Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1850

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1850,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.4106.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1850,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.4106.

Well-pruned and shaped eyebrows mirror the top arc of this sitter’s eye and eyelid. The subtle eyelashes, defined brow, and perfectly coiffed curls suggest a female sitter. Her pupil is higher than the center of the eye, creating the appearance that she is gazing slightly upward. The sitter’s stylized brown locks encircle nearly three-quarters of the painted edge. The shape and size of the support perhaps proved challenging for the artist; the space where the left eye should be is occupied by more hair as it curves down toward the nose. The case and support are reminiscent of an eye not only in the pearl bezel but also in the elongated elliptical shape.

The portrait shares stylistic similarities with Brown Right Eye and Blue Right Eye from the Skier Collection in Birmingham, Alabama, specifically in the shape of the eye, eyelid, and eyebrow and the outline of the tear duct and shading along the bottom lid’s waterline.¹ The Skier miniatures are dated around 1840 and 1860, respectively, which helps refine the date of the Nelson-Atkins miniature to around 1850. An eye miniature at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Portrait of a Woman’s Right Eye, also has a strong resemblance to the Skier eyes;² all feature clouds along the lower right edge. The artist of the Nelson-Atkins portrait may have intended to fill the opening at the bottom similarly but, for unknown reasons, did not. This miniature also differs in paint handling from the Skier and Philadelphia examples; it appears more rigid, particularly in the structure of the hair. No strands of hair escape as they do in the loose rendering of the others.³ While the artist remains unknown, the similarities between these other examples strongly suggest a close kinship. They present this miniature as a decorative object, in its sweeping pattern of curls and arcs that repeat in the eye, brow, and case.

Notes

1. Thanks to specialist Elle Shushan for drawing this comparison. See Elle Shushan, ed., Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection (London: D. Giles, 2021), 80: Brown Right Eye with Clouds, ca. 1840, cat. 68; and Blue Right Eye with Hair and Clouds, ca. 1860, cat. 62.

2. Portrait of a Woman’s Right Eye, ca. 1800, watercolor on cardboard, 1 5/8 x 1 3/16 in. (4.1 x 3 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1935-17-4, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/45337.

3. In the Nelson-Atkins miniature, the artist scratched in the paint of the hair, creating highlights by exposing the bare ivory.

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. 212, as Eye Miniature.

Antiques 80, no. 5 (November 1961): 389, (repro.), as Eye Miniature.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 212, p. 72 (repro.), as Eye Miniature.