Unknown, Eye Miniature, early 20th century

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Unknown, Eye Miniature, early 20th century,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.4116.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Unknown, Eye Miniature, early 20th century,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.4116.

While this eye miniature dates to the early 1900s, it is framed in a bracelet setting from the late 1700s or early 1800s. This kind of mismatch between painting and frame is not atypical in the art world, especially with portrait miniatures.¹ The artist likely did not intend for it to pass as a Georgian-era piece, since the painting style does not resemble that period. Here, the eye is oversized and closely cropped, whereas earlier eye miniatures focused more on surrounding hair or facial features.

Photomicrographs display the dots and dashes from the painter’s hand, which are significantly different from the opaque marks of black in the sketchily painted pupil, upper eyelid, and lines of hair (Fig. 1). Although these marks do not yield the identity of the artist, the blue eye, with its magnified appearance, captures the wide-eyed innocence of childhood and was likely commissioned and worn by a fashionable mother. A 1904 article in The Kansas City Star outlines the trend of American women commissioning their own eye miniatures at this time: “Nearly every handsome woman of social consequence has had, or is having, her miniature painted by greater or lesser artists” (Fig. 2).² This moment of resurgence in the popularity of eye miniatures corresponded to the overt sentimentality of the Victorian era. This child’s eye acted as a decorative and deeply personal piece of jewelry that meant something dear to its original owner. It also probably resonated with Mr. and Mrs. John W. Starr, keen collectors of portraits of children.

Notes

1. Marcia Pointon, “‘Surrounded with Brilliants’: Miniature Portraits in Eighteenth-Century England,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (March 2001): 49; conversation with conservator Carol Aiken, March 19–23, 2018, notes in NAMA curatorial files.

2. “Miniatures of Your Eyes: A Curious Fashion of a Century Ago is Revived Again,” Kansas City Star (December 2, 1904): 18.

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. 214, 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. 214, p. 72, (repro.), as Eye Miniature.