Mother Hammond, Fruitseller at Cambridge: P.14879-R

Current Location: In storage

Titles

Mother Hammond, Fruitseller at Cambridge

Maker(s)

Entities

Description

Etching on paper. Small vignette, full-length figure of an old woman wearing bonnet and shawl and carrying a stick in her right hand and a basket over her left arm. She walks towards the viewer. Scratched onto the plate at lower left: 'T. Orde f.'. Written in pen and ink on the artist's board onto which this print is laid down: 'Mother Hammond. / Fruitseller at Cambridge'. An inscription on the verso of the artist's board repeats this information and a catalogue entry from the 1908 exhibition of portraits and caricatures from the Cambridge Antiquarian Society's collection and the Fitzwilliam Museum, held at the Fitzwilliam, confirms that it is inscribed on the verso, 'Mother Hammond / Fruitseller at Cambridge'. Listed in the catalogue in the section 'Cambridge Caricatures' as no. 6, 'A Portrait', the catalogue entry references Coopers Annals IV for 1785 (taken from the Cambridge Chronicle, 24 December 1785): 'On the 19th December, died at Spital House End, the widow Hammond aged 102'. A larger, finished etching featuring Mother Hammond by Orde (a double portrait with a man known as 'D. Randal') portrays a figure wearing a similar bonnet and carrying a similar basket. See P.14883-R. The technique and style of P.14879-R is similar to that seen in other small vignettes among the 'Cambridge Amateurs' prints. See P.14832-R and P.14834-R.