MENU
Marble; the figure of Puck titled to the front and signed to the reverse ‘H.Hosmer Fecit Roma;’ the figure of Will-o'-the-wisp titled to the front
81.5 and 78 cm high
PROVENANCE
Sold Phillips Son & Neal, Contents of Park Hall, Hayfield, Derbyshire, 5 April 1978;
Bonhams London, Fine Decorative Arts, 12 July 2023, lot 66; where acquired.
This marble sculpture of Puck, the mischievous sprite from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, together with his companion figure of Will-o’-the-wisp, was the American artist Harriet Hosmer's most popular composition. Hosmer was one of the most successful female artists of the 19th century and spent most of her life living and working in Rome. There she was a leading figure in an important group of women artists known as the ‘sisterhood of American lady sculptors' who expressed their feminist and anti-slavery views through the neoclassical sculptures they produced.
With a desire to be financially self-sufficient and to remain living and working in Rome, Hosmer knew that sculptures of literary figures were commercially the most successful. Hence, she created the models of Puck and Will-o'-the-wisp of which an example of each is presented here. The whimsical figure of Puck was so successful a composition that Hosmer carved over 30 replicas and generated over 30,000 dollars in profit from it. And even though versions of Puck and Will-o'-the-wisp as individual figures can be found today in various museum collections it is very rare to find a surviving pairing such as the present figures.
Hosmer was - as both an artist and an icon - a central figure in the modern era, even if she is little known today outside of the United States. The ‘sisterhood’ of female sculptors that formed around her represented a special - if not crucial -moment for the history of art, feminism and homosexuality. They actively rejected heterosexual norms and the social conventions expected of women: Hosmer rejected marriage, supported herself financially, lived in romantic relationships with other women and wore masculine clothes. However, her greatest legacy was that she paved the way for other women to work as professional sculptors and, as argued by Frances Power Cobbe in 1863, showed that women could be creative artistic geniuses - just as much as men - and that there was a place for art that celebrated female strength and power.