I have sought out two series of sculptural works by these sculptors to make paintings and drawings from. In my first selection these women are depicting women (often a friend or peer) with their eyes downcast or closed, looking away. I enjoy the ambiguity implicit in both the signalling of an empowered absorption or self-containment alongside a reading of social conformity and female modesty. I have also become interested in sculptural portraiture where the sitter is in a friendship or relationship with the artist, not only can this bring to light obscure[d] histories, it also allows me to speculate broadly on the ‘intersubjective’ relation that spirals around ‘ocular power’ within portraiture. The 12 paintings, 20 x 25 cm on gesso boards are placed on hand printed wallpaper, a patterned abstraction that explores the compelling nature of symmetry and references the decorative excesses of the art nouveau of the period. On another wall, a second series of drawings from sculptures by the same women will be placed, but this time of men (often teachers or lovers). Most of these portraits only exist as a photographic document - by painting and drawing them I attempt to exhume them, rescuing the forgotten legacy of women sculptors. Further, a larger drawing of Sarah Bernhardt, with her face nearly erased, from a maquette by another of these sculptors the American artist Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872 –1955) is present on another wall and a plinth, between them, holds four small hands in different materials originating from a 3D scan of a sculpture 'After Rodin' from the Ashmolean collection that may or may not have been modelled by one of the women in the exhibition.