Mrs. Peachey's group of wax flowers, modelled for the Glass Palace, is now on view at her house in Rathbone-place. Mrs. Peachey, it seems, refused the space assigned her by the Committee, on the ground that heat and darkness would, the one have destroyed, and the other shrouded the marvels of her skill. The bouquet (which is in a glass case, unsurpassed for chasteness and beauty of design) is on a gigantic scale, and contains among the rarest exotics the pride of the conservatory and the garden. We were as much surprised as delighted, on paying a visit during the past week at the skill which can imitate, and even rival, nature in her most attractive aspects. Conspicuous among the lilies, and other water flowers lining the base, is the Victoria Regia in its several states. The botanist and the florist will dwell delightedly on the cricæ, orchids, cacti, the night-flowering cereus, etc., besides numberless others more familiar to us.—Dispatch.
An exhibition of wax flowers, at the residence (in Rathbone-place) of Mrs. Peachey the artiste, is a perfect curiosity of its kind. Almost every variety of English flower, exquisitely coloured, is massed into an enormous bouquet, surprising alike from the largeness of the conception and the minuteness of the execution. This beautiful piece of art was prepared for the Great Exhibition, but withdrawn by Mrs. Peachey in consequence of her dissatisfaction with the place reserved for her.—Examiner.
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 were not 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 a real artiste. 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. We are not disposed to enter into the question in any spirit of censure. We know too well the innumerable difficulties with which the Executive Committee have had to contend in arranging the contents of the enormous building, to cavil at any decision they may have arrived at; but we have now had the opportunity of seeing two very beautiful works of English industry which would have been a credit to the Exhibition.—Morning Chronicle.
Those forms which our continental neighbours take such wondrous care in imitating in the perishable material of muslin, Mrs. Peachey, Her Majesty's artiste, of 35, Rathbone-place, endeavours to perpetuate in the more endurable materials of wax. Naturally afraid of jeopardising the work on which so much time and labour has been bestowed, Mrs. Peachey has withheld her contribution from the Great Exhibition; whether wisely or not, we are not here called upon to pronounce.
We can only bear witness to the evidently botanical fidelity of execution with which the forms and colours so lavishly spread throughout nature have been mimicked. In wax work generally, one is made painfully aware of the all-powerful presence of the forceps, but here we notice little or nothing of the kind, this is especially the case with the small blossoms, which expand their petals throughout a monster bouquet in wax.