Harriet Goodhue Hosmer was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1830 and studied anatomy in St Louis, Missouri before travelling to Rome in 1852 to join the studio of John Gibson. Her typical output, like many of Gibson’s pupils, consisted of ideal classical figures. In 1854, however, she modelled a figure of Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which does not appear to be based directly on Shakespeare’s text but captures the character’s mischievous and ‘knavish’ spirit. The figure was Hosmer’s most successful and commercial work; she sold numerous marble versions of it, helped by the circulation of photographs, taken under her supervision.

Puck was purchased by Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, at the age of 19. The Prince’s visit to Rome in 1859 was organised by Gibson and included a visit to the studio that Hosmer had by then established on her own. Puck was first displayed in the Prince’s drawing room at Frewin Hall, where he lived while he was attending Christ Church college, Oxford. It was lent to the International Exhibition at South Kensington in 1862, and later placed at Sandringham.