Ronald Pope

Born 16 August 1920
Died 1997

Active: 1945 - 1997

Country of birth and death: England

Sculptor, painter

Born in Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire. He took an engineering course at Derby College of Technology, completing his degree in 1941 and going on to work for a time in the tool design office at Rolls-Royce. He then studied at Derby College of Art, 1943-5 and the Slade School of Fine Art, 1945-8 (transferring from painting to sculpture in his second year). His teachers at the Slade were A.H. Gerrard, Randolph Schwabe, and F.E. McWilliam. In 1946-8 Pope also studied ceramics at Woolwich Polytechnic under Heber Mathews.

For much of his life Pope worked in Melbourne, Derbyshire, drawing inspiration from the High Peak and the Derbyshire Dales, Snowdonia, the Lake District and Norfolk. Here he produced a significant body of work in stone, wood and ceramic for public, private and ecclesiastical settings. Amongst his major works are the 'Family of Man' relief, for the entrance to Derby Museum and Art Gallery, and 'Walking Figures', a wall relief in welded aluminium for Spondon County Secondary School, Derbyshire, both 1964; a figure of St Catherine, 1965, on St Catherine’s Church, Sheffield (for architect Sir Basil Spence); and Five Bishops, 1974, a wall sculpture in bronze for Hertford Civic Centre. He had an exhibition at the Alwin Gallery, 1984, and other shows at the Yew Tree Gallery, Ingleby, and the Ninety-Three Gallery, Derby. The Derby Museum and Art Gallery mounted a retrospective in 1998 and there is a selection of his work in its permanent collection. He wrote poetry and in later life returned to painting and drawing. Pope died in 1997.

There is a website giving more details of his life and many images of his work at http://ronaldpope.com/index.htm (accessed 23 February 2014).

Citing this record

'Ronald Pope', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=ann_1393199351, accessed 03 Feb 2023]