Mrs. Peachey has spared neither pains nor expense, the glass flower-shade having cost her £200; she has contributed to the Exhibition, and exhibits freely. The press has noticed the emanations of her genius, and we add our testimony.—West Kent Guardian.
And before passing from the wax flower group, we may add an expression of our regret, that differences of some kind prevented its including the very magnificent case and bouquet which had been prepared by Mrs. Peachey, one of the artistes in wax to her Majesty. The stand itself, which, with its contents, was on private view, is externally, more elegant than any of the cases in the Exhibition, and the flowers would have yielded to none in variety or brilliancy of tint. The reputation of Mrs. Peachey, whose artistic talent is of a first-rate description, would have justified the authorities in some concession, and would have enriched this department of the Exhibition with a feature of no ordinary beauty.—Illustrated London News.
We have inspected, at the private residence of Mrs. Peachey (in Rathbone Place, Oxford Street,) artiste in wax-work to Her Majesty, one of the most remarkable specimens of ingenuity and industry which London at present contains. This is an immense bouquet of wax flowers which that lady had prepared for the Crystal Palace, but which are not at present within its walls, for a reason to which we will presently advert. Let us first describe this really magnificent work. On four sturdy stone columns, tastefully designed, and edged with gold, is a looking-glass platform upwards of four-feet square, and representing water. From the centre of this fairy lake rises a glass column supporting a golden basket. In this is placed a bouquet some two feet high, and of proportionate girth, in which are clustered all the flowers we ever saw, and a great many which we never saw—from the humble favorites of our Rigolettes and Fleur de Maries, up to the floral aristocracy of the conservatory. There they are exquisitely reproduced in all their graces of form and colour, and arranged with the attention to contrast and general effect which bespeaks the superintending eye of the real artist. We are afraid to say how many hundred wax flowers compose this splendid bouquet; but we can safely say that, after having walked round and round it, and, as we thought, having completely examined it, the eye continually insisted on detecting some new variety, and we finally abandoned the hope of ever becoming acquainted with the whole. From the corners of the imitative waters rise various superb specimens of water plants, fresh, cool, opaque-looking, productions; and at the foot of the glass column, as if planted by accident, spring a few of our more common and very beautiful garden flowers. The whole is covered by an enormous bent glass shade, from the centre of which rises a pretty copy of Her Majesty's crown. Nothing can be more beautiful or in better taste than the object we have described. Near it is another vase, not so large, and filled with wax fruit of every kind—the bloom of the grape, the blush of the apple, the rich brown of the nut, the velvet of the apricot, the glow of the orange, and the characteristics of a hundred other fruits being represented with a tantalizing fidelity. We would have flogged the fellow who broke the Portland Vase, but we did not feel so sure, while gazing upon these admirable imitations of the most delicious fruits, that we should have been so severe upon some earnest gourmand who might dash down the vase of which we speak, in wrath that his eye and his palate had been so nobly cheated. The two vases, one of flowers, the other of fruits, are certainly the most sumptuous specimens of wax composition we ever saw.
As we have said, these works were intended by Her Majesty's artiste for the Great Exhibition. On her applying for a site, that lady states that a very admirable one was assigned her upon the ground-floor of the building, near the fountains. Upon her work being complete, she was directed to place it in the gallery. This, Mrs. Peachey considered would be to jeopardise it, from the danger so fragile a production would probably sustain in being taken up stairs, and still more from the heat of the sun, to which the wax would in that situation be exposed, and which would speedily produce Icarian results destructive to the work.—Bell's Weekly Messenger.
Two groups of flowers and fruit most tastefully and elaborately executed in wax by Mrs. Peachey, of Rathbone Place, have, we regret to say, been withdrawn from the Crystal Palace in consequence of an inappropriate position having been assigned them by the Committee. Mrs. Peachey, who stands unrivalled in this class of ornamental art, feeling herself aggrieved by the decision of the committee, has appealed from it to the judgment of the public, and with that view has placed her works in an apartment of her residence, 35, Rathbone Place, for inspection. The taste, the labour, the time bestowed on these magnificent works, must have been very great, and we fancy the visitors to the Crystal Palace will be greater losers by their absence from that repository than even the fair artiste herself, for they are deemed by all who have seen them the finest works of the kind ever executed.—Morning Herald.
We have several times during the past week inspected, with much gratification a magnificent bouquet of the most rare exotics, as also a large collection of grouped fruits, modelled entirely in wax, by Mrs. Peachey, Her Majesty's artiste in ordinary in that department of feminine accomplishment, and intended by that lady for competition in "the World's Fair." We have often had occasion to witness the extraordinary skill displayed by this lady in imitating the beauties of nature from her kindly materials, but we must confess (although previously informed that the present works outvied all the previous attempts of the artiste) that we were unprepared for designs and executions so exquisitely chaste and artistic, and true in the imitation of nature. What could have induced the executive committee of the Great Exhibition to decide upon excluding works of such elaborate labour and beauty, and these the works of an English artist, of the first standing, we are totally at a loss to conjecture. We say "excluding," for it is tantamount to exclusion to tell Mrs. Peachey that she must place such volatile work in a top gallery, exposed to the heat of a July sun, or withdraw them, although she had been previously allocated space on the basement of the building. Mrs. Peachey adopted the latter alternative, feeling it detrimental to her works, not only from the objectionable position assigned her, but also from the impossibility of having her cases, which are of a large size, conveyed into the gallery, without materially injuring designs of so fragile a nature.