Anonymous: 19th century

English

  • Concert ticket (early 19th century), London. Ref. Warwick (1968: 128, pl., b&w). Two women stand each side of a central column playing lyre and what looks like a straight trumpet or shawm held with one hand. Beside them on the left lie tympani, a cello and a transverse flute and one-piece, flared bell recorder crossed. On the right lie violins, trumpet, horn and another transverse flute.
  • Cherub with a Pipe (1860s), porcelain figurine, ca 75 cm high. Antique Shop, UK. Ref. Anthony Rowland-Jones (pers. comm., 2000). Stamped ‘EBS 808’. The cherub’s pipe is a clear duct flute played with all fingers down (ie including both little fingers!) Below the lowermost hand is a mark showing one hole, offset from the line of the fingers. It is of soprano size (or a little larger) and cylindrical.
  • Portrait of a Child Holding an Ivory Flute (19th century), pastel, 59.5 × 49.5 cm, England. Ref. Bonhams (Knightsbridge), Sale 14671, British & Continental Pictures, 9 January 2007, Lot 183A. A young girl with long curly hair wearing a white smock holds a very narrowly conical duct flute right hand uppermost. The window/labium is vaguely discernible but the number of finger holes is obscure. Indistinctly signed.
  • Flauto dolce, or flûte à bec, Leighton, George C., Illustrated London News 56: 368 (1870). Entry from an illustrated dictionary:

The Flauto dolce, or sweet flute, is called in English the Recorder.; in French is is the flüte à bec or beaked flute.
The tortoise-shell flauto dolce, or flageolet, belonged to the late illustrious composer Rossini; it is of the seventeenth century.

This instrument, by an unknown possibly Neapolitan maker, survives in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It is covered in turtle-shell and gold-piqué.  Before the museum acquired this object, it formed part of a decorative trophy of old wind instruments that hung on a wall of the Paris apartment of Gioacchino Rossini (1792 – 1868), the great Italian composer of light opera. For a photograph and further details see here.

French

  • Carved note-case (19th century), ivory, Dieppe, France. Dieppe: Château Musée de Dieppe, Inv. 906.22.7; 1776 (MD). Clearly shows the upper part of a baroque recorder. The design could be derived form late 18th century carved wood or stone trophies or swags with musical instruments (Rowland-Jones, pers com.)
  • L’agréable leçon (The Pleasant Lesson), copperplate-printed plain-weave cotton, 172.2 × 84.0 cm, Swiss. Chicago: Art Institute, 1979.292. Ref. Ford (1987: #352). “Various scenes: (1) A woman holds a coiled horn as if about to play it, and a man holds an object that is perhaps a flute or a recorder. (2) A boy plays a bagpipe. (3) A shepherdess blows into a small wind instrument fingered by a shepherd. (4) A putto holds a coiled horn. The decoration of an urn in a garden includes a putto playing a slightly curved horn” (Ford, loc. cit.)
  • Pastoral Scene (early 19th century), wool-work picture, 41.0 × 51.5 cm, English. New York: Christies East, English Furniture and Decorative Arts, 23 October 2001, Lot 14. A pastoral scene depicting a gentleman playing the recorder to two listening ladies and their dog, within a period gilt wood frame. Not seen
  • Trophy of Musical Instruments (1850s), gilded or painted wood, French. Paris: Musée du Louvre, Grand Salon. This trophy includes a musette, a small lute, a tambourine and a transverse flute, the strongly flared bell ends of two other wind instruments and the beaked mouthpiece end of what could be a tenor recorder.
  • Trophy of Musical Instruments (1850s), gilded or painted wood, French. Paris: Musée du Louvre (Salon). The neighbouring Salon to the Grand Salon was used as a private theatre and is similarly decorated with lots of musettes and beaked ends of instruments sticking out of painted trophies. One has a syrinx as its centre-piece but shows a probable recorder with a beaked mouthpiece and turned ring, and, opposite the lower part with three finger holes and another ring at the foot-joint followed by an elongated and moderately flared bell end of a tenor-sized instrument. Notes by Anthony Rowland-Jones (loc. cit.)

