Skip to main content

Peasant Woman and Child: M.8-1996

Object information

Current Location: In storage

Titles

Peasant Woman and Child

Maker(s)

Sculptor: Hardy, Bernhard Caspar

Entities

Categories

Description

Three-quarter length figure of a peasant woman nursing a baby - Peasant woman and child. Wax, coloured flesh pink, red, pale greyish-green, dark greyish-green and pale brown. A woman is seated on a red cushion, holding a baby in her arms as if to suckle it, and leaning over it slightly, with her head in profile. She wears a pale greyish-green headscarf and a low-necked dark greyish-green dress with widely spaced white stripes. Her chemise shows at the neck and below the sleeve ends. The model rests on a D-shaped base covered in dark green ribbed silk and the background is buff ribbed silk. In gilt-metal rococo scrolled frame with three scroll feet, glass half dome, and hinged door at the back.
A pair with M.7-1996.

Notes

History note: Sotheby's, 31st July 1958, lot 135

Legal notes

Bequeathed by Edward Joseph Pyke

Place(s) associated

  • Cologne ⪼ Germany

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1996) by Pyke, Edward Joseph

Dating

18th Century, Late
Circa 1775 CE - 1800 CE

People, subjects and objects depicted

Components of the work

Figure composed of wax ( coloured)
Frame composed of gilt-metal glass Height 26.7 cm Width 20.2 cm

Inscription or legends present

Inscription present: extract from a sale catalogue

  • Text: 135 A GOOD PAIR OF WAX HALF-LENGTH FIGURES by Bernhard Caspar Hardy, both modelled in almost full relief, one of the 'Vegetable Woman', who wears a yellow hat and holds in her blue apron cabbages and other vegetables, the other of a 'Peasant Woman and Child'. the woman wearing a turquoise scarf on her head and bottle-green dress, supporting the naturalistically modelled baby in her arms, both set against lime green cloth backgrounds and contained in ormolu cases with domed glass fronts, 10 1/2 in Bernhard Caspar Hardy (1726-1819), was perhaps the most notable of all 18th Century wax modellers on the Continent. G. Bernhard Hughes illustrates another example of the 'Vegetable Woman' in 'An Artist in Wax', Country Life, October 12th, 1951. For other examples of Hardy's work see also D.R. Riley, Portrait Waxes, plates 15 and 16.
  • Location: Stuck to the back
  • Method of creation: Printed in black
  • Type: Label

References and bibliographic entries

Identification numbers

Accession number: M.8-1996
Primary reference Number: 30478
Stable URI

Audit data

Created: Saturday 6 August 2011 Updated: Tuesday 21 March 2023 Last processed: Friday 8 December 2023

Associated departments & institutions

Owner or interested party: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department: Applied Arts

Citation for print

This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:

The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Peasant Woman and Child" Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/30478 Accessed: 2024-11-05 23:50:19

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:

{{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/30478 |title=Peasant Woman and Child |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-05 23:50:19|publisher=The University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/api/v1/objects/object-30478

Sign up for updates

Updates about future exhibitions and displays, family activities, virtual events & news. You'll be the first to know...