This two-sided relief was intended as a garden ornament. The artist, Gilbert Bayes, described the group as ‘something between a relief and the round: perhaps a two-sided pierced relief’.

While its subject matter derives from Greek myth, the stylised treatment of the reeds and water recalls ancient Egyptian art. The relief has an Art Deco feel and represents a strand of early 20th-century British sculpture that ran parallel with Modernist style works by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

The original much larger version is currently on loan to the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. It was produced in cement, one of the new and unusual materials that appealed to Bayes. A plaster model version is also in the V&A (Museum no. A.4-2004).

Bayes (1872-1953) was an English sculptor and medallist. He was the son of the painter and etcher Alfred Walter Bayes (1832–1909) and brother of the painters Walter Bayes (1869–1956) and Jessie Bayes (1878–1971). He studied at the City and Guilds Technical College and the Royal Academy School in London. Much of Bayes’s sculpture was of a decorative nature intended to be placed in gardens.