German

  • [Shepherd and Shepherdess] (ca 1800), Meissen porcelain figurine, 15 cm high, German. Sotheby’s: Silver, Portrait Miniatures and Objects of Vertu, Ceramics, Works of Art, Furniture, Oriental Rugs, 24 July 2000, Lot 472. Ref. Website: Artfact 2004. From the ‘Marcolini’ period, ca 1800, later decorated. A girl seated on a goat with a fruiting vine draped across her lap, a boy standing beside her resting against a basket filled with bunches of grapes, playing a recorder, on an oval base, crossed swords and star in under-glaze blue, impressed G93, some damage.
  • Family of the Elector Max IV Emanuel of Bavaria (1801), silhouette, Seitz. Munich: Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. Ref. Anthony Rowland-Jones (pers. comm., 2002). The Elector later became Emperor Max I Emanuel. Above the portrait are five in-line shapes (lozenges, etc.) with ultra-miniature paintings within each of them. The central one of these shows a (?shepherd-)boy playing an alto-size pipe to a dancing spaniel with a long curly tail. His left hand is lowermost and the instrument has a slight bell flare, but further details are not possible to show at this scale.
  • Mercury and Argus, ink on paper, 27.5 × 21.2 cm, German. Heidelberg: Kurpfälzisches Museum Z 3437. Ref. Munich RIdIM (2003, HDkm – 199). On the left sits Mercury, a recorder in his hand; on the right is Argus; in the middle is Io as a heifer.
  • Shepherdess (ca 1820), Volkstedt porcelain figurine, 14 cm high, German. New York: Christie’s, Fine French Furniture and European Ceramics, 17 November 1999, Lot 461. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Crossed fork mark and incised 2789 at the back. Wearing pink hat and striped skirt, holding a recorder and her apron in her right hand, a posey in her left, the apron filled with flowers, a lamb recumbent at her left, on gilt-enriched rocaille base.
  • Still-life, ink on paper, 9.9 × 16.4 cm, German. Frankfurt am Main: Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Inv. L.St. 515, fol. S2. Ref. Munich RIdIM (2009, Fmk – 194). Still-life of scissors, tape, needles, books, halberd and recorder. Not seen.
  • The Violinist Jean Joseph Bott as a Boy (ca 1836), oil on canvas, 59 × 50 cm, German. Kassel: Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Inv. LM 1933/313. Ref. Munich RIdIM (1999, Kksg – 73); Macmillan (2008: 136). The violinist plays, but a soprano recorder lies in front of him on music by Spohr for two violins. Notes by Anthony Rowland-Jones (pers. comm., 1999).
  • Children (ca 1880), 2 Meissen porcelain figurines, 15 cm high, German. London: Christie’s, British and Continental Ceramics, 4 October 2001, Lot 339. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Both children are wearing eighteenth century dress, the boy playing a recorder, the girl holding grapes in her apron, on square gilt line bases, blue crossed swords marks (minor restoration).
  • Shepherd (ca 1880), Meissen porcelain figurine, 24.5 cm high, German. London: Christie’s, 19th-century Ceramics, 2 November, 2000, Lot 234. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Wearing a plumed hat, fur-lined puce cape, ruff and pale-blue flowered tunic and breeches, holding a wreath aloft, a recorder in his left hand, a seated hound at his feet, on a tree-stump mound base moulded with scrolls, blue crossed swords mark, incised 1305, Pressnummer 163, circa 1880 (some minor damages and restoration).
  • Shepherd and Shepherdess (mid-19th century), 2 Meissen figurines, 22.9 & 4.0 cm high, German. Chicago: Sotheby’s, Centuries of Style, 18 October 1998, Lot 487. Ref. Artfact (2004). The shepherdess wearing a pink bodice and a striped skirt, playing a recorder and standing beside a recumbent lamb on an elaborate rocaille base, (some restoration), crossed swords mark in under-glaze blue, painter’s numeral 25 in iron-red, impressed 69 and incised F 156; the shepherd wearing a magenta cloak over a blue costume, holding up a wreath of flowers and a recorder, and standing beside a brown seated dog (raised foreleg repaired) on a mound base edged in gilt-heightened scrolls, crossed swords mark in underglaze-blue, painter’s numeral 41 in brown, impressed 143, incised 1305.
