Dwight Lyman Moody (9 ¾ in): C.1033-1928

Titles

Dwight Lyman Moody (9 ¾ in)

Maker(s)

Production: Sampson Smith (Perhaps)

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, brown, blue, red, yellow, pink and flesh-pink enamels, and gilt.

Dwight Lyman Moody stands with his left hand on his hip and his right resting on a book atop a short pillar. The oval base is lettered ‘MOODY’ in relief, black script, capitals; a pink line runs across the front beneath the title The figure is sparsely coloured. He wears a long coat, its lapels and cuffs lined in gilt; and a yellow waistcoat decorated in brown. He has black hair, a moustache and a full grey beard, and wears black shoes. The pillar is orange brown and the book is outlined in blue and yellow. The underside is concave and glazed. The upper back is moulded, with a vent hole 10.5cm from the bottom.

Notes

History note: Goodwin’s shop at Ipswich. Bought as a pair with figure of Ira D Sankey, on 3 February 1910 for 6 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
Circa 1873 CE - Circa 1875 CE

Note

Dwight Lyman Moody (1837 - 1899) was an American evangelist and publisher who founded the Chicago Adventure Church, two schools in Massachusetts and the Moody Bible Institute. In 1870, Moody met Ira D Sankey, the Gospel singer, and together they held crowded revival meetings throughout the United States.. In 1873 he and Sankey came to Britain for a two year revival tour that culminated with a four month London Crusade in 1875. It is said that a crowd of 20,000 attended their Edinburgh meeting, held on the slopes of ‘Arthur's Seat’, and they raised £10,000 for the building of a Mission in the Royal Mile. This figure was probably made at the time of the 1873-75 visit.

Rackham (1935) lists this figure as of a type chiefly made by Sampson Smith at Sutherland Works, Longton. Sampson Smith is listed in contemporary directories as a ‘manufacturer of figures in great variety’ in Longton and seems to have begun making figures around 1851. The firm continued to make figures in quantity into the early part of the twentieth century. Sampson Smith figures are rarely marked, but in 1948 a number of original moulds were found on site, and one of these was a mould for a 17 inch figure of Moody. As the moulding of this smaller figure is very similar, it seems likely that it and its pair were also made by Samson Smith.

The Fitzwilliam collection also includes another Staffordshire figure of Moody (C.1021-1928), in similar pose, but 13 ¼ in, more sparsely coloured and with some differences in the moulding; it is unlikely to have been made by Sampson Smith.

This figure is a pair ro a figure of Sankey, which is also in the collection.

School or Style

Victorian