Derived from British and continental European models, American miniatures took on a character of their own, infused with the spirit of cultural exchange and individualism that defined the fledgling nation. Miniatures were more affordable than oil paintings and therefore attracted the new republic’s many upwardly mobile patrons. Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), like John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), painted oil portraits as well as watercolor: A sheer water-soluble paint prized for its luminosity, applied in a wash to light-colored surfaces such as vellum, ivory, or paper. Pigments are usually mixed with water and a binder such as gum arabic to prepare the watercolor for use. See also gum arabic. miniatures on ivory: The hard white substance originating from elephant, walrus, or narwhal tusks, often used as the support for portrait miniatures.. Peale and his artistic family established Philadelphia as a center for miniatures, while Irishman John Ramage (ca. 1748–1802) made his name in New York. Itinerant artists who had worked in London, like Robert Field (ca. 1769–1819) and Edward Greene Malbone (1777–1807), spurred an interest in miniatures along the eastern seaboard, using ivory transported along the same routes as the transatlantic slave trade. While miniatures were supplanted in the 1840s by the invention of the daguerreotype, some enterprising miniaturists like Edward Samuel Dodge (1816–1857) adapted by becoming photographers themselves.
doi: 10.37764/8322.8.3000