Object Type
One of the earliest experiments in European ceramic sculpture, this object was commissioned by the father of the dead child in order to capture her likeness and perpetuate her memory. It was a personal and private sculpture, reflecting the grief of the little girl's family, and perhaps not intended for open display in the house.
People
Lydia Dwight was six years old when she died on 3 March 1674 (1673 by the Old Calendar). The fact that the next daughter was also christened Lydia does not suggest lack of grief on the part of the parents, but was usual practice in an age noted for its high infant mortality.
Materials & Making
John Dwight's first patent for salt-glazed stoneware, of 1672, did not list statues and figures among the types of product to be protected. They were, however, included in his second patent of 1684, when he had apparently stopped making them. Almost all his figures, like these two examples, were actually made in the 1670s. He is known to have shown a bust of Dr Willis and a figure to members of the Royal Society in 1674 and was clearly attempting to adapt his tough new material to the delicate art of modelling in clay, terracotta or wax at exactly the time his daughter Lydia died. The identity of the four different modellers involved in his experiments, assumed to be from Italy or the Low Countries, still remain a mystery. Dwight's failure to make commercial use of his stoneware figures has denied him the role of founder of the later tradition of English pottery and porcelain figures. But his attempts to link the stoneware material to art does have parallels with Josiah Wedgwood and Sir Henry Doulton in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Physical description
Figure of Lydia Dwight, half-length recumbent, grey salt-glazed stoneware. Portrait of a dead child lying on a pillow decorated with lace. Lace also decorates her cover, and her headdress. She wares a hood and 'grasps' a posy of flowers.
Place of Origin
Fulham, England (made)
Date
1674 (made)
Artist/maker
John Dwight's Fulham Pottery (maker)
Materials and Techniques
Stoneware, hand-modelled and salt-glazed
Marks and inscriptions
'Lydia Dwight dyed March 3 1673'
Dimensions
Height: 25.5 cm, Width: 20.5 cm, Depth: 11 cm
Object history note
Made in London at the Fulham factory of John Dwight (born in Todenham, Gloucestershire, about 1633, died in Fulham, near London, 1703).
Descriptive line
Figure, stoneware, depicting a dead child, Lydia Dwight, made in London at the Fulham factory of John Dwight, 1674
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Baker, Malcolm and Richardson, Brenda, eds. A Grand Design : The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: V&A Publications, 1997. 431 p., ill. ISBN 1851773088.
A touching image of the potter John Dwight's dead child, this is one of the most striking of a group of pieces that played a key role in the writing, in the 1860s, of a history of English ceramics. Lydia Dwight was less than seven years old when she died, and this highly personal memorial vividly evokes the feelings of bereaved parents. The very material-indestructible stone-ware-chosen to represent the fragility of the lace, the impermanence of the flowers, and the vulnerability of the dead child herself, adds considerably to the pathos.
Little was known about the Dwight family until the death of the last descendant released a cache of heirlooms that were bought by a Fulham antiquary, Thomas Baylis, who published them along with a fanciful account of Dwight in the Art Journal (October 1862). The objects were then acquired by C. W. Reynolds, who exhibited them in the 1862 Special Loan Exhibition at South Kensington, with an introduction giving details of Dwight's "Statues and Figures" covered by his second patent of 1684. A fuller account, including the first patent of 1672, given by William Chaffers in the Art Journal (June 1865), finally established Dwight's reputation as the father of English fine ceramics, which in turn provided the basis for the huge expansion of the Staffordshire potteries in the second quarter of the eighteenth century.
Dwight's activities as a chemist (including his association at Oxford with Robert Boyle, the "Father of Chemistry") and his nearly successful attempts to make porcelain preceded the experiments of Bottger at Meissen by some fifty years. Furthermore, Dwight's intention of raising the status of his refined stonewares by employing artist-modellers, and his eventual reliance upon the mass production of functional brown stoneware, offer interesting parallels with the life of Josiah Wedgwood a hundred years later. When the Dwight heirlooms were sold at Christie's in 1871, the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum agreed to divide them; Lydia Dwight was purchased for £158.
It has long been known that John Dwight was neither a modeller nor a practical potter. Recent writers have concluded that Dwight employed four professional modellers-possibly from the Low Countries or Italy-to create pieces. But in the complete absence of documentary evidence, it has proved impossible on stylistic grounds alone to identify any of the four. Recent excavations at the Fulham Pottery and the publishing of copious surviving documentation have confirmed Dwight's pivotal role in converting English ceramics from a position of struggling imitation to one of successful stylistic innovation.
Lit. Bimson, 1961; Haselgrove and Murray, 1979
ROBIN HILDYARD
Sturgis, Alexander. Presence. The Art of Portrait Sculpture, exhibition catalogue for exhibition held at the Holburne Museum, published by the Art Collector’s Club Ltd, Old Martlesham Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 2012, cat. no. 39, p. 65, illus. p. 64
Exhibition History
Precious: Objects and Changing Values (The Millennium Galleries, Sheffield 02/04/2001-24/06/2001)
Presence: the art of portrait sculpture (The Holburne Museum of Art 26/05/2012-02/09/2012)
A Grand Design - The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum (Victoria and Albert Museum 12/10/1999-16/01/2000)
Flower Power (The Millennium Galleries, Sheffield 01/01/2003-31/12/2025)
Flower Power (Castle Museum, Norwich 01/01/2001-31/12/2005)
Labels and date
British Galleries:
Lydia Dwight was the daughter of John Dwight, founder of the Fulham pottery. She died aged six in 1674. The figure of Lydia dead shows her dressed in her burial clothes, clutching a posy of flowers. White was an appropriate mourning colour for a child. The figure of Lydia standing represents her resurrection. Belief in life after death was a great comfort to the living. Her burial shroud hangs loosely around her body, with symbols of life (flowers) and death (a skull) at her feet. [27/03/2003]
Materials
Stoneware
Subjects depicted
Flowers; Children; Death; Childhood; Lace; Sleep; Mortality; Hoods; Pillows; Dwight, Lydia
Categories
Ceramics; British Galleries; Portraits; Sculpture; Death
Collection code
CER
