This bronze was inspired by one of Leighton’s models stretching after a sitting and is also called ‘An Athlete Awakening from Sleep’. The original life-size version (Tate) was widely admired, and reproduced in a one-third size edition.

New sculpture is a name applied to the sculptures produced by a group of artists working in the second half of the nineteenth century The term was coined by critic Edmund Gosse in an 1876 article in Art Journal titled The New Sculpture in which he identified this new trend in sculpture. Its distinguishing qualities were a new dynamism and energy as well as physical realism, mythological or exotic subject matter and use of symbolism, as opposed to prevailing style of frozen neoclassicism. It can be considered part of symbolism. The keynote work was seen by Gosse as Lord Fredrick Leighton’s Athlete Wrestling with a Python, but the key artist was Sir Alfred Gilbert followed by Sir George Frampton. An Important precursor was Michelangelesque work of Alfred Stevens.