To cite a specific biography on this page, add the author and artist details to the following citations:

Chicago:

Author First Name Last Name, “Artist Name (Artist nationality, life dates),” biography, 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. 4, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.2.5000.

MLA:

Author Last Name, First Name. “Artist Name (Artist nationality, life dates),” biography. 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. 4, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.2.5000.

Mystery has long surrounded the miniaturist James Barry, including his first name, which was until recently believed to be John.¹ To further muddy the waters, there was another artist named James Barry (Irish, 1741–1806), an oil painter, who worked in London at the same time.² New research has shed light on his previously unknown life dates and unveiled details regarding his family and religious ties.

Records from the Royal Academy Schools reveal James Barry’s enrollment on March 21, 1774, listing his age as “18 yrs 6th last Nov.,” indicating a birthdate of November 6, 1755.³ In 1783, Barry advertised himself as a miniature painter, subsequently exhibiting at the Academy two years later.⁴ He resided at 2 Lyon Terrace, Edgeware Road, from 1816 to 1825.⁵

A will dated November 24, 1835, belonging to James Barry of Lyon Terrace, Edgeware Road, provides additional information.⁶ It mentions his wife, Caroline, confirmed to be Caroline Jupp by a marriage license dated October 6, 1803.⁷ But Barry interestingly lists himself as already a widower, aligning with an obituary in Gentleman’s Magazine that had reported the death of “the wife of Mr. Barry, miniature-painter” on January 12, 1803, nine months before his marriage to Jupp.⁸ His first wife may have been Jane Hemmings, whom a James Barry married on October 9, 1786.⁹

Apart from leaving his prints, pictures, and jewels to Caroline, Barry mentions his brother, Richard (ca. 1765–1819),¹⁰ and two religious groups: the United Brethren, or Moravians, and the Naval and Military Bible Society. The former counted John Wesley (1703–1791), the founder of Methodism, among its members before he started his own ministry, while the latter was initiated by two men from Wesley’s chapel.¹¹ Barry’s spiritual connection to Wesley is reinforced by a miniature he created of the Methodist leader.¹²

Barry also documented his friend and brother-in-law, the Reverend Basil Woodd (1760–1831), by drawing him during a sermon.¹³ These works, and others by Barry, were collected by another brother-in-law, Richard Webb Jupp (1767–1852), and later donated to the Royal Academy.¹⁴ Finally, a death notice from October 30, 1835, corroborates Barry’s birth date in late 1755, aligning with the record of his enrollment in the Royal Academy Schools: “DIED. On the 27th inst., James Barry, Esq., of Lyon-terrace, Edgeware-road, in his 79th year.”¹⁵

Notes

1. The confusion is likely due to Royal Academy exhibition records only ever referring to him as “J. Barry.”

2. Following the latter’s death in 1806, the miniaturist Barry cleared up any confusion in a Morning Post advertisement: “MR. BARRY, (Miniature Painter), perceiving that the death of the late JAMES BARRY, Esq. formerly Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, has occasioned repeated mistakes among his friends, in consequence of his having the same Christian and Surname with the deceased, finds it necessary to inform the public that he still resides at No. 57, New Bond-street”; Morning Post (London), March 27, 1806, 1. This discovery was made in 2018 by Nicolas Stogdon, former head of Christie’s print department and now a private dealer. The two Barrys probably crossed paths, the elder being a professor at the same time the younger Barry was regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy.

3. Royal Academy Collection, Archive, “Page 5 – B,” 1769–1775, ref. RAA/KEE/1/1/1/5, Royal Academy of Arts, London, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/archive/page-5-blank-page. This cannot be the historical painter James Barry (1741–1806), because he would have been too old, having joined the Academy as a member, not a student, around 1777. See “Barry, James,” Encyclopædia Britannica (1911), digitized on Wikisource, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Barry,_James.

4. Barry exhibited in 1784–1787, 1789–1794, 1796–1809, 1816–1819, 1825, and 1827. He exhibited portraits of Mr. and Mrs. R. Barry in 1801, probably Richard Barry and his wife, Letitia. He also exhibited portraits of the “Rev. B. Wood and Mrs. C. Wood” in 1806 and “C. Wood” in 1818, probably referring to the Reverend Basil Woodd, Charles Woodd (1775–1827), and the latter’s wife, Mary (née Jupp). Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors (London: Henry Graves and George Bell and Sons, 1905), 1:132–33.

5. The British Museum provides a full list of Barry’s known addresses: “James Barry,” The British Museum, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG152428, accessed September 27, 2023.

6. See “Will of James Barry, Gentleman of Lyon Terrace Edgeware Road, Middlesex,” November 24, 1835, PROB 11/1853/356, National Archives, Kew. The relationship between Basil George Woodd and the later mentioned Rev. Basil Woodd is not yet known, although Basil George Woodd named one of his sons Charles Henry Lardner Wood (1821–1893), which may be a nod to Dr. William Lardner (ca. 1779–1843), executor of Barry’s will. See Francis Wheatley, Portrait of a Man, called George Basil Woodd, ca. 1780, oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm), Yale Center for British Art, B1981.25.676.

7. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P87/Js/013, London Metropolitan Archives. The witness to Barry’s will was Edward B. Jupp, Caroline Jupp’s (1775–1862) brother.

8. Sylvanus Urban, “Obituary, with Anecdotes, of Remarkable Persons,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 93 (January 1803): 91.

9. For the marriage record, see Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STA/PR/4/7, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London. A Jane Barry was buried on January 9, 1803. The burial record does not list a date of death. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P89/MRY1/315, London Metropolitan Archives.

10. For more information on Richard, see Rev. Charles Hole, The Early History of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East (London: Church Missionary Society, 1896), 240, 622.

11. Wesley was formerly a member of a Moravian society before leaving the religious group after 1738 and starting his own ministry. “United Methodist Men History,” New York Conference: The United Methodist Church, accessed November 20, 2023, https://www.nyac.com/ummhistory.

12. The miniature was painted in 1790, probably the last likeness captured of the famous cleric and theologian. He also probably exhibited the portrait miniature at the Royal Academy; J. Barry, Portrait of a Clergyman, in The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London: T. Cadell, 1790), 12. See also Peter Forsaith, Image, Identity and John Wesley: A Study in Portraiture, Routledge Methodist Studies (London: Taylor and Francis, 2017), 179. Forsaith confirms that the miniature was completed by the present Barry, and not the historical painter James Barry.

13. Woodd was an evangelical cleric famous for his invention of evening preaching. James Barry served as treasurer of his Bentinck Chapel. “Associations in and near London: Bentinck Chapel,” Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East (London: Bensley and Son, 1818), unpaginated. The drawing is erroneously attributed to John Barry (fl. 1784–1827): Portrait of the Reverend Basil Woodd, by 1827, pencil, pen and ink on cream woven paper, 8 3/4 x 7 1/4 in. (22.2 x 18.5 cm), Royal Academy of Arts, Given by Leverhulme Trust 1936, 03/5030, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/portrait-of-the-reverend-basil-woodd.

14. Jupp was present at Caroline’s marriage and was also executor of Richard Barry’s will, in addition to the Rev. Basil Woodd. Jupp was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and clerk of the Carpenters’ Company. His son was Edward Basil Jupp (1812–1877); See “Edward Basil Jupp,” The British Museum, accessed November 20, 2023, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG33366.

15. Morning Herald, London, October 30, 1835. Since he had not yet turned eighty, this confirms that the artist was born in November or December of 1755. He was buried on November 4, according to London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P87/Mry/064, London Metropolitan Archives.

John Thomas Barber Beaumont was a distinguished artist and entrepreneur. His early years remain uncertain, with some reports suggesting he came from a modest home and others stating he came from “reasonably affluent circumstances.”¹ He began his artistic career as a student at London’s Royal Academy of the Arts in 1791, where he regularly exhibited miniature paintings from 1794 to 1806.² He served as miniature painter to Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn; Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany; and the Prince of Wales. His pupils included painter and engraver Henry Thomas Alken (1785–1851). In 1796, he married Sophia Sarah Schabner, and they had ten children. Perhaps as a way to distinguish himself from the painter Thomas Barber (1771–1843), John Thomas Barber added the name “Beaumont” to his surname after 1812.³

Barber Beaumont’s interests extended beyond art. In 1803, he published the acclaimed guidebook A Tour through South Wales⁴ and wrote on various other subjects as well, including the titles Life Insurance (1814), Provident and Parish Banks (1816), Public House Licensing (1816–18), Criminal Jurisprudence (1821), and Parliamentary Reform (1830). He founded the renowned rifle corps, The Duke of Cumberland’s Sharpshooters, during the Napoleonic Wars.

As an entrepreneur, Barber Beaumont established successful insurance ventures. The Provident Life Office (1806) and County Fire Office (1807) became leading fire insurers through his strategic leadership. He also served as a magistrate for Middlesex and Westminster beginning in 1820.

Barber Beaumont was a supporter of Queen Caroline, the estranged wife of King George IV, which earned the painter a radical reputation. He invested in Mile End, a neighborhood of London, acquiring property and founding the Philosophical Institution there in 1840. Beaumont bequeathed thirteen thousand pounds to the institution, which evolved into Queen Mary College.⁵

He passed away on May 15, 1841, at the County Fire Office in Regent Street. Initially buried at Stepney in the East End of London, he was reinterred at Kensal Green cemetery in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.⁶ Beaumont’s legacy is one of artistic excellence, entrepreneurial achievements, and a commitment to intellectual pursuits.

Notes

1. David Anthony Beaumont, Barber Beaumont (London: Witherby, 1999), 1. The author, a distant relative of the artist, endeavored to compile as much information as he could about Barber Beaumont in the wake of the destruction of nearly all of the family papers. The author utilized original sources; however, he does not provide footnotes for these sources.

2. Much of the biographical information for this entry has come from Robin Pearson, “John Thomas Barber Beaumont (c. 1774–1841),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1877; and Beaumont, Barber Beaumont.

3. This is the author’s observation. Other scholars, including Robin Pearson, do not offer a reason for Barber’s adoption of the additional surname “Beaumont” and/or state that the reason is unknown.

