3-011-427 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Hop Queen", sculptured by G. Halse, in the Exhibition of the British Institution, 1864. '...it is not a portrait bust... [but] the beauty of the forms justifies it being so classified...[It] has so much fidelity to nature; and the crowning a child with the graceful hop-bines (as children are crowned with hawthorn, and styled "May Queens," in another season of the year) is so simple and probable an incident of rustic life, that the sculptor's work may as legitimately be considered a study direct from nature, without treatment or idealisation of any kind...The bust...recalls one of the most animated and picturesque scenes of rural life - the hop-picking of Kent and some other of the great plantations in England. The chubby child has drawn over its little head and snoods its laughing face with one of the cut bines at the hop-gathering, drawing the vinelike leaves and tendrils to its bosom; and so striking is the ensemble of crown-wreath and happy, radiant face of childish innocence, that the sculptor may well call the subject of his chisel, whether it be a creation of fancy or simply suggested by nature, "The Hop Queen".' From "Illustrated London News", 1864.