From its start, the nineteenth century in Britain was imbued with new possibilities for the proliferation of sculpturally informed aesthetic judgements and criteria, for it was then that Britain, France and America imported into their museums what were to become the best-known examples of Classical sculpture, statues which '[entered] deeply into the visual consciousness of educated Europe', which 'were used as touchstone[s] by artists, art lovers, collectors and theorists alike for the gauging of taste and quality'.