  • Monkey Band (19th century), Meissen porcelain figurines, the tallest 17 cm high, German. Melbourne: Christie’s, Decorative Arts, 28 May 2001, Lot 76. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Typically modelled and painted in colours comprising: a conductor, a French horn player, trumpeter, two cellists, boy piper, oboist, flautist, two recorder players, timpanist carrier and drummer, hurdy gurdy player, guitarist, harpist, a pianist on a monkey’s back and a choir of six singers, blue crossed swords mark, impressed numbers and various gilders numbers (minor losses and restoration).
  • Monkey Band (19th century), Meissen porcelain figurines, the tallest 17 cm high, German. Melbourne: Christie’s, Decorative Arts, 28 May 2001, Lot 76. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Typically modelled and painted in colours comprising: a conductor, a French horn player, trumpeter, two cellists, boy piper, oboist, flautist, two recorder players, timpanist carrier and drummer, hurdy-gurdy player, guitarist, harpist, a pianist on a monkey’s back and a choir of six singers, blue crossed swords mark, impressed numbers and various gilders numbers (minor losses and restoration).
  • Shepherdess (19th century), Meissen porcelain figurine, German. New York: Christie’s, Nineteeth Century Furniture, Sculpture and Ceramics, 31 May 2000, Lot 326. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). One of three figurines auctioned in this lot. A shepherdess stands holding a recorder, her apron filled with apples, a ewe at her feet
  • Shepherdess (19th century), Meissen porcelain figurine, German. New York: Sotheby’s Arcade, Silver, Decorations, Furniture, Rugs and Carpets, 27 January 1993, Lot 786. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). One of several items auctioned in this lot. A young woman wearing a yellow and purple floral dress, and playing a recorder, a lamb at her feet.
  • Shepherd (19th century), Meissen figurine, 25.5 cm high, London: Christie’s, 19th Century British and Continental Ceramics, 1 July 1999, Lot 137. Lot 137 : A Meissen figure of a shepherd Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Wearing a plumed hat, a fur-lined puce cape and a pale-blue jacket and breeches, modelled standing before a tree stump holding a garland of flowers and a recorder, a seated hound at his feet, on a mound base moulded with scrolls, blue crossed swords mark, incised 1305, Pressnummer 143, circa 1880 (some minor damages, the dog with the raised paw broken and repaired).
  • Musicians (19th century), Meissen porcelain figurines, 25.5 cm high, German. London: Christie’s, 19th Century British and Continental Ceramics, 1 July 1999, Lot 139. Ref. Artfact (2004). A shepherd and shepherdess, wearing eighteenth century dress: he playing bagpipes and standing with a hound and sheep at his feet; she playing a recorder, with a lamb at her feet; both on tree stump mound bases moulded with scrolls, blue crossed swords marks, incised marks and Pressnummer, circa 1880 (some minor damages).
  • Musician (19th century), Meissen porcelain figurine, 13.5 cm high, German. London: Christie’s, 19th-century British and Continental Ceramics, 19 November 1998, Lot 222. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). A boy wearing tricorn hat with grape garland, playing the recorder and standing before a jug filled with grapes, on gilt-line scroll-moulded base, blue crossed swords mark, incised marks and Pressnummern, late 19th century (chips).
  • Musicians (19th century), 2 Meissen porcelain figurines, German. Chicago: Leslie Hindman, American and Continental Furniture and Decorative Arts of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, 14 May 1995, Lot 200. Ref. Website: Artfact 2004. One depicting gentleman in 18th Century attire playing the cello, the other peasant playing a recorder.
  • Decorated Clock (19th century), Meissen porcelain, 37 cm high, German. London: Christie’s, 19th-century British and Continental Ceramics, 19 November 1998, Lot 265. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Modelled en rocaille with C-scroll clock case applied with flowers and surmounted with a figure of girl holding bunches of grapes, on rocky-moulded base with a figure of boy playing a recorder, a girl with a basket of fruit and another with a garland of flowers, on gilt-line scroll-moulded base, painted in shades of blue and gilt, blue crossed swords mark, incised 572 and Pressnummer, late 19th century (restoration and chips).
