Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1800

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1800,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.4104.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1800,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.4104.

This skillfully composed eye miniature includes strands of black curls escaping the top left border that meet similarly curved scallops of clouds around the remaining three-quarters of the edge. The subtle linear marks of the clouds are not unlike the style of those that frame another eye miniature in the Starr collection. Here, an eye with a brown iris confronts the viewer from the very center of the composition. The ruddy complexion, shape of the eyebrow, and length of the curled hair point to a male sitter.

The pearls surrounding the bezel are nearly the exact same size as the painted iris, a reminder of the portrait miniature’s scale—it is about one inch tall. The pearls also create an effect of not one but twenty-seven glistening eyes staring back. Pearls symbolize purity, innocence, and love itself, due to their value and perfectly round shape.¹ The pearl bezel forms part of the lace pin, so called because its purpose was to hold a lace or linen fichu onto women’s clothing.² One can imagine this eye worn in the center of a woman’s bosom, close to her heart.³

It is unclear whether the miniature was intended as a token of love or loss: the cloud and pearl surrounds imply a heavenly setting and teardrops, but the sitter’s rosy skin tone and crow’s feet, developed over years of smiling, present a lively figure. Like its sitter and artist attributions, the intention of this work’s commission remains unknown for now. Nevertheless, its abraded case and glass indicate that the miniature was frequently worn and handled, and most certainly well loved.⁴

Notes

1. According to Graham Boettcher, “Symbol and Sentiment: Lover’s Eyes and the Language of Gemstones,” in Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection, ed. Elle Shushan (Lewes: D. Giles, 2021), 43.

2. It is unclear whether the case is original to the eye miniature, but specialist Elle Shushan remarked in a March 27–31, 2017, consultation visit that the case has characteristics that are indicative of the United States in the 1820s.

3. For a similar placement, and an altogether rare example of an eye miniature, see Continental School, Portrait Miniature of a Lady Wearing an Eye Miniature, reproduced in Shushan, ed., Lover’s Eyes, 270, cat. 132.

4. Per a conversation with conservator Carol Aiken during her March 19–23, 2018, collection survey: “Very abraded. Someone obviously used it and wore it.” 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. 216, 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. 216, p. 72, (repro.), as Eye Miniature.