The Art Fund recently announced that the Foundling Museum has acquired a rare embroidered sampler made by a 10-year-old girl in 1825. The sampler is the only known child’s depiction in any medium of the original Foundling Hospital, London’s first home for abandoned children, which was demolished in 1928. The girl who worked the sampler is believed to have had close family connections with the Foundling Hospital.
Acquired at a Christie’s auction on March 9, the sampler cost a total of $15,000 of which a little more than $8,000 was contributed by the Art Fund. Contributions were also made by the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Worshipful Company of Weavers. The museum does not often make additions to its collections, making this acquisition particularly important.
The sampler was created by Sarah Ann Quartermain. Embroidered in fawn and green silks on a natural background with a floral border, the work depicts the Foundling Hospital as it looked in 1763. Experts at the museum have tracked down records of an “S.A. Quarterman,” baptized at St Andrews in Holborn, a church that has links with the Foundling. It is believed that Sarah had a personal connection with the Foundling Hospital, given that topographical samplers of known buildings are unusual, and when they do occur, they usually directly relate to the child’s experiences.
The Foundling Museum was established in 1998 by the childcare charity, the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children (now known as Coram), which is the successor of the original Foundling Hospital. Its collections mainly focus on the history of the Foundling Hospital between its foundation in 1739 and its closure in 1954. It also houses the Gerald Coke Handel Collection (GCHC), which relates to the life and work of the composer George Frideric Handel, and a number of works by and relating to celebrated artist and social documenter William Hogarth.
The sampler is to go on display at the museum’s forthcoming exhibition, “Material Witness,” alongside some 6,000 fabric tokens left by mothers in the Eighteenth Century when handing over their babies, usually for the last time, to the care of the Foundling Hospital. The exhibition opens in October. When the exhibition closes, it will join the museum’s permanent display of social history, currently on view on the ground floor of the Foundling Museum.
The Foundling Museum is at 40 Brunswick Square. Visit www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk or call +44 20 7841 3600 for information.
