Peasant Woman and Child: M.8-1996

Current Location: In storage

Titles

Peasant Woman and Child

Maker(s)

Entities

Figure

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