4. John Thomas Barber, A Tour through South Wales and Monmouthshire Etc. (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1803).

5. See H. A. Grueber, “English Personal Medals From 1760,” Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Numismatic Society 7 (1887): 265–67.

6. When the East London cemetery closed, his body was removed to Kensal Green. The tombstone was left abandoned and eventually taken to Queen Mary’s College, where it is embedded in the wall of the Rotunda in the Queen’s Building. See David Anthony Beaumont, Barber Beaumont, 187.

Born in Stockholm to a French Huguenot family, Charles Boit originally trained as a goldsmith. After three formative months in Paris in 1682—where he may have studied with enameller Jean Toutin (1578–1644), one of the first artists to make enamel portrait miniatures—Boit took up the art of enameling. He may also have received training in Sweden from the French enameller Pierre Signac (d. 1684).¹ In 1687, Boit departed for England. According to George Vertue, Boit initially struggled to get commissions and worked in the countryside as a drawing master for the country gentry.² The support of a fellow Swede, portraitist Michael Dahl (1659–1703), eventually launched Boit’s career as one of the premiere miniaturists in England.

Boit was appointed court enameller to William III in 1696.³ Boit insisted that his title be changed from the standard “limner” to “enameller,” reflecting not only his pride in mastering this difficult medium and elevating its status in England, but also signaling the fundamental shift at that time from an understanding of miniatures, or “limnings,” as artworks solely executed with watercolor on vellum to include enamels and watercolors painted on ivory.⁴

Boit was talented and commanded high prices, leading a scandalized Horace Walpole to opine that his fees were “not to be believed.”⁵ In spite of Boit’s success, his lofty ambitions and extravagance led him into financial arrears. His unsuccessful efforts to fulfill a royal commission for an unusually large enamel group portrait led him to flee to France in 1714.⁶ Elected to the French Royal Academy in 1717, Boit died in Paris a decade later, besieged by creditors.⁷ Boit’s legacy lived on in England through his student Christian Friedrich Zincke (ca. 1684–1767).

Notes

1. Erika Speel, Painted Enamels: An Illustrated Survey 1500–1920 (Aldershot, UK: Lund Humphries, 2008), 194. For more on Boit, see Gunnar W. Lundberg, Charles Boit, 1662–1727, Émailleur-miniaturiste suédois: Biographie et catalogue critiques (Paris: Centre culturel suédois, 1987).

2. During his time in the countryside, Boit—according to Vertue and Horace Walpole, at least—may have spent two years in prison after seducing and attempting to marry one of his students. Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849), 634.

3. Vanessa Remington, “Boit, Charles (1662–1727), miniature painter,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2783.

4. Marjorie E. Wieseman, “Bernard Lens’s Miniatures for the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9, no. 1 (Winter 2017), https://doi.org/10.5092/jhna.2018.10.2.3. While all previous court miniaturists had been appointed Limner in Ordinary to the king, after Boit requested the change to his title, all subsequent appointees were referred as “Enameller in Ordinary,” even if they worked in watercolor, until Samuel Finney’s appointment as Enamel and Miniature Painter to Queen Charlotte in 1763, likely due to the increasing obscurity of limning. Katherine Coombs, The Portrait Miniature in England (London: V&A Publications, 1998), 89.

5. Boit charged thirty guineas “for a lady’s head,” and “double that sum” for a larger miniature. For more ambitious projects, he charged 500 guineas or more, as in the case of the thousand-guinea advance that was forwarded by Prince George for the large royal commission mentioned later in this paragraph. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, 634.

6. Remington, “Boit, Charles.”

7. Boit was a Protestant and foreign national, albeit of French parentage, so his election to the esteemed and insular French Academy was somewhat unusual and attests to his skill and international reputation. Upon his arrival in France, his patrons included Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, who would rule France as regent beginning in 1715, and Tsar Peter the Great. Graham Reynolds, “Boit, Charles,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T009653.

The son of a woodcarver and cabinetmaker from Truro, Cornwall, Henry Bone was born February, 6, 1755. He began work as a miniature painter following a short career in Plymouth painting on hard-paste porcelain for local manufacturers. He apprenticed with porcelain painter Richard Champion (English, 1743–1791) in Bristol before moving to London in 1779, reportedly with one guinea in his pocket and five pounds borrowed from a friend.¹ Bone’s first miniatures on ivory date from this year, including a portrait of Elizabeth Van der Meulen, whom he married on January 24, 1780.² They had numerous children, five of whom—including Henry Pierce Bone (1779–1855) and two grandchildren—also became miniaturists.³ Bone turned exclusively to enamel around 1803, becoming one of the most sought-after enamellists of his day.

