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Valentine card
Printmaker: Gilks, Edward
A hand-coloured lithograph on white wove paper cut into a small rectangle and mounted onto a secondary support of a larger piece of cream laid paper which is mounted along the left side onto a strip of buff wove paper. A female figure wearing a soldier's uniform with a striped skirt and playing a lute. A verse in brown ink is written onto the secondary support below: 'Oh, Daughter of the Regiment / Oh, very Queen of Song / Sing on, sing on, for ever / Thy dulcet strains prolong ... Her voice, not thine, sweet Jenny / It is that fills mine ear ...'. The lithograph is signed at lower right: 'E. Gilks lith.'. '29x' written in graphite at the upper right corner of the secondary support. An embossed stamp of Prince of Wales feathers inside a shield at upper left of the secondary support. A graphite inscription, apparently in a different hand to the verse, is written along the left edge of the buff-coloured paper: 'Jenny Lind'. _The Daughter of the Regiment_ (_La fille du régiment_) is a comic opera in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). It was first performed in Paris in 1840 and in London on 27 May 1847 at Her Majesty's Theatre, with Jenny Lind in the title role. Lind is presumably the 'Jenny' mentioned in the verse. It seems likely that the lithograph and accompanying verse make reference to the 1847 performance of the opera and Jenny Lind's role in it and that it was produced prior to Gilks's departure for Australia in 1852. This is one of three designs for valentines by Gilks mounted onto the same page of album P.14414-R which feature small lithographs of women in theatrical costume that are cut down and pasted onto paper with either hand-written or lithographed verse below. Glaisher seems to have had an interest in the Swedish-born soprano, Jenny Lind. Four further objects relating to her can be found in his collection of ceramics and glass; a pot lid (GPL.254-1928), two Staffordshire figures (C.1003-1928 and C.1014-1928) and a glass flask (C.131-1975). In a letter to Catherine Parsons dated December 6th, 1924, he talks about a ‘Jenny Lind’ pot lid and mentions that he has ‘got a life of J.L. with a number of pictures of her from the Un. Lib’. See Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 910-1985, letter to Miss Catherine Parsons, December 6th, 1924.
Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928
Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr
19th Century
Circa
1847
-
Circa
1852
Pen and ink
Hand colouring
Lithography
Accession number: P.14414-R-122
Primary reference Number: 215113
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Paintings, Drawings and Prints
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Valentine card" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/215113 Accessed: 2024-11-14 16:24:06
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/215113
|title=Valentine card
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-14 16:24:06|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/api/v1/objects/object-215113
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<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/pdp/pdp77/P_14414_R_122_1_201609_amt49_dc2.jpg"
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<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Valentine card</figcaption>
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