Rodin’s The Thinker has been a prominent exhibit at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor gallery since its opening in 1924, the museum’s founder having been a significant patron of the artist. This exhibition catalogue, published in 2017 to commemorate the centenary of the sculptor’s death, includes newly commissioned photographs of many of Rodin’s most important works, including The Burghers of Calais, The Gates of Hell and The Kiss, as well as plaster models and fragments.

Charles Avery is a leading authority on Renaissance art, and an admirer of the 16th- and 17th-century bronze works of Joseph de Levis and his family. This illustrated survey of their lives and works includes church-bells, some of which remain in remote country churches, mortars, inkstands, perfume-burners, door-knockers and firedogs. Each artefact is accompanied by a detailed explanation of its significance and inscriptions, while the family story gives an insight into the Jewish Diaspora of the period.

The colourful ceramic figures (mingqi) placed within Chinese aristocratic tombs represent the humans and animals that protect, serve and entertain the soul in the afterlife. More than 200 such objects are illustrated in this volume, spanning two millennia from the Han dynasty to the tradition’s latter stages in the Ming dynasty. The accompanying text traces the political, religious and economic influences on the evolution of the art and examines what the sculptures reveal about ancient Chinese philosophy and daily life.

In this first in-depth study and catalogue raisonné of the work of Ivor Roberts-Jones (1913–1996), the authors explore the career of this exceptional British sculptor in a number of essays, beginning with a biographical sketch. The essay topics include Roberts-Jones’s most familiar work, the statue of Winston Churchill that stands in Parliament Square; other portraits of Churchill in Oslo, New Orleans and Prague; and the portrait heads; while the catalogue illustrates and comments on over 156 works, with sketches and variants.

This illustrated guide to all outdoor statues and busts in Greater London examines the significance, the sculptor and the story behind each piece, from Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square to the many monuments that have been erected in the suburbs. This revised second edition also features sculptures added between 2012 and 2017, including the controversial memorial to Mary Seacole at St Thomas’s Hospital and the life-size statue of Amy Winehouse in Camden.

Portrait medals, which commemorate individuals through a combination of likeness, imagery and text, were an important artistic innovation of the Renaissance. Ng presents fine examples, ranging from the 15th to 19th century, which are now in one of the world’s most significant private collections. She traces the art form’s origins and development, discussing the techniques used across Europe to make medals and the personal and political purposes for which they were produced.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens, this catalogue features the 28 large bronzes by Henry Moore, photographed around the gardens. Texts explain the sculptor’s working methods, the installation of Large Reclining Figure at Kew, and his work’s relation to natural forms.

David Nash sculpts wood with a chainsaw, creating forms that reflect their natural origin. This book chronicles his year-long residency at Kew Gardens, working with trees at the end of their lives. Photographs show the works in progress against a backdrop of the changing seasons.

The Djenné-Jeno culture flourished in the Niger delta, in what is now Mali, from around 700 to 1700 CE, and throughout that period produced powerful renderings in terracotta of the human figure. The product of 30 years’ field research, this authoritative study depicts more than 300 of these statues, charts the rediscovery of this lost art, explores the culture that produced it, establishes a chronology of styles, and sets the works in their historical context.

A highly regarded sculptor in both wood and stone, Dick Onians presents a basic guide to sculpting the human figure, from the basics of anatomy to carving the whole figure, with chapters dealing with the head, torso and limbs, drapery, stylization and carving in relief.

The rare monkey figurines created by the Baule of West Africa have puzzled historians since the 19th century. Rough-hewn and fearsome – with jutting jaws and bared teeth – the bowl-bearing monkeys seem quite unlike the Baule’s more delicate ancestor figures. In the first survey to focus exclusively on the monkeys, the authors explore their origin, creation and role in Baule society, and examine their ritualistic function as objects charged with invisible powers.

Head of Painting at Falmouth School of Art from 1960 to 1981, Francis Hewlett (1930–2012) remained a figurative artist, exploring what he called the ‘essential geometry’ of observed objects, despite the prevailing fashions of the period. Including over 200 paintings and drawings, this biography charts his lifelong dedication to art, from his early studies in Bristol, London and Paris to his completion of a major series of paintings in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Accompanying an exhibition of works by the sculptor, draughtsman, painter and poet Hans Jean Arp (1886–1966) at the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, this catalogue examines the extraordinary range of Arp’s creative output in essays, reproductions and photographs. Text in English and Dutch.

Ancient Greek sculptors established the foundation of a new art form in which human bodies were realistically and dynamically portrayed. This book brings together more than 60 examples now in museums around the world; they range from early kouros statues (c.600 BCE) to a Roman-period portrait bust, and from delicate grave-markers to the friezes of Athens’ Acropolis and the great altar of Pergamon. Each item is discussed in the accompanying text and illustrated in multiple photographs that highlight significant details.

Born in Vienna, Roland Paris (1894–1945) lived and worked in Berlin during the interwar years, and his work, although made in the Art Deco period, has an idiosyncratic style, using grotesques, caricature and mockery in depictions of clowns, jesters, devils and temptresses. This volume presents an illustrated biography of Paris and over 180 pages of photographs showing his figurines in plaster, wood and bronze, and works on paper.

Born in Romania, Demetre Chiparus studied in Paris and stayed on to experience the cultural explosion of the inter-war years. He became an iconic Art Deco sculptor, his delicate figurines – which depict elaborately dressed dancers, children and animals – enjoying great popularity. Charting his life and influences, and the materials and foundries he used, this updated volume, originally published in 1993, includes colour plates of his work, recently discovered pieces and updated information, alongside a selection of his paintings.

Following her earlier book on Epstein’s formative years, Raquel Gilboa focuses on the artist’s life and his mature work after 1930: a period in which antisemitism increasingly coloured attitudes to art and culture. Illustrated with over 200 monochrome photographs, the book explores Epstein’s symbolism in the bold, monumental sculptures such as Genesis (1930) and Primeval Gods (1931–2) and smaller works including the magnificent bronze Lucifer (1947).

Beginning with an essay outlining the distinct features of public sculpture in the area, this fourth volume on the West Midlands covers public sculpture ranging in date from medieval times to 2005 and including church monuments by Roubiliac, Rysbrack, Nollekens, Flaxman and Chantry. The book is arranged alphabetically by location within each of the three counties.