"The Savoyard Sweep Boy" (1879) by Charles Francis Summers (1857-1945)

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The Savoyard Sweep Boy

Charles Francis Summers (1857-1945)

Marble

1879

Height: Two metres (78 inches)

Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

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The marble figures of a child chimney-sweeper (identified as such by the rope at his feet and the chimney behind him) and a girl carrying a lute are positioned near the top of the Royal Botanic Garden steps. Summers has based these figures on characters from a Donzietti opera entitled Linda di Chamonix (1842).

Photograph and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Commentary

Summers has rendered the Italian chimney-sweeper who is only a minor character in the 1842 opera by Ligetti truly pathetic. The waif tucks his bare hands inside his jacket to keep them warm, and can do nothing to warm his bare feet.

The boy and girl, although about the same age, are a study in contrasts: whereas the well-dressed young Linda, the star of Donizetti's melodrama, exudes health and confidence, despite being the daughter of a poor farmer, the boy is a scruffy chimney-sweep, the sort of miserable, put-upon urchin that one finds in the pages of Dickens's Oliver Twist in scenes such as George Cruikshank's Oliver Twist escapes being bound apprentice to the sweep (March 1837), or Phiz's Jo, The Crossing-Sweeper in Bleak House (September 1853).

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853.

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.

Eastwood, Jill. "Summers, Charles (1825-1878)." Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. VI (1976). National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Melbourne University Press. Web. 21 February 2026. adb.anu.edu.au

Scarlett, Kenneth William. "Summers, Charles Francis." Australian Sculptors. West Melbourne: Nelson, 1980. 630-635.

Created 23 February 2026