  • Figures Emblematic of Love (late 19th century), 2 Dresden porcelain figurines, 41.6 cm high, German. New York: Christie’s, 19th Century Decorative Arts, 27 October 1998, Lot 113. Blue crossed lines, dot and C marks One group modelled as a gallant seated atop a rocky mound leaning against a tree-stump playing a recorder, below a confident receives a love-letter from a billing dove, while other standing and seated figures string floral garlands; the other group with a companion figure releasing a love bird above a similarly modelled group, raised on ribbon-tied circular bases painted with alternate panels of birds and flowers.
  • Musical Children, oil on canvas, 87 × 91 cm, (19th century). Brunswick: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Inv. 661. Ref. Munich RIdIM (1999, BSm – 91, as 17th century). Three children play music, one in rear view. The boy in the middle holds a small duct flute with five finger holes which does not seem to be a recorder. Notes by Anthony Rowland-Jones (pers. comm., 1999).
  • Children (late 19th / early 20th century), 5 Meissen porcelain figurines, the tallest 13 cm high, German. New York, Christie’s, Nineteeth Century Furniture, Sculpture and Ceramics, 31 May 2000, Lot 318. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Blue crossed swords marks, two with incisions, various incised and impressed cyphers to all. Each modelled standing on rocaille moulded bases, the boy playing the recorder and the boy in a black hat outside-decorated, the two girls and third boy holding flowers.
  • A Musician and a Gardener (late 19th / early 20th century), 2 Meissen porcelain figurines, 13.3 cm, German. New York: Sotheby’s Arcade, Furniture and Decorations, 9 July 1998, Lot 230. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Each modeled as a young boy standing barefoot on a domed base with gilt scroll border: the first playing a recorder and with a wooden churn of grapes on the ground behind him; the second wearing a floral jacket and resting his left foot on a spade, (minor chips and losses), crossed swords factory marks in under-glaze blue, incised, painted and impressed numerals.
  • [Children] (late 19th / early 20th century), Meissen porcelain figurine, 14,3 cm high, German. Bolton: Skinner Auctioneers, English and Continental Furniture and Decorations including Silver, 7 October 2000, Lot 383. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). A young boy and girl with a goat, the boy playing a recorder, the girl with a grape vine, on ovoid base.
  • Musicians, 5 Meissen porcelain figurines, 12.7-13.7 cm high, German. Chicago: Sotheby’s, Centuries of Style, 18 October 1998, Lot 551. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Each wearing a colorful costume, comprising two figures of a barefoot boy playing a recorder and standing beside a seated dog on a gilt-edged scroll-molded base, (the slightly smaller version with hands and instrument repaired); a bassoonist and a flutist (repaired through legs, and hands and flute restored), each standing on a gilt-heightened scroll-molded base; and a triangle-player from the ‘Madchenkapelle Series,’ standing barefoot on a flower-applied mound base; crossed sword marks in under-glaze blue, various painter’s, impressed and incised numerals.
  • Three Musicians (late 19th / 20th century), Meissen porcelain figurines, the tallest 15.5 cm high, German. New York: Christie’s, Nineteeth Century Furniture, Sculpture and Ceramics, 31 May 2000, Lot 327. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Blue crossed swords marks, various incised, impressed and painted cyphers The first modelled as a bagpiper, a hound and a ewe at his feet; the second a shepherd playing a recorder a hound below; the third a seated maiden with violin.
  • Grape Pickers (19/20th century), 2 Meissen porcelain figurines, 15.2 cm high, German. London: Bonhams, Fine 19th & 20th Century Furniture, Sculpture & Ceramics, 25 May 25 1995, Lot 212. Ref. Website: Artfact (2004). Standing upon upturned half barrels, each before either a jug or basket containing fruit, he playing a recorder, she dancing, upon finely scrolled circular bases.
  • Mercury and Argus, ink wash on paper, 27.5 × 21.2 cm, German. Heidelberg: Kurpfälzisches Museum, Inv. Z 3437. Ref. Munich RIdIM (2009, HDkm – 1990). Mercury sits to right, holding a recorder. Argus is to the right. In the middle is Io, amongst the trees. Designed in the nature of an ancient stone carving. Not seen.
  • [Boy with a Pipe] (? 19th century), painting,octagonal, ? German. Forney (Texas): Caspar & Gerard’s Antiques (2014, col.) A young boy lying on a hillside plays a duct flute with enough finger holes to be a recorder. Two lambs graze beside him.

