Henry Spicer, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1774

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Henry Spicer, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1774,” 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: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1654.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Henry Spicer, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1774,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1654

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Although Henry Spicer was known to have copied portraits after fellow artists John Russell (1745–1806), Ozias Humphry (1742–1810), and Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), a model for this portrait of a woman remains unknown.¹ Nevertheless, it presents a charming example of the artist’s style in the mid-1770s, as learned from his instructor, Gervase Spencer (1722–1763). Spicer’s sitter bears Spencer’s hallmark duotone pink upper and orange lower lip, a technique that originated with Christian Friedrich Zincke (German, ca. 1684–1767), whose enamel work dominated the market in London.²

Spicer presents the sitter in three-quarters view, with her torso facing right and head turned toward the viewer. Her upswept hair, pinned around a “pouf,” or a cushion used to lend shape and structure, is slicked away from her face with pomade (then made of animal fat and perfume) and powdered to perfection. Popularized in France by Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), this hairstyle made its way to England in the mid-1770s, and it grew higher and more complex by the end of the decade. Spicer’s sitter stares out of the picture boldly, with bright blue eyes and lids rimmed in blush tones that match her simplified pink silk dress, which has darker red shadows and pearl-encrusted sleeves.³ The sitter wears a gold-striped white sash around her waist, which in combination with the crossover style of her gown lends an echo of turquerie to her ensemble. This combination of seventeenth-century elements of dress, such as the pearl adornments, with eastern motifs, including the wrapping gown with striped sash at the waist, creates a kind of Greco-Turkish ensemble, characterized by flowing graceful lines.⁴ Reynolds was master of blending these two styles in his compositions, which may point to an original source for the portrait. Indeed, the sitter bears some resemblance to Elizabeth Storer (née Proby, 1752–1808), whom Reynolds painted with her older brother, John Joshua Proby, 1st Earl of Carysfort, in 1765.⁵ Elizabeth married Thomas Storer in 1774, which may have occasioned the desire for an additional portrait. Whether or not the sitter is Elizabeth Proby, she is presented as a period beauty; the predominant colors of pink and red, along with the contrasting pallor of her bosom, served as culturally encoded referents to beauty during the period.⁶

The color red was on Spicer’s mind on August 30, 1774, when he wrote to his good friend Ozias Humphry, then in Rome, who had seen some mosaic works featuring red enamel.⁷ Curious how to achieve this color in enamel himself, Spicer begged Humphry to bring back a sample to facilitate his own experimentation. While the intense red tones appear only in the shadows of this sitter’s dress, this deep crimson would become a feature of Spicer’s later miniatures, including the red swagger curtain that appears in the background of his 1787 enamel portrait of celebrated actress Sarah Siddons.⁸ Overall, Spicer’s mastery in capturing period beauty and attention to detail make this portrait of an unknown woman a valuable and intriguing piece of his artistic legacy.

Notes

1. See, for example, Henry Spicer, Ozias Humphrey (1742–1810), 1783, enamel, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 766, https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/18240, after an original by George Romney. Spicer’s portrait of Edmund Burke, 1770s/80s, enamel, 4 1/2 in. (11.4 cm) high, which sold at Property From The Collection of Robert S Pirie Volume III: Fine and Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s, London, lot 192, https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2015/property-collection-robert-s-pirie-fine-decorative-arts-n09449/lot.192.html, is after a pastel drawing by Humphry, which in turn is after a portrait by Reynolds. See also Henry Spicer, Miniature Portrait of Gerard de Visme at Age 67, ca. 1794, enamel on copper, 2 1/2 x 2 1/8 in. (6.35 x 5.40 cm), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 27.10.229, https://collection.carnegieart.org/objects/b994cd1a-45b9-4ac7-bd6d-46a4a68ed9a7, after a pastel by John Russell (1745–1806).

2. See, for instance, Gervase Spencer, Portrait of a Woman, 1753 and Christian Friedrich Zincke, Portrait of a Viscount, 1727, both also in the Starr collection.

3. There is a small black speck of kiln dust over the sitter’s right eye, a hazard of the firing process.

4. See Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 223.

5. The double portrait is in the collection of Elton Hall, Cambridgeshire, seat of the Earl of Carysfort: https://eltonhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/John-Joshua-and-sister-by-Joshua-Reynolds-1024x1024.jpg.

6. For more on this topic, specifically how the colors red (in its various shades, including pink) and white were associated with eighteenth-century period ideals of beauty, see Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Dangerous Beauty: Painted Canvases and Painted Faces in Eighteenth-Century Britain” (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, August 2007).

7. See Henry Spicer, London, to Ozias Humphry at the English Coffee House, Rome, August 30, 1774, Royal Academy Archives. George Charles Williamson also alludes to this correspondence in Life and Works of Ozias Humphry, R. A. (London: John Lane, 1918), 54.

8. Henry Spicer, Sarah Siddons, 1787, enamel on metal, 2 3/4 in. (7 cm) high, formerly with Philip Mould, London.

W. Briscoe, Esq., by 1955 [1];

Sold at his sale, Fine Portrait Miniatures and Objects of Vertu, Sotheby’s, London, December 5, 1955, lot 41, as A Miniature of a Lady [2];

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.

Notes

[1] According to the sales catalogue, lots 19–65 were “The Property of W. Briscoe, Esq.”

[2] Described in the catalogue as “A Miniature of a Lady, by Henry Spicer, signed with initials S H. nearly half length, three-quarters sinister, gaze directed at spectator, a coil of brown hair on her left shoulder, wearing an attractive pink dress and coloured sash, 1 3/4 in. Spicer was a pupil of Gervase Spencer and close friend of Ozias Humphry. (See Frontispiece).” The annotated catalogue for this sale is located at University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr. Lot number 41 is circled.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 166, as Unknown Lady.

Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures and Objects of Vertu (London: Sotheby’s, December 5, 1955), 10, (repro.), as A Miniature of a Lady

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), 265, as Portrait of a Lady.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 166, p. 57, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.