Pupils at Bromet Primary School in Oxhey may well be aware their educational establishment is named after a sculptor but now the work of Mary Bromet (nee Pownell) is getting a wider audience at Watford Museum’s exhibition of Sculpture from the Watford Museum Collection.

On display are two of Mary’s works; busts of local personages George Herbert Hyde de Villiers, 6th Earl of Clarendon, and of Ralph Alfred Thorpe, the first and second mayors of Watford.

Born in 1862, Mary was a pupil of Rodin during the early 1900s. Shortly after, she married Alfred Bromet, a barrister, and lived at Lime Lodge in Heath Road, Oxhey. Mary exhibited at the Royal Academy and sculpted the three bronze figures for the Watford War Memorial outside the Town Hall.

The exhibition has been curated and catalogued by art historian Laurie Harwood, whose first catalogue of Watford works, paintings and watercolour drawings in the Watford Museum, was published in 1992.

“The main driving force was that I wanted the town to realise what they had in their collection,“ explains Laurie.

“The museum had all these wonderful things but they were all in storage. I first started going through the documentation for the sculptures but it was hard to find papers for everything, so I ended up cataloguing them, giving each a museum number and organising them into groups for exhibition.“

Laurie discovered that a philanthropic local businessman was responsible for much of the collection.

Born in 1910, Arnold Thompson grew up in Watford and attended the Boys’ Grammar School. He went on to work for John Dickinson and Co., the paper manufacturers at Nash Mill. A keen collector, he was responsible for gifting 31 of the 37 sculptures in the collection.

Among these are a few striking portraits by Joseph Epstein and a significant number of works by Derbyshire artist Ronald Pope, who graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art and created works in stone, metal and wood that were largely influenced by the landscape around him. Of note is his Passing Crowd series featuring exquisite compositions of commuters and also some chunkier, slab-like monoliths that echo the roughness of natural forms.

“Finding out about Pope was extremely difficult,“ Laurie adds. “He kept himself under wraps. I was fortunate to be put in touch with the Pope family and I went up to Derbyshire a couple of times and looked through their collection. Arnold Thompson had quite a close relationship with Pope. He really inspired him to keep going and encouraged him to exhibit. Pope was very happy just creating sculpture; he didn’t want money or renown for it.“

Oxhey photographer Dave Parker has also photographed the collection to create an online gallery. There is also a talk for the Friends of Watford Museum this Saturday at 2pm by Annette Kendall, who will give further free gallery talks on Saturday, January 28, Saturday, February 11 and Saturday, February 25, at 11am. Booking is essential.

The exhibition is at Watford Museum, Lower High Street, Watford, open Thursday to Saturday, 10am-5pm. Details: 01923 232297, www.watfordmuseum.org.uk