Bone was largely self-taught, and his technique began with a preparatory pencil drawing of his subject on squared paper. He traced this in red chalk onto an enamel surface that he then fired in order to fix the chalk outline. His process evolved through trial and error, undoubtably aided by his formative training in the porcelain industry. This facilitated his ability to experiment with size, coloring, and firing temperatures,⁴ resulting in the largest known enamel on copper miniature, after Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne.⁵

Principally a copyist, Bone exhibited more than 240 miniatures at the Royal Academy of the Arts between 1781 and 1832, when his eyesight began to falter. He also painted designs for lockets, watches, and jewelry. He was elected Associate to the Royal Academy in 1801, the same year he was appointed enamel painter to the Prince of Wales. He later held the same position for George III, George IV, and William IV. He achieved full academician status in 1811. He died of paralysis in Clarendon Square, Somerstown, London, on December 17, 1834.⁶

Notes

1. R. B. J. Walker, “Henry Bone,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2836.

2. Henry Bone, Elizabeth Vandermeulen, the Artist’s Wife, 1779, 1 3/4 x 1 3/8 in. (4.5 x 3.5 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.23-1936, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070092/elizabeth-vandermeulen-the-artists-wife-portrait-miniature-henry-bone/.

3. His children helped in the production of a large body of enamel portraits, mostly after well-known portraits by Renaissance and Baroque painters as well as near contemporaries. These are signed with the monograms “HB,” “WB,” and “HPB,” almost always inscribed in puce against light blue counter-enamels. Henry Bone’s children were Henry Pierce (1770–1855), Peter Joseph (1785–1814), Robert Trewick (1790–1840?), William I (active 1815–1843), Thomas Mein (b. 1798), and Samuel Vallis (active 1819–1824). The ready market for these works in the early 1800s—in tandem with a steady stream of commissions for enamel portraits from the Prince of Wales, among other aristocratic patrons—facilitated Bone’s ability to move his growing family from his small house on Hanover Street to a larger house at 15 Berners Street, east of Mayfair, which is now known as Soho. For more on Bone, including a complete family tree, see R. B. J. Walker, “Henry Bone’s Pencil Drawings in the National Portrait Gallery,” The Volume of the Walpole Society 61 (1999): 305, 305n5.

4. This knowledge also helped him avoid warping and cracking during the heating and cooling process. Walker, “Henry Bone’s Pencil Drawings in the National Portrait Gallery,” 307.

5. The miniature, which measures 15 15/16 x 18 1/8 inches, is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.51, https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2013.51. Its composition is based on Titian’s (Venetian, ca. 1488–1576) Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–1503; National Gallery, London), and it took Bone three years to produce.

6. Walker, “Henry Bone.”

Henry Jacob Burch was the son of Edward Burch (1730–1814),¹ a well-known gem and seal engraver and a self-taught miniaturist.² Edward worked as a waterman on the Thames before pursuing a career as an artist, but despite his success at the latter, he was so impoverished in old age that the Royal Academy of the Arts appointed him librarian in order to provide him with an income.³ Edward’s insolvency coincided with that of his son; Henry Jacob Burch’s own financial difficulties in the field of portrait miniatures had made him unable to provide for his elderly father.⁴

While some scholars give Henry’s year of birth as 1763, a baptismal record confirms that he was baptized on December 30, 1762, to Edward and Anne Burch.⁵ Henry followed his father’s career in the arts and enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools on March 25, 1779.⁶ Although he did not become an academician like his father, he frequently exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1787 and 1831.⁷ Burch married Elizabeth Beresford on December 6, 1784, with his father listed as a witness.⁸ Burch and his wife had at least five children together, none of whom are known to have continued the family tradition in miniature painting or seal engraving.⁹ A fire in 1793 destroyed the Burches’ house on Rathbone Place, forcing a move to 66 Newman Street, a neighborhood near the British Museum that was popular among artists and known as “Artists’ Street.”¹⁰

Burch rarely signed his work, making it extremely difficult to pinpoint his style with much consistency. Some scholars compare his style and technique to those of William Wood (English, 1769–1810), although Burch’s portraits are often painted with more assurance and a more vibrant color palette.¹¹ His repertoire, despite problems with attribution, includes many portrait miniatures of children.¹² Burch’s year of death is often listed as 1834, but this has yet to be confirmed through death records.

Notes

1. Typically listed as ca. 1730–ca. 1814, Edward’s life dates have been confirmed through genealogical research: London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. DL/T/066/006, London Metropolitan Archives. For a more substantial biography on Edward, see Gertrud Seidmann, “Burch, Edward,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 8:724–25.

2. Henry Jacob Burch is sometimes referred to as Henry Burch or Henry Burch Junior. See George Bernard Hughes and Therle Hughes, Collecting Miniature Antiques: A Guide for Collectors (London: Heinemann, 1973), 16. The Nelson-Atkins previously referred to this artist as Henry Burch Junior. Daphne Foskett, in Collecting Miniatures (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1979), 399, refers to the artist as Henry Jacob Burch Junior.

3. Two of his seals were used by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792). Librarian of the Royal Academy was a sinecure post, one that required little responsibility, according to the British Museum, “Edward Burch,” British Museum website, accessed August 30, 2022, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG66427.

4. The two were likely close, based on the portrait of Edward that Henry Jacob Burch exhibited in 1814, the year his father died: The Royal Academy, The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London: B. McMillan, 1814): 21, no. 386, as Henry Burch, Portrait of the late E. Burch, Esq. R.A. and Librarian of the Royal Academy.

