Russian Gardner Porcelain Figurine From Series “People Of Russia”

Statuette representing a “Peasant Woman of Kaluga” (Калуж. Крестьянк) from the famous “People of Russia” series, in tinted porcelain and bisque painted in polychrome. The young woman is shown standing on a naturalistic circular terrace, dressed in the traditional costume of the Kaluga province.
Russia. Gardner factory in Verbilki (Moscow). Late 19th century period.
Height: 24 cm
Founded in 1766 by the Englishman Francis Gardner, the Gardner factory in Verbilki is one of the most famous and prestigious private earthenware factories in the Russian Empire, directly competing with the Imperial Factory. From the years 1870-1880, Gardner published his famous anthropological series “People of Russia”, largely inspired by the lithographs in the ethnographic work of Jean-Baptiste Pauly (1862).
The major technical particularity of this series lies in the exclusive use of painted porcelain biscuit (without glossy coating), deliberately chosen to give a matte, realistic and extremely velvety appearance to traditional flesh and textiles. These figurines of great documentary and plastic fidelity were highly sought after by the Russian aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie, capturing with immense refinement the Slavophile spirit of the end of the 19th century.
Our object is part of the procelain production of the Gardner factory from the 1870s through its emblematic “Peoples of Russia” series, consisting of around 50 figurines representing the ethnographic diversity of the Russian Empire. These statuettes were inspired by the chromolithographs of the monumental work
Ethnographic description of the peoples of Russia
, published in 1862 by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society under the direction of Fedor Khristianovich Pauli (1817-1867).
This reference work, produced on the occasion of the millennium of the Russian State, brought together the work of the main ethnographers and artists of its time and included 63 color plates illustrating the costumes, traditions and lifestyles of the different populations of the Empire. The Gardner figurines constitute a three-dimensional transposition of these graphic models, precisely reproducing the traditional costumes, cultural attributes and social particularities of the peoples represented.
Both decorative objects and documentary evidence, these figures demonstrate the 19th century interest in ethnography and the representation of the cultural diversity of Imperial Russia. Today, the “Peoples of Russia” series remains one of the most sought-after productions of the Gardner factory and appears in important museum and private collections.