Italian

  • Allegory of the Grape Harvest (ca 1800), oil on metal, 42 × 56 cm, Italian (Neapolitan). Mantua: Private Collection; offered for sale by Bigli, Milan, 2003.  The back of the canvas is annotated “Fi…o”, and the painting is in the style and of the quality of works by the Lombard painter Filippo Comerio (1747–1829). Scantily clad women play triangular harp and double pipe. A putto cuddles the piper, another dances with a goblet of wine held high, and a third sits playing a flared-bell pipe, possibly a duct flute.

Russian

  • The Bear and the Goat, from Russian Folk Pictures (1881), printed from the original wood-block and hand-coloured, Russian. Location unknown: sold at The Sporting D’Hiver, Monte Carlo, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Monaco, 28 November – 1 December 1975, No. 177. Ref. Paris RIdIM (2000). Part of the Diaghilev-Lifar Library, the property of Serge Lifar. An anthropomorphic bear in a frilly collar with tassels and a feathered hat plays a cylindrical duct flute with a broad, turned foot, all four of the fingers of his lowermost (left) paw seem to be employed covering their holes, and the thumb of his uppermost (right) paw seems to be in an excellent thumbing position. He is watched by an equally anthropomorphic goat in a magnificent dress with tassels matching the bear’s and bells on her horns who is playing the spoons in both front hooves. This is an example of Lubki (singular lubok), the woodblock prints which served as folk literature and graphic art in Russia until 1917. Amongst the best known collectors was D. A. Rovinskii, whose Russkie Narodnye Kartinki (Russian Folk Pictures) was published in 1881 in an edition of 250 copies by the St. Petersburg Academy of Science and State Paper.

Swedish

  • Portrait of Philip Erik Trozelli (1824-1856), oil, 19th century, Swedish. Norrköping (Östergötland): Björnsnäs. Ref. RIdIM Stockholm (2000, photo SPA 1922:1767); Anthony Rowland-Jones (pers. comm., 2000). A young lad in a lace collar holds a small duct flute (probably a recorder) in his left hand. The instrument is clearly depicted with a turned ring above the window/labium and four finger holes below the clutching hand. The body is slightly conical terminating in another turned ring and a short straight-sided bell flare. Notes by Rowland-Jones (loc. cit.)
  • Cylinderpositiv Barrel Organ (≤1883), 19th century Swedish. Stockholm: Scenkonstmuseet  / Swedish Museum of Performing Arts, Inv. N34925. Cabinet externally painted brown-red, the inside of the lid covered in printed paper with floral ornaments. On the front is a garland depicting sheet music, a bell, a lyre and wind instruments: horn, bassoon, trumpet, triangle (with jingle rings), and a baroque style recorder viewed in side profile, only the head joint of which is visible.

Switzerland

  • Musical Angels, (?1878). Geneva: Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Genève: Chapel of the Maccabees, ceiling above altar. Angels play shawms, straight trumpet, harp, lute, tambourine, a cylindrical pipe (possibly a duct flute), symphony and portative organ. Built in 1405 as a burial and collegial chapel, the Chapel of the Maccabees was used as a warehouse for salt and gunpowder and then as lecture hall after the Reformation. In 1878, it was reconsecrated and richly decorated; the neo-Gothic ceiling decorations appear to date from this time.

Cite this article as: Nicholas S. Lander. 1996–2024. Recorder Home Page: Anonymous: 19th century. Last accessed 21 December 2024. https://recorderhomepage.net/recorder-iconography/anonymous-19th-century/