Mary Thornycroft ranked among Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s favourite sculptors. Having trained in the studio of her father, John Francis, she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy (1835–77) and the British Institution (1845–64), as well as the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Thornycroft received her first commission from Queen Victoria in 1842 for a set of marble limbs of the royal children and went on to produce busts and statues of four generations of the Royal Family. Many are romanticised, intimate studies in the neo-classical style. This statue of Princess Alice as ‘Spring’ demonstrates Thornycroft’s consummate ability to combine a closely observed likeness with idealised allegory.

Thornycroft frequently collaborated with her husband, the sculptor Thomas Thornycroft, on larger commissions, but it was her work which largely funded the family. In addition to teaching her own children, Mary tutored Queen Victoria’s daughters, including Princess Louise, who would later work as a sculptor in her own right.