Catherine Andras was one of the most celebrated wax artists of the early 19th century. As an orphan, C. Andras learned to work in wax to support herself, promoting her work and honing her craft so successfully that she was appointed the official Wax Modeller to Queen Charlotte from 1801 until at least 1817. C. Andras would become a frequent fixture at the Royal Academy’s annual exhibitions, showing a total of 22 works between 1799 and 1824 and winning the Royal Society of Arts’ Silver Pallet in 1802. Women have a long history of working in wax and by 1800 it was a medium in which many women had built critically and commercially successful careers. Like paper cutting or quilling, waxwork was a readily available and relatively affordable medium, making it accessible for creative women such as C. Andras from diverse social and economic backgrounds.

Born in Bristol in the United Kingdom, in 1775, C. Andras’s earliest biographers suggest that she learned to sculpt while working in a toy shop. She found early success as a portraitist in Bristol, producing sculpted waxes such as the sympathetic portrait of Rose Bruce of Dublin (1799) now found in duplicate at both the Yale Center for British Art and the National Gallery in Dublin. Her sculptures of Rose Bruce were amongst the last works produced before the artist’s relocation to London where she would remain for the rest of her life. There, C. Andras was quickly introduced to an elite network of patrons through her association with the artist Robert Bowyer (1758–1834), miniaturist to King George III. Bowyer and his wife took in the young artist, treating her as their own daughter and supporting her flourishing career, which was marked by her initial exhibition of a portrait of a lady in wax (possibly that of Rose Bruce) at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in 1799.

C. Andras spent the height of her decades-long career working from locations in or near the notable London address of Pall Mall. Her residence at 80 Pall Mall was part of Schomberg House, a notable artistic hub embellished by leading women artists of the period including a stone portico by Eleonor Coade (1733–1821) and rooms painted by Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) at the behest of former resident Maria Cosway (1760–1838). From this fashionable studio, C. Andras worked in both cast and sculpted wax and was praised for the verism of her work and for her skills as a miniaturist. Her most celebrated portraits included likenesses of Princess Charlotte; the noted abolitionists Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson and Sir William Dolben; and Lord Horatio Nelson. Those successes were rewarded with her commission for a life-size effigy of Nelson following his death. Her life-like product, dressed in his own clothes, was praised for its accuracy by Nelson’s paramour, Emma Hart, known as Lady Hamilton, and remains on view today in Westminster Abbey. Works by C. Andras can additionally be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the British Royal Collection.