Percival Ball studied at the Royal Academy and exhibited from 1865 to 1882. He was awarded a medal in 1866 for his relief depicting The Brazen Serpent. Of his works, the busts of the author Blandford Edwards and of Amelia Ann Edwards are in the National Portrait Gallery and his relief of Phryne before Praxiteles is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. The latter was designed and modelled while the sculptor was in Sydney in 1899 and then cast by Singer and Sons in Frome, Somerset. Ball was to establish a sound reputation among informed critics for work which reflects the influence of his master Henry Weekes's homely neo-classicism.