New Adelphi, WC2

This figure is either Inspiration or The Time of Day, depending on who you consult. It is by Gilbert Ledward, who was professor of sculpture at the Royal College of Art where his assistant was Henry Moore.
Ledward served as an artilleryman in Italy in the First War and afterwards became famous for his war memorials, including the bronzes on the Guards Division monument in Horse Guards Parade.
By the time the New Adelphi commission came along, Ledward had turned away from the normal practice of making a clay model and scaling up, to carving the stone directly, as Michelangelo had done. He resisted the move to abstraction that his former assistant pioneered, believing that sculpture had a mission to the masses.