5. “Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials: City of London: St. Bride Fleet Street,” ref. P69/BRI/A/007/MS06541/001, London Metropolitan Archives. Henry Jacob may have had a sister, Anne Mary, born on May 24, 1761, as well as a brother, Edward Burch (b. 1772).

6. “Register of Admission of Students: Page 6–B,” ref. RAA/KEE/1/1/1/6, Royal Academy Archives, London.

7. Daphne Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 344; Seidmann, “Burch, Edward,” 725. Specifically, he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1787 to 1790, 1792 to 1795, 1797 to 1804, 1807 to 1810, 1812, 1814 to 1815, 1817 to 1821, 1827, and 1831, according to digitized exhibition catalogues at the Royal Academy, https://chronicle250.com.

8. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P89/MRY1/171, London Metropolitan Archives.

9. Edward James, born September 2, 1785; Shovil, born October 29, 1788; Henry, born February 3, 1790; Mary Beresford, born March 26, 1792; and James Beresford, born November 21, 1793. All their birth records can be found in Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STA/PR/1/3, City of Westminster Archives Centre.

10. Foskett, Miniatures, 344; “Insured: Henry Jacob Burch, 66 Newman Street, miniature painter,” March 12, 1794, ref. MS 11936/397/626218, London Metropolitan Archives; Mary L. Shannon, “Artists’ Street: Thomas Stothard, R. H. Cromek, and Literary Illusion on London’s Newman Street,” in Romanticism and Illustration, ed. Ian Haywood, Susan Matthews, and Mary L. Shannon, online edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019): 243, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108348829.011. The family moved often, according to addresses listed during Burch’s years exhibiting at the Royal Academy.

11. Foskett, Miniatures, 344.

12. See Henry Jacob Burch, Portrait Miniature of an Unknown Boy, ca. 1780–1834, watercolor on ivory, 2 1/4 x 1 3/4 in. (5.7 x 4.5 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, EVANS.252, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070159/portrait-miniature-of-an-unknown-miniature-henry-jacob-burch/; and Henry Jacob Burch, Portrait Miniature of a Young Girl, ca. 1785–1835, watercolor on ivory, 2 1/2 x 1 15/16 in. (6.4 x 4.9 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, P.157-1929, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070112/portrait-miniature-of-a-young-portrait-miniature-henry-jacob-burch/.

Born in London on January 5, 1774, George Chinnery was the sixth of seven children of William Chinnery (1741–1803) and Elizabeth Bassett (d. 1812). His father and paternal grandfather were calligraphers, and his father also exhibited portraits at the Free Society of Artists in London in 1764 and 1766. Chinnery probably received his earliest artistic instruction from his father before submitting a miniature to the Royal Academy of the Arts exhibition in 1791, enrolling in its school a year later. From 1791 to 1795 he exhibited twenty-one portraits at its annual exhibitions before leaving for Dublin in 1796.¹

In Dublin, Chinnery expanded his artistic repertoire and the scale of his work to include large landscapes and portraits in oils. He married his landlord’s daughter, Marianne Vigne (1776/7–1865), in 1799.² While they may have planned to stay in Dublin, the abolition of the Irish parliament in 1800 led to the exodus of many of the city’s wealthier inhabitants, threatening the artist’s livelihood. In 1802, at the age of twenty-eight, Chinnery received permission from the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) to move to Madras, India, to work as a painter.³ He spent twenty-three years there, moving to China in 1825 to escape debts of more than thirty thousand rupees. He spent twenty-eight years in Macau, specializing in views of the community’s daily life. Chinnery’s style greatly influenced the Chinese artists who depicted the Canton trade system for the foreign export market.⁴ He died of a stroke in Macau on May 30, 1852, having spent his later years living in impoverished circumstances.⁵

Notes

1. For biographical information on George Chinnery, see Patrick Connor, “Chinnery, George” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last updated May 24, 2007, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5311. See also Walter Strickland George, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, vol. 1, A to K (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012; originally published 1913), https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139382106.

2. In Dublin, Chinnery stayed with the family of the jeweler James Vigne at 27 College Green. On April 19, 1799, he married Vigne’s younger daughter, Marianne; see Connor, “Chinnery, George.”

3. Although Chinnery started out in Madras, he eventually moved to Calcutta, where he spent the largest part of his Indian career. For a more in-depth look at this phase of his career as well as his sojourn to China, see P. R. M. Conner, George Chinnery, 1774–1852: Artist of India and the China Coast (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1993).

4. For more on the Chinese context during this period, see Peter C. Perdue, “The Artists’ Narrow World,” in Rise and Fall of the Canton Trade System: China in the World (1700–1860s) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Visualizing Cultures, 2009), https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/rise_fall_canton_01/cw_essay04.html.

5. Patrick Connor noted that Chinnery’s friend and doctor Thomas Boswall Watson performed an autopsy on Chinnery’s body; an examination of the brain revealed that he died of a stroke. See Connor, “Chinnery, George.” In a separate source, Connor noted that in Chinnery’s later years “the artist lived in straitened circumstances,” and that while he “remained devoted to his work, . . . portraiture was no longer his mainstay.” See Patrick Conner, “George Chinnery Comes Home,” review of The Flamboyant Mr Chinnery (1774–1852)—an English Artist in India and China, Asia House, London, International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, no. 58 (Autumn/Winter 2011): 48, https://www.iias.asia/sites/default/files/nwl_article/2019-05/IIAS_NL58_48.pdf.

