Nicolas François Dun, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1820

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Nicolas François Dun, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1820,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.2304.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Nicolas François Dun, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1820,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.2304.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

In this portrait of a woman, her head and neck rise from a dense bank of gray clouds, an unusual format within Dun’s body of work and among portrait miniatures generally. The ominous nature of the storm clouds encroaching on the sitter’s neck and upper shoulders, as well as her somewhat stylized features, suggest that this portrait was not done ad vivum and hint that it may be a mourning portrait. In the first half of the nineteenth century, mortality rates among women of childbearing age, like this sitter, were still relatively high. If it is not a sign that the portrait commemorates a lost loved one, the cloud surround is otherwise emblematic of the Romantic era, in which artists like Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840) favored dramatic skyscapes to evoke the sublime in nature.¹

The portrait is undated, like most of Dun’s miniatures.² It was probably painted in Naples around 1820, during the final phase of Dun’s career.³ The sitter’s physiognomy closely corresponds to Dun’s characteristic style of painting women, particularly her prominent almond-shaped eyes, which mirror the subtle curve of the brow, and the soft flush of pink pigment across her cheeks. In this miniature and others, Dun frequently placed greater emphasis on the sitter’s upper lip, with a deep pink stroke that follows its outline, in contrast to a soft wash of pigment along the lower lip.⁴ He notably positioned a piece of silver foil, called a paillon, behind the sitter’s face to exploit the luminosity of the ivory support and add to the ethereality of the sitter’s appearance.⁵ Emerging from the clouds, this unknown woman’s portrait is a poignant souvenir of a loved one, lost or absent but made immortal through this likeness.

Notes

1. Friedrich’s influential Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, for example, was painted in about 1817. Casper David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, ca. 1817, oil on canvas, 37 5/16 x 29 7/16 in. (94.8 x 74.8 cm), Hamburger Kunstalle, https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/de/objekt/HK-5161/wanderer-ueber-dem-nebelmeer.

2. Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard, Les Peintres en Miniature 1650–1850 (Paris: Les éditions de l’Amateur, 2008), 216.

3. We are grateful to Bernd Pappe, who examined this miniature and offered his insight on the artist attribution and date during a July 23–25, 2023, visit. Notes in NAMA curatorial files.

4. For example, Nicolas François Dun, Portrait of a Lady, ca. 1795, watercolor on ivory, 2 5/8 x 2 1/16 in. (6.7 x 5.2 cm), sold at Sotheby’s, London, December 4, 2020, lot 168, https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/old-master-british-works-on-paper/portrait-of-a-lady-circa-1795; Nicolas François Dun, Mrs. John Izard Middleton (Eliza Augusta Falconet), ca. 1810, watercolor on ivory, 2 3/4 x 2 3/8 in. (6.9 x 6 cm), Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC, 1960.010.0004, https://gibbesmuseum.pastperfectonline.com/Webobject/D3BCEA17-A91A-4023-91F8-270329230434.

5. Pappe, in conversation with the author, July 23–25, 2023. Notes in NAMA curatorial files.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 252.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 264.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 252, p. 82, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.