Theology Directing the Labours of Science and Art

John Cassidy (1860-1939)

Installed, 1898

Shawk stone

Entrance hall of the John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester

John Archer describes this group of three life-size figures as closing the view in the entrance hall "like a reredos" (Archer 99). Such a description would scarcely have pleased Mrs Rylands, who had objected to Cassidy's original idea of having the three figures "in a line ... too much like the statues one sees in a cathedral" (qtd. in Wyke 68). However, there is some truth in it.

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