Puck

Date: modeled 1854, carved 1856
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1918/1918.3.5_1a.jpg?itok=VMcL8faB width="255" height="300" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/puck-10804"]] || Title: **Puck**

Artist: **Harriet Hosmer** Born: Watertown, Massachusetts 1830 Died: Watertown, Massachusetts 1908

Medium: marble Dimensions: 30 1/2 x 16 5/8 x 19 5/8 in. (77.5 x 42.1 x 49.9 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Mrs. George Merrill

Accession: 1918.3.5 || Harriet Hosmer created //Puck// out of financial necessity when her father could no longer support her in Rome. Literary themes were popular in the nineteenth century, and Hosmer chose the mischievous but adorable fairy from Shakespeare’s //A Midsummer Night’s Dream//. //Puck//---or “my son,” as Hosmer called him---was an instant success with the aristocracy, including Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales and the crown princess of Germany, who, upon seeing the work, remarked, “Oh, Miss Hosmer, you have such talent for toes!”
 * About the Artwork: **

“I have another order for Puck; he has already brought me his weight in silver.” Harriet Hosmer, in Cornelia Crow Carr, ed., Harriet Hosmer: Letters and Memories, 1913

Hosmer later created //Will o' the Wisp// as a companion piece to //Puck//.
 * Addendum: **

Women Artists
 * Resources: **

About the Artist <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Artist Biography from the Luce Center <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Hosmer's Letters and Memoir <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">SAAM Collection Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Links: **