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'Parting' was Goscombe John's first major success, winning the Royal Academy Gold Medal in 1889, and enabling him to travel to Europe. The subject was set by the Royal Academy committee, and the sculptor interpreted it with the figure of a blind old man holding his dead son across his knees. The interest in surface effects, with contrasting textures of hair and skin, was typical of the New Sculpture style. The figure group reveals the influence of the celebrated sculpture of 'Ugolino and his sons' by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1863.

New sculpture is a name applied to the sculptures produced by a group of artists working in the second half of the nineteenth century The term was coined by critic Edmund Gosse in an 1876 article in Art Journal titled The New Sculpture in which he identified this new trend in sculpture. Its distinguishing qualities were a new dynamism and energy as well as physical realism, mythological or exotic subject matter and use of symbolism, as opposed to prevailing style of frozen neoclassicism. It can be considered part of symbolism. The keynote work was seen by Gosse as Lord Fredrick Leighton’s Athlete Wrestling with a Python, but the key artist was Sir Alfred Gilbert followed by Sir George Frampton. An Important precursor was Michelangelesque work of Alfred Stevens.