Harriet Goodhue Hosmer

American (1830–1908)
Puck, modeled ca. 1855–56
Marble
Gift of James H. Ricau and Museum purchase     86.471

Harriet Hosmer flatly defied Victorian expectations for women—marriage and motherhood—and by 1860 had become one of America’s premier sculptors.  Working in Rome from 1852, she stood at the forefront of a famous group of expatriate American women marble sculptors whom the novelist Henry James glibly dismissed as the “white, marmorean flock.”  Despite such denigration, Hosmer viewed herself as an equal, if not superior, competitor in a discipline long dominated by men.  Her friend, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, called her the “perfectly emancipated female.”

Though Hosmer built her reputation with a number of ambitious, even monumental, sculptures (see illustration), she also made more modest “conceits,” imaginative works designed solely to amuse and delight.  Both Puck and Will-o-the-Wisp (on view nearby) are classic examples.  Faced with financial ruin brought on by her father’s bankruptcy, Hosmer quickly created Puck—a playful evocation of the mischievous forest elf in William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream—for its marketability as a parlor sculpture for wealthy collectors.  Her plan paid off: she sold more than thirty replicas of the popular sculpture at $1,000 apiece.  One was ordered for the young Prince of Wales to decorate his rooms at Oxford University.