'Queen Henrietta Maria & Prince Rupert of The Rhine at Edge Hill' - An Important Victorian Silver Sculptural Group By Elkington & Co., Modelled by Pierre-Emille Jeannest

Object Description

‘Queen Henrietta Maria & Prince Rupert of The Rhine at Edge Hill’ – An Important Victorian Silver Sculptural Group By Elkington & Co., Modelled by Pierre-Emille Jeannest (1813 – 1857).

Birmingham, England, Circa 1852-1853.

Signed ‘Executed by Elkington, Mason and Company 1852-1853’. Further hallmarked on foot, cape, and base.

Weight of weighable silver 357 oz. 18 dwt. (11,232 gr.)

This large and exceptional silver sculpture depicts a finely modelled figure of Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-1669), who was Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland from her marriage to King Charles I on 13 June 1625, until Charles was executed on 30 January 1649. Queen Henrietta-Maria is shown in full dress chased with fleur-de-lys and adorned with jewels, mounted on a horse draped with a latticed blanket. The male figure bowing at her side, his hat resting on the ground, is Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-1682). The group is raised on a red Cornish serpentine marble plinth applied with four silver panels depicting medallions of King Charles I and Queen Henrietta-Maria, between the Royal arms of England, the ends embellished with the arms of Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

Superbly modelled by the French émigré sculptor Pierre-Emile Jeannest (French,1813 -1857), the group is depicted as an historical ‘tableau vivant’ of the historical meeting during the English Civil War of Queen Henrietta Maria and Prince Rupert at Edge Hill.

Conceived in the chivalric French troubadour style, adapted to the English taste, the group exemplifies the mid-19th century obsession with romantic historicism, as popularised by Sir Walter Scott, and the influence on Jeannest of his teacher, the famed artist Paul Delaroche (French, 1797 – 1856).

England, Circa 1852-1853.

Object History

Commissioned from Elkington and Co. by the Warwick Race Committee, 1853. Run for at Warwick Races on Wednesday, 8 September 1853, won by Mr Barber’s 3 year old horse ‘Goorkah’.

Object Literature

The Illustrated London News, ‘Warwick Race Plate’, 10 September 1853, p. 16, column 3, illustrated.

Comparative Literature:

Atterbury and Batkin ‘Dictionary of Minton’ (1990), p. 279.
A Century of Art Education in the Potteries. With notes on the Artists, 1953 Local Studies, 1953 (Circa) p. 6 and p. 44.
‘Pierre-Emile Jeannest’, Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib4_1219250614, accessed 12 May 2023]
The Illustrated London News, ‘Warwick Race Plate’, 10 September 1853, p. 16, column 3, illustrated.
Alistair Grant, ‘Elkington & Co. and the Art of Electro-Metallurgy, circa 1840-1900’.
Thesis, University of Sussex, September 2014.
The Art-Journal, Wallis, George, “Obituary. M. Emile Jeannest,” 1st July 1857, New Series, Volume III, James S. Virtue, London, 1857.

Object Details