Thomas Woolner

There is wear to the patina with flaking to the green throughout and several minor scratches. There are some nicks, including to the proper left upper leg and edges of the mushroom. The wings are cast separately and slightly open joints are slightly visible. There are a few small original casting plugs. There is some minor dirt to the surface consistent with age. Otherwise the condition of the bronze is good.
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According to Read and Barnes, Puck was Thomas Woolner’s favourite sculpture. They quote Holman Hunt’s anecdote of watching Woolner interact with his sculpture with ‘much paternal fondness’ (op. cit. p. 142). Puckwas modelled by Woolner around 1844 and exhibited in plaster at the British Institution in 1847, accompanied by the following lines:

As he was sailing through the air one day, searching for wherewith to place his humorous malice, right well was he satisfied to alight on a mushroom, and awaken a sleeping frog, of which a hungry snake was about to make a meal.

The sculpture is a fine figural work, demonstrating Woolner’s technical skill in rendering naturalism of human form. However, it is also charming for its expression of the supernatural. With his pointed ears, sharpened chin and piercing wings, Puck is an image of creative imagination. He arches his back in mischief as he prepares to prod the frog. Read and Barnes record Tupper’s appreciation of the sculpture as ‘the puissant sprite of Shakespeare’, and outshining the ‘quaint, fat baby of Reynolds’ (op. cit. p. 142).

Two casts in bronze have been recorded, an early version now in a private collection and one made in 1908 for Sir John Bland-Sutton which was later bequeathed to the Royal College of Surgeons. We believe that the present bronze is the latter.

RELATED LITERATURE
B. Read and J. Barnes (eds.), Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture. Nature and Imagination in British Sculpture, 1848-1914, exh. cat. The Matthiesen Gallery, London, and Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, 1991, pp. 141-142, no. 53