The life and work of a little known Harrogate woman sculptor was put on a pedestal in a show at the Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, in November 2003. Frances Darlington (1880-1939) overcame the obstacles facing female artists in her day to win major public commissions, such as the sculptural reliefs of The Stations of The Cross for St Wilfrid's Church and a decorative scheme for the foyer of the Harrogate Theatre. Frances Darlington, the daughter of a Harrogate solicitor, studied sculpture in London at the progressive Slade School of Art and then at the School of Art and Design in South Kensington. Her earliest works were portrait busts and relief panels with religious and mythological subjects, for which she often used her family and friends as models. Throughout her career she exhibited widely at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, at the Paris Salon and in New Zealand and the USA. Official commissions in Yorkshire followed Darlington's student years. In 1912 she was invited to work on a grand scale to produce a statue of Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, for the Market Place in Birstall, West Yorkshire. Darlington's best work, however, is in plaster relief. The artist possessed strong religious beliefs and she belonged to the congregation of St Wilfrid's Church, Duchy Road, newly built in the 1930s, for which she was invited to interpret the Stations of The Cross in sculptural curves and glowing colour, reputedly incorporating portraits of members of the congregation. Darlington also created a magnificent seventy-foot frieze for the foyer of the Opera House, now Harrogate Theatre, featuring eleven plaster panels of scenes relating to drama and poetry. Sadly, many of Frances Darlington's works have proved impossible

The life and work of a little known Harrogate woman sculptor was put on a pedestal in a show at the Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, in November 2003. Frances Darlington (1880-1939) overcame the obstacles facing female artists in her day to win major public commissions, such as the sculptural reliefs of The Stations of The Cross for St Wilfrid's Church and a decorative scheme for the foyer of the Harrogate Theatre. Frances Darlington, the daughter of a Harrogate solicitor, studied sculpture in London at the progressive Slade School of Art and then at the School of Art and Design in South Kensington. Her earliest works were portrait busts and relief panels with religious and mythological subjects, for which she often used her family and friends as models. Throughout her career she exhibited widely at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, at the Paris Salon and in New Zealand and the USA. Official commissions in Yorkshire followed Darlington's student years. In 1912 she was invited to work on a grand scale to produce a statue of Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, for the Market Place in Birstall, West Yorkshire. Darlington's best work, however, is in plaster relief. The artist possessed strong religious beliefs and she belonged to the congregation of St Wilfrid's Church, Duchy Road, newly built in the 1930s, for which she was invited to interpret the Stations of The Cross in sculptural curves and glowing colour, reputedly incorporating portraits of members of the congregation. Darlington also created a magnificent seventy-foot frieze for the foyer of the Opera House, now Harrogate Theatre, featuring eleven plaster panels of scenes relating to drama and poetry. Sadly, many of Frances Darlington's works have proved impossible to trace, but her own photographs of sculptures in her studio were on show. It was hoped that Harrogate visitors to the Mercer would be able to help identify some of them. This panel "Sir Perceval: The Vision of the Holy Grail" in the Harrogate Ladies' College, Hewlett Reading Room was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1907 (RA catalogue lot.1810). It was discovered as being Darlington's work during the Mercer Exhibition of her work in November 2003. This makes the piece contemporaneous with the two busts Darlington made for Ilkley Library. She was living in Ilkley at the time in a house called Chester Lodge. Works in the exhibition included loans from both the artist's descendants and public institutions, including Darlington's sculpture The Little Sea Maiden, 1905, from Leeds City Art Gallery. Matthew Withey of the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds who carried out the research for the exhibition in collaboration with Jane Sellars, Curator of the Mercer Gallery, Harrogate helped identify the "Sir Perceval" as one of Frances Darlington's works and Louise Murphy, a descendant of the sculptor has been informed. Although, the inscription states that this work of art was presented by the former pupils of Harrogate College, there is no clear indication as to how or why it might have been acquired.