Thomas Day, Portrait of a Woman, 1779

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Thomas Day, Portrait of a Woman, 1779,” 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. 2, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1356.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Thomas Day, Portrait of a Woman, 1779,” 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. 2, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1356

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Although the common surname “Day” has caused this artist to be confused and conflated with others, this portrait of a woman from 1779 provides a unique and valuable glimpse into the early works of miniaturist Thomas Day.¹ This period marks a pivotal transition for Day, as he shifted from pastels to miniature painting in 1777. The portrait not only showcases Day’s evolving artistic style but also underscores his artistic lineage, particularly his connection to teachers Ozias Humphry (1742–1810) and Daniel Dodd (fl. 1752–1780), who also instructed the renowned John Smart (1741–1811).

Day’s technique warrants careful consideration. He was often referred to as “Macgilp Day” due to his presumed use of macgilp varnish, a mixture of mastic varnish with pigment and an oil such as walnut, linseed, or poppy. While it is unlikely that he utilized those exact materials, earlier recipes for macgilp involved wax, evident here in the wax-like deposits in the sitter’s blue overgown.² Macgilp varnish, used for thinning, glossing, and expediting the drying time of oil paint, likely helped Day to convey depth and transparency while retaining brush and hatch marks, especially in representing the different fabrics of the sitter’s dress and its brown fur trim.

Fashion played a crucial role in signaling one’s social standing in late eighteenth-century London. This sitter’s attire features a fashionable powdered and towering hairstyle, adorned with two large white ostrich feathers, popularized by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and exemplifies the sitter’s awareness of contemporary trends. The incorporation of a decorative turban and a strand of baroque pearls, possibly chosen for a masquerade, further attests to her sartorial confidence. The sitter wears a type of fancy dress with a blue overgown, its scalloped sleeves edged in fur. Dresses with fur trimming appealed to the English for fancy dress occasions, perhaps because they did not generally wear fur in their everyday dress. Fashion historian Aileen Ribeiro acknowledges that fur came to be synonymous with the glamorous and the “exotic,” evocative of faraway lands like Turkey.³

In the mid-eighteenth century, so-called Turkish influence significantly shaped English fashions. During this period, Turkish attire referred to the clothing worn by individuals in the Ottoman Empire, which ranged from the Arabian Peninsula to Greece.⁴ With a notable Western presence in Turkey, driven by diplomatic and mercantile activities, there was growing interaction between the West and the Ottoman Empire. Travelers’ narratives ignited a widespread fascination with turquerie, a trend that swiftly permeated various aspects of European culture, including theater, interior design, and portraiture.⁵

While the sitter represents the epitome of late eighteenth-century fashion, she is not the quintessential English beauty. Day meticulously captures her distinctive features—her fleshy face, receding chin, spartan eyebrows, and the creases in the corners of her eyes—as he perceives them. His unidealized yet skillful rendering of the figure, adept modeling, and use of jewel tones evoke parallels with John Smart, suggesting a stylistic kinship possibly inherited from their shared teacher, Daniel Dodd. Amid the fashionable elements, Day’s sensitivity to his subject shines through, underscoring his familiarity with Smart’s work and his engagement with a vibrant community of miniature painters in central London.

Notes

1. Daphne Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger, 1972), 1:525.

2. Macgilp was also used by Old Master painters, including Titian (Italian, d. 1576), Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640), and their predecessors, including Jan van Eyck (Netherlandish, before 1399–1441) and others, and was incorporated by English artists into their works. See R. D. Harley, Artists’ Pigments, c. 1600–1835 (London: Butterworths, 1970), 209–19. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) revived interest in this material in the eighteenth century. For a recipe and description of its use in a decorative context, see Nathaniel Whittock, The Decorative Painters’ and Glaziers’ Guide (London: I. T. Hinton, 1827), 22–26.

3. Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 228.

4. Ribeiro, Art of Dress, 222.

5. Ribeiro, Art of Dress, 222–29.

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, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 154, p. 53, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.