Samuel Cooper is distinct among miniaturists for his enduring reputation as one of the greatest painters of his age.¹ Little is known of Cooper’s biography, but a large and consistently dated body of work from 1642 until his death in 1672 enables us to assess his legacy. Writer and art historian Horace Walpole proclaimed that “the anecdotes of Cooper’s life are few, [but] his works are his history.”² Cooper’s steady output is a testament to not only his work ethic but also his diplomacy and resilience amid one of the most turbulent periods in English history; his portraits were in high demand among rulers and Roundheads alike during the Civil War and beyond.

Born around 1608 to Richard Cowper and Barbara Hoskens, Samuel and his brother Alexander (1609–ca. 1660) were fostered as children by their uncle, the artist John Hoskins (ca. 1590–1665).³ This early artistic exposure led to both brothers becoming miniaturists. Alexander was apprenticed to English miniaturist Peter Oliver (ca. 1594–1647), while Samuel joined their uncle’s studio, soon eclipsing Hoskins as his most celebrated student.⁴ Both Hoskins and Oliver lived and worked in the central London parish of St. Ann Blackfriars, a hotbed of artistic talent.⁵ Their most illustrious neighbor was the Flemish artist Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), court painter to King Charles I.⁶ Cooper had studied Van Dyck’s work and painted Van Dyck’s mistress Margaret Lemon early in his career.⁷ Cooper’s earlier miniatures exhibit some Van Dyckian influence, which lingered in his subsequent reputation as “Van Dyck in little.” However, by the 1640s, Cooper had come into his own style, distinguished by his bravura brushwork and the simplicity of his direct, astute representations. This artistic candor allegedly led Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell to request that Cooper paint him “warts and all.”⁸

Cooper likely lived in Continental Europe for several years, resurfacing in 1642 with a move to Covent Garden, in the West End of London.⁹ Around this time, he married Christiana Turner (1623–1693).¹⁰ Exposure to Continental art seems to have imparted a cosmopolitan flair to both Cooper and his miniatures, most visible in the vibrant coloring that evokes the court portraits of Swiss enameller Jean Petitot (1607–1691). Cooper moved in intellectual circles with philosophers, antiquarians, and poets.¹¹ Epitomizing the courtly artist, fluent in several languages, and a talented lutenist, Cooper was described by Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, as “a tiny man, all wit and courtesy, as well housed as Lely, with his table covered with velvet.”¹² Cooper was indeed paid handsomely for his work, especially after his 1663 appointment as limner to King Charles II, enabling him to secure accommodations that rivaled those of the court’s preeminent portraitist, Sir Peter Lely (1618–1680), who succeeded Van Dyck in that role. In the 1660s, a typical miniature by Cooper cost thirty pounds.¹³ Lely charged the same amount for a full-scale oil portrait, suggesting that Cooper’s fees for miniatures were competitive with those of the foremost painters in Britain.¹⁴

Despite the era’s volatile politics, the demand for Cooper’s work endured, with one eager patron, Dorothy Osborne, promising her portrait “as soon as Mr. Cooper will vouchsafe to take the pains to draw it for you. I have made him twenty courtesys, and promised him £15 to persuade him.”¹⁵ Cooper’s thriving career was cut short by his death in 1672 after a sudden illness. He was eulogized by the diarist Charles Beale: “Sunday May 5 [1672], the most famous limner of the world for a face died.”¹⁶

Notes

1. Richard Graham, Cooper’s earliest biographer, wrote that Cooper’s “Talent was so extraordinary, that for the Honour of our Nation, it may without Vanity be affirmed he was (at least) equal to the most famous Italians; and that hardly any of his Predecessors has ever been able to show so much Perfection in so narrow a Compass” (emphasis original); Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy, John Dryden, and Richard Graham, De Arte Graphica: The Art of Painting (London: Printed for J. Hepinstall for W. Rogers, 1695), 338–39. More recent appraisals of Cooper include Daphne Foskett et al., Samuel Cooper and his Contemporaries (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1974); Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper, 1607–1672 (London: Faber and Faber, 1974); and Bendor Grosvenor, ed., Warts and All: The Portrait Miniatures of Samuel Cooper (London: Philip Mould, 2013).

2. George Vertue and Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849), 2:530.

3. The spelling of names varied widely at this time. The names of Samuel Cooper’s parents are recorded here as they appear in the parish record of their marriage, “Hoskens” being a variant of the more widely-used spelling “Hoskins.” Cooper’s parents were unknown until Mary Edmond discovered the parish records for their marriage on September 1, 1607, at St. Nicholas Cole Abbey. Per Edmond, Alexander was baptized December 11, 1609. Samuel’s baptism was not recorded, but Edmond posited that he must have been the elder brother, likely born in late 1608, based on the date of his parents’ wedding and the inscription on his burial monument in St. Pancras Old Church. Mary Edmond, Limners and Picturemakers: New Light on the Lives of Miniaturists and Large-Scale Portrait-Painters Working in London in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Walpole Society, 1980), 99.

