He was a survivor of the "lost generation" who came of age in 1914, and was scarred, both mentally and physically, by the First World War.

As a result of an education on strictly traditional lines, he developed a style of modelling that was classically accurate, but which expressed the character and background of his subject.

Instead Lamb settled permanently in his native Montrose, Angus, Scotland, and sculpted the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood, concentrating upon working class models, especially from the fishing community.

[3] Fiercely independent, Lamb despised the young modernists and pre-war baroque fashions alike.

He never escaped poverty, never married and until the publication of a biography in 2013, his work was largely forgotten outside east central Scotland.

[5] He completed his apprenticeship in his craft, and then moved to Aberdeen to work and to attend Gray's School of Art (now part of Robert Gordon's University).

[7] In September 1922, Lamb journeyed to Paris where he briefly attended the École des Beaux Arts.

He gradually fell under the influence of Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance literary movement which was centred in Montrose.

[12] After his royal commissions, he built himself a new studio, but the collapse of a personal relationship triggered a mental breakdown and his artistic output suffered.

As he recovered from his depression, Lamb found that the approach of war made it difficult, and later impossible, to procure materials for modelling.

In this genre, the more noteworthy works are The Beardless Christ[14] (Five Figures set above the rood screen in the Episcopal Church of St. Mary, Newport-on-Tay), Wind frae the Baltic, Sou-Wester, The Shrew & Gale Force.

Although William Lamb relied on his prints and water-colours for much of his livelihood, his marketing skills were non-existent.

William Lamb was fiercely independent and on occasion declared that his work was not subject to the influence of others.

[18] Firstly Lamb was an inheritor of the Scottish Enlightenment and the strong classical tradition rooted at that time in the country's educational system.

He completed an apprenticeship in stone carving, as a monumental mason, and attended art classes in his free time.

Around 1912 he decided that art was to be paramount in his life, but this did not stop him from practising his craft when convenience or necessity made it advantageous to do so.

The First World War made Lamb distrust authority and admire art that was simple and down to earth.

This was to be achieved through portraying Scots working in their local community and by describing the life of ordinary people.

He followed the teaching of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran who had taught several of the French artists whom Lamb admired.

With the exception of his commissions and in spite of his poverty, Lamb was reluctant to sell his work and especially anything that he thought was any good.

The collection has received little public attention outside east central Scotland and is virtually unknown to the wider world.