Jenny Lind (as 'Alice'): C.1014-1928

Titles

Jenny Lind (as 'Alice')

Maker(s)

Production: Unidentified factory

Entities

• Figure
• Victorian Staffordshire figure
• Flat-backed figure

Categories

• Lead-glazed earthenware

Description

White earthenware figure moulded in three parts and pearlware glazed. Painted with black, grey, blue, red, pink, green yellow and flesh-pink enamels, and gilt.

Jenny Lind sits with her hands clasped around a pillar which supports a stone cross; she looks away from the cross, over her left shoulder. The rectangular base is rounded to the back and one side and decorated with an impressed pattern and gilt touches; the front is moulded in rococo style and bears the title ‘Jenny Lind as Alice in Meyerbeer’s Opera’ in gilt script, on a ribbon. The figure is well coloured. The cross is grey, outlined in black, and a pink and green vine winds up the pillar. Jenny Lind wears a low blue bodice with pink cuffs, a tartan sash with red tasselled edge, and a flowered yellow skirt. Her black hair is tied back in a bun. The underside is concave and glazed. The back is moulded and decorated for the upper body only, and has a vent hole 12.5cm from the bottom.

Notes

History note: Wm Brough and Sons, 312 and 313 Broad Street, Birmingham, bought on 29 May, 1913 for £2 and five shillings, by Dr Glaisher, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Legal notes

Dr J.W.L. Glaisher Bequest

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr

Dating

19th Century, Mid
Victoria I
Production date: circa AD 1847

Note

Jenny Lind (1820-1887) was a Swedish opera soprano. She sang with Verdi, and Mendelssohn wrote the soprano part in Elijah for her. She is believed to have inspired several Hans Christian Andersen stories, including The Ugly Duckling and The Emperor’s Nightingale. In May 1847, she made her London debut in the role of Alice in Meyerbeer’s opera, Roberto il diavolo (Robert the Devil) at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, to immense popular acclaim – it is said that Queen Victoria threw her a bouquet rom the Royal Box. In later life she raised substantial funds for good causes, such as Florence Nightingale’s Nursing Fund and The Railway Servants’ Benevolent Fund.

Rackham (1935) lists this figure as of a type made chiefly by Sampson Smith at Longton, a factory listed in contemporary directories as a ‘manufacturer of figures in great variety’, which began around 1851 and continued to make figures in quantity into the early part of the twentieth century. But Sampson Smith figures were rarely marked, and typically have a flat, undecorated back and plain oval base, and are made without subsidiary mouldings. Meanwhile there were many other, sometimes smaller, manufacturers of figures working in Staffordshire at this time.

The source for this figure is a coloured lithograph of Jenny Lind as Alice in Meyerbeer’s Opera, Roberto il Diavolo, by T. Packer, which shows Lind in the same pose and dress. An engraving in The London Illustrated News of 8th May 1847 also shows her in a similar pose, but recoiling in fear from a male character who points aggressively at her (see Pugh (1970), pp.74 and 455). The existence of several differently moulded Jenny Lind figures based on these illustrations indicates their popularity, and that they were made by a number of different manufacturers. Pugh (1970) estimates that, in all, some 18 different Jenny Lind figures were made.

School or Style

Victorian