4. “He [Cooper] so far exceeded his Master, and Uncle, Mr. Hoskins, that he became jealous of him, and finding that the Court were better pleased with his Nephew’s Performances than with his, he took him in Partner with him; but still seeing Mr. Cooper’s Pictures were more relished, he was pleased to dismiss the Partnership, and so our Artist set up for himself, carrying most part of the Business of that time before him”; Roger de Piles, The Art of Painting (London: J. Nutt, 1706), 410.

5. The parish of St. Ann Blackfriars and the nearby “miniaturists’ parish” of St. Bride Fleet Street were well known for housing miniaturists and other artists, particularly those from Europe. See Edmond, Limners and Picturemakers, 100.

6. John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997), 115.

7. Richard Graham wrote that he “derived the most considerable Advantages, from the Observations which he made on the Works of Van Dyck”; Graham, De Arte Graphica, 375. Cooper’s brilliant portrait of Van Dyck’s mistress Margaret Lemon wearing men’s clothing is now at the Fondation Custodia, Paris: Portrait of Margaret Lemon, ca. 1635–37, watercolor on vellum, 4 3/4 x 3 7/8 in. (12 x 9.8 cm), inv. 395, https://www.fondationcustodia.fr/Margaret-Lemon-1722.

8. While this quotation is closely associated with Cooper’s legacy, it was likely intended for Lely, who was famous for flattering his sitters. Cooper’s portrait of Cromwell in the Buccleuch collection, featuring a prominent wart, aptly illustrates this exchange, perhaps explaining its link to Cooper. Laura Lunger Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait and Print, 1645–1661 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 80.

9. “He spent several Years of his Life abroad, was personally acquainted with the greatest Men of France, Holland and his own Country, and by his Works more universally known in all the Parts of Christendom.” Graham, De Arte Graphica, 339. It is unknown exactly where Cooper traveled.

10. The date of their marriage is unknown but likely occurred before 1643, when Cooper moved to King Street in Covent Garden. The Coopers moved in 1650 to a fashionable address on Henrietta Street, where they remained until Cooper’s death. Susannah-Penelope Rosse (English, ca. 1655–1700) took up residence at the same home shortly afterward, exemplifying the close ties between miniaturists of this era. Edmond, Limners and Picturemakers, 101–4.

11. Some of Cooper’s most celebrated intimates included the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the poet Samuel Butler, the antiquarian John Aubrey, and the diarist John Evelyn. Foskett, Samuel Cooper, 42–43.

12. Daphne Foskett, Collecting Miniatures (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1979), 95. Cosimo was keen to have his portrait painted by Cooper. See also Lorenzo Magalotti, Travels of Cosimo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Through England, During the Reign of King Charles the Second (1669) (London: J. Mawman, 1821), 166.

13. Cosimo III griped, “[Cooper] gets paid thirty pounds each for [miniature portraits] and pretends to do you a great favour.” W. E. Knowles Middleton, Lorenzo Magalotti at the Court of Charles II: His Relazione d’Inghilterra of 1668 (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980), 150. The diarist Samuel Pepys discusses payment to Cooper for a portrait of his wife in his entry dated August 10, 1668: “He hath 30l [£30] for his work, and the chrystal [sic] and case and gold case comes to 8l-3s-4d [£8, 3s, 4d.], which I sent him this night that I might be out of his debt.” Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 9:277.

14. On Lely’s fees in the 1660s, see Mary Bryan H. Curd, Flemish and Dutch Artists in Early Modern England (London: Ashgate, 2010), 137.

15. Osborne’s efforts to secure a portrait by Cooper for her lover Sir William Temple are documented in a letter dated June 13, 1654, published in Edward Abbott Parry, ed., The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652–54 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1901), 303.

16. The diary entries of Charles Beale (1631–1705), husband and studio assistant of the painter Mary Beale (1633–1699), are published in Vertue and Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, 2:539.

Born in Devon as the son of a schoolmaster, Richard Cosway became one of the most influential and successful portrait miniature painters in England during the Georgian era. His family sent him to London in 1754, at the age of twelve, to study drawing and portraiture (both in oil and in miniature) under William Shipley (1715–1803), who had recently formed the Society for Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.¹ Cosway exhibited his work publicly throughout the 1760s, entering the newly formulated Royal Academy of the Arts Schools in 1769, first as a student, and then, by 1771, as an elected associate academician. He continued to exhibit his work annually at the Royal Academy from 1770 to 1787, 1798 to 1800, and in 1803 and 1806.²

In 1781, Cosway married Maria Hadfield (1760–1838), a talented musician and painter from Florence, Italy, who then settled in London with her new husband.³ They hosted salons in their studio and home, which became the place to see and be seen among the fashionable set. During this time, Cosway secured the patronage of the Prince of Wales (later King George IV) from 1780 to 1808. As the future king’s principal painter, Cosway also exerted his powerful influence on the royal family’s collecting habits, serving as their art advisor until 1811.⁴ Cosway had other important aristocratic patrons as well, including William (Kitty), third Viscount Courtenay (1768–1835), whose portrait is in the Nelson-Atkins collection.⁵

Cosway was eccentric in behavior and dress, and his personality matched the bravura of his brushwork. His facility of line was unrivalled, as was his ability to showcase the natural translucence of his ivory supports through his use of transparent pigment. Although his final years were filled with illness—he died on July 4, 1821—his dashing likenesses capture the sensuousness and frivolity of the era.

