'Leda' is a powerful yet sensuous bronze by the highly acclaimed Royal Academician sculptor, Ralph Brown (1928-2013). As one of his larger works 'Leda' is a superb example of Brown's later period and shows his skill at capturing the figure in movement. As the title suggests, this piece clearly references Leda the Spartan Queen who in Greek Mythology was seduced by Zeus who had disguised himself as a Swan, a theme that has attracted artists such as Michelangelo and Cezanne throughout history.

Ralph Brown was born in Leeds in 1928, and is the younger contemporary of the eminent group of Yorkshire sculptors that included Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. He studied at Leeds College of Art, where both Moore and Hepworth attended, and the Royal College of Art where he was taught by Frank Dobson, John Skeaping and Leon Underwood.

Like Moore, who befriended him and became a patron, buying his bronze 'Mother and Child' in 1955, Brown’s art is deeply rooted in the figurative tradition. However, whilst his contemporaries focused their energies on carving and maintaining ‘truth to materials’,
Brown chose to concentrate on modelling, allowing him to interact with his material on a more intimate level.

During the fifties Ralph Brown’s work attracted much critical acclaim and was shown alongside the most prominent sculptor’s of the day including Kenneth Armitage, William Turnbull and Eduardo Paolozzi. He came to national prominence in the late 1950s with his
large-scale bronze sculpture 'Meat Porters' which was commissioned for Harlow New Town, Essex.

Brown’s sculptures can be seen as enigmatic contradictions; they are shocking yet sensuous, savage but imbued with humanity. Their surfaces pulsate with an often erotic energy and, contrary to popular depiction, Brown’s figure’s clefts, folds, pits and creases explore sculpting the body from the inside out.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when abstraction prevailed in British sculpture, Ralph Brown remained faithful to the human figure and he has long stood out among his contemporaries as one of the most accomplished sculptors of human anatomy. In 1962, for
the BBC programme ‘Art in the Making’, Bryan Robertson enthused “everything he touches is charged by this sensibility: passionate, humane and with the courage to resist any easy or obvious eloquence.”

Brown was elected a Royal Academician in 1972 and his work can be found in many public collections including the Tate Collection, the Arts Council of Great Britain, Bristol City Art Gallery, Leeds City Art Gallery and The National Museum of Wales.