Ozias Humphry, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1770

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Ozias Humphry, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1770,” 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. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1436.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Ozias Humphry, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1770,” 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. 3, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1436.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Although the colors have faded, this miniature by Ozias Humphry remains a sensitive portrait of a woman fashionably dressed “à la turque.” Turquerie was a style popularized in Britain¹ by the diarist Lady Mary Wortley Montagu beginning in the 1720s, and the trend had lasting appeal for much of the century, especially after Montagu’s travel diaries were published after her death in 1762 (Fig. 1).² Humphry’s miniature is undated but probably dates to earlier in his career, based on the immature technique and the sitter’s hairstyle, which has not yet reached the towering heights that would become popular in the later 1770s.³ It was painted no later than 1772, when Humphry largely stopped painting miniatures for thirteen years after he was injured in a riding accident.⁴

Despite the faded pigments—particularly in the face, in which the barest remnants of features remain—Humphry’s attention to detail is clear in the jeweled hair accessory; the trim of the sitter’s undergown, studded with red and white stones; and the diaphanous white scarf striped and fringed with gold threads.⁵ The scarf is tied around the sitter’s head and trails over her shoulder, imitating the appearance of a turban. If the exoticizing aim of her apparel was in doubt, she also wears a purple caftan, a common component of “Turkish” costume, along with layered ropes of pearls, worn to evoke the perceived opulence of a fantastical, romanticized “Orient” as imagined by eighteenth-century Europeans (Fig. 2).⁶

Turban-like headdresses were typically worn at fancy dress balls, or masquerades, suggesting that the sitter does not present her everyday self in this portrait.⁷ Rather, in an effort to briefly escape the rigid strictures of etiquette, gender, and class performance demanded of British noblewomen, she portrays a role that evokes an exotic, sensual Other, a British colonial fantasy only loosely inspired by the actual fashions of eighteenth-century Turkey.⁸

Notes

1. Turquerie rapidly spread across the European continent. Its evolution and its various forms are discussed in Haydn William, Turquerie: An Eighteenth-Century European Fantasy (London: Thames and Hudson, 2014), especially chapter 3, “Playing the Turk in Europe,” which focuses on the adoption of turquerie in European fashions.

2. Malcom Jack, ed., The Turkish Embassy Letters: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (London: Virago, 1994).

3. Aileen Ribeiro’s study of turquerie and masquerades categorizes the development of turquerie in the later eighteenth century into two distinct trends. The dress of the Nelson-Atkins sitter fits into the first, less formal phase designated by Ribeiro, which is characterized by a loose gown of silk, printed gauze, or embroidered muslin, often paired with a fringed scarf worn at the waist, and jewels, feathers, or scarves as turbans. See Aileen Ribeiro, The Dress Worn at Masquerades in England, 1730 to 1790, and its Relation to Fancy Dress in Portraiture (New York: Garland, 1984), 159.

4. For more information, see his biography. There are limited examples of miniatures by Humphry between 1772 and 1785, with notable exceptions including Ozias Humphry, Portrait of Suliman Aga Le Luna, 1782, watercolor on ivory, 9 3/5 x 2 7/8 in. (9.3 x 7.3 cm), Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, https://collection.nationalmuseum.se:443/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=artist&objectId=19914&viewType=detailView.

5. See, for example, the more formal example of the turban worn by Margaret Kemble Gage, painted by John Singleton Copley in 1771, which appears to be silk interwoven with a striped pattern of gold threads. Mrs. Gage was an American married to the British general Thomas Gage. In the absence of any American masquerades, Mrs. Gage’s Turkish-style costume was deliberately intended to evoke fashionable British styles of the era. See Isabel Breskin, “‘On the Periphery of a Greater World’: John Singleton Copley’s Turquerie Portraits,” Winterthur Portfolio 36, nos. 2/3 (summer–autumn 2001): 97–123.

6. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted many such examples, including Mrs. Baldwin in Eastern Dress, 1782, oil on canvas, 55 1/2 x 43 1/3 in. (141 x 110 cm), Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park, Warwickshire, https://www.comptonverney.org.uk/works/mrs-baldwin-in-eastern-dress.

7. See Ribeiro, Dress Worn at Masquerades in England, for a thorough analysis of masquerade and its implications.

8. In contrast, Humphry’s liveliest miniatures were arguably produced during his years in India (1785–87), where his vividly painted portraits of local Nawabs, princes, and ministers show his talents in a far better light. See, for example, Ozias Humphry, The Sahibzada, Vizir Ali Khan, later Nawab Wazir Of Oudhh, 1786, watercolor on ivory, 3 1/2 in (8.8 cm) high, Philip Mould, London, 2022, https://historicalportraits.com/artworks/5060-ozias-humphry-the-sahibzada-vizir-ali-khan-later-nawab-wazir-1786/.

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.

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. 70, p. 27, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.