage, agriculture and harvest, and hunting.

Derwent Wood produced other allegorical figures during the same period, including Psyche (c.1908-1919), which is on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1908 (ref. no. 1976). Daedalus equipping Icarus (c.1895) is in the collection of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, whilst a marble of Atlanta (c.1907) is on display at Manchester Art Gallery, UK. A later bronze of Atlanta (1929) was also installed at Chelsea Embankment, London. Another example of his exploration of this popular theme includes a statuette entitled Bacchante (c.1907), a worshipper of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1907 (ref. no. 1824) alongside Atlanta (c.1907, ref.no. 1839). Derwent Wood was the founding member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1904, and was made an Academician at the Royal Academy in 1920.

Another version of Venus (1924) is held in the Royal Collection Trust, which was made for Queen Mary's Dolls' House and was exhibited at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 with the rest of the dolls' house. The Royal Collection Trust directly references Venus (1909), suggesting these may be the only two that Derwent Wood depicted holding a fish in her left hand as she gazes into the distance.

During World War One he enlisted in 1915 in the Royal Army Medical Corps as he was too old to serve, which was a role that came to define his later years when he opened a clinic called the Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department at the 3rd London General Hospital in Wandsworth. Derwent Wood applied his knowledge of sculpture to construct painted masks of thin metal to match soldiers' features before their exposure to warfare and their subsequent disfigurements. Working in line with advancements in plastic surgery at this time, his masks were a step toward prosthetic recovery for those men for whom surgery was not sufficient and continued to be deeply traumatised by their wounds. In a 1917 edition of The Lancet Derwent Wood wrote that 'when the surgeon has done all he can to restore functions… I endeavour by means of the skill I happen to possess as a sculptor to make a man's face as near as possible to what it looked like before he was wounded'. Despite the laudable aims of this initiative, the clinic remained open for only two years between 1917 and 1919 and the numbers of those Derwent Wood helped is unclear.