The first recognisably fine art stone carver was Edward Grubb of Birmingham, who was producing ecclesiastic carvings and statuary in Birmingham by 1769. The growth of Birmingham sculpture over the following decades was rapid, and by 1829 the majority of the 49 pieces of sculpture exhibited in the town's exhibitions that year came from local artists. The leading Birmingham sculptor of the Midlands Enlightenment, however, was Peter Hollins, who took over the studio of his father William Hollins in the Jewellery Quarter and produced over sixty major works. Hollins studied under Francis Chantrey in the early part of his career and his best work is considered the equal to that of Chantrey, although he was less famous at least partly because of being based outside London. The dominance of neoclassical sculpture lessened in the later 19th century, and the following generation of Birmingham sculptors was largely defined by its relationship with the Birmingham School of Art, which under Edward R. Taylor emphasised the relationship between high art and craftsmanship, and was closely aligned to Birmingham's dominant Civic Gospel ideology. Albert Toft was a prominent exponent of the New Sculpture, his works exhibiting the movement's characteristic naturalism in form and spiritualism in mood. Benjamin Creswick was the leading sculptor of the Arts and Crafts-dominated Birmingham Group, working in a wide variety of genres and expanding the iconography of Birmingham sculpture with imagery of working men and compositions examining the relationship between arts, crafts and learning.  20th century Birmingham sculpture was dominated by the figure of William Bloye, who combined the arts and crafts tradition of Benjamin Creswick with the avant-garde edge of Eric Gill, with whom he worked at Ditchling in Sussex. Bloye was the Head of Sculpture at Birmingham School of Art from 1919 to 1956 and became the city's unofficial civic sculptor – producing everything from pub signs to the bas-reliefs on the city's Hall of Memory war memorial. Several generations of sculptors who trained under Bloye at the School of Art later worked as assistants at his studio in Small Heath before establishing themselves independently, including notable figures such as John Poole, Gordon Herickx, Ian Walters and Raymond Mason. Outside the city's Bloye-dominated mainstream, the surrealist sculptor Oliver O'Connor Barrett was active in Birmingham between 1927 and 1942, the portrait sculptor David McFall studied and worked in the city throughout the 1930s, while Hans Schwartz produced sculpture in the city from the time of his exile from Nazi Austria in the 1940s until his move to London in the 1960s.