Notes

1. The Society of Arts, as it was also known, attracted many talented students, including fellow miniaturist John Smart (1741–1811), who became Cosway’s professional rival.

2. Stephen Lloyd, “Richard Cosway,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last updated January 3, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6383.

3. The Cosways had one daughter, Louisa Paolina Angelica Cosway (1790–1797), who died after contracting a sore throat. See Lloyd, “Richard Cosway.”

4. Cosway also assembled an impressive private collection of Old Master paintings and drawings. For more on this aspect of his career, see Stephen Lloyd, “Richard Cosway, R.A.: The Artist as Collector, Connoisseur and Virtuoso,” Apollo 138 (June 1991): 398–405.

5. For more on Cosway’s patronage, see Lloyd, “Richard Cosway.”

Samuel Cotes was the third son born to Robert Cotes (1693–1774), the former mayor of Galway, Ireland, and later an apothecary, and Elizabeth Lynn (1702–1776), daughter of the chief secretary of the Royal African Company, Francis Lynn (1671–1731).¹ Scholars previously believed Samuel Cotes’s year of birth to be 1734, but a recently discovered parish record has firmly established his date of birth as January 23, 1733.² Cotes intended to follow his father’s profession as an apothecary in London but abandoned this to pursue a career in fine art under his older brother Francis’s instruction.³ Francis Cotes (English, 1726–1770) was celebrated for his pastel and crayon drawings as well as his large-scale oil paintings.⁴

Samuel and Francis were living at Cork Street, London, in 1763 while also exhibiting at the Society of Artists. In 1769, Samuel Cotes moved to 25 Percy Street, Rathbone Place, and began exhibiting at the newly created Royal Academy of the Arts.⁵ His early work included enamel miniatures, a craft he may have learned from Nathaniel Hone (Irish, 1718–1784) or possibly Jean-André Rouquet (Swiss, active in England and France, 1701–1758).⁶

Cotes married Mary Creswick, the daughter of an Honourable East India Company (HEIC) director, on June 11, 1768.⁷ Mary likely died in childbirth; she was buried on July 14, 1770, a day before Samuel baptized their newborn daughter, also named Mary.⁸ Meanwhile, Francis had been experimenting with treatments for his kidney or bladder stones and died in his attempt to find a cure on July 19.⁹ Unfortunately, Samuel’s misfortunes did not end there—his daughter passed away a few months later from “convulsions.” Widowed and also grieving the loss of his brother, Samuel buried his only child on October 14, 1770.¹⁰

Cotes married again, this time to an artist, Sarah Sheppard (d. 1814), on February 7, 1780.¹¹ The art historian Matthew Pilkington wrote, “[her] talents in painting were of a superior order,” although no known examples of her work exist today.¹² Cotes retired from painting around 1789 but lived until the age of eighty-five, dying at his home on Paradise Row, Chelsea, on March 7, 1818.¹³

Samuel Cotes shared the same initials as the miniaturist Samuel Collins (1735–1768), so their work is often confused.¹⁴ They both signed their miniatures “SC,” but Collins’s initials consist of neat separate letters, while Cotes’s contain several short strokes (Fig. 1).¹⁵ Cotes’s style is reflective of his brother’s influence in the soft and sober depictions of his sitters. Cotes excelled at painting fashion; he had a particular fondness for using green and purple pigments in clothing and opaque white in lacework. Despite problems of attribution, Cotes is considered the best miniaturist from the generation preceding Richard Cosway (English, 1742–1821) and John Smart (English, 1741–1811).¹⁶

Notes

1. Neil Jeffares, “Francis Cotes (1726–1770) and His Family,” British Art Journal 16, no. 3 (Winter 2015/2016): 68. Robert Cotes served as mayor from 1716 to 1717, at the ripe age of twenty-one. After the Protestant aldermen of the Irish House of Commons accused Cotes of failing to enforce anti-Catholic penal laws, Cotes was forced to leave his post and move to London, where he took up the profession of apothecary. Robert married Elizabeth in 1725; London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P69/KAT2/A/001/MS07889/003.

2. Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. SML/PR/3/4 part 2.

3. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, “Cotes, Samuel (1734–1818),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 13:570. For the entry on Samuel Cotes as a pastellist, see Neil Jeffares, “Cotes, Samuel,” Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition (Norwich: Unicorn Press, 2006), 1–2, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/CotesS.pdf.

4. Introducing Francis Cotes, R.A. (1726–1770), ed. Alastair Smart (Nottingham: Nottingham University Art Gallery, 1971), 7.

5. He was one of the earliest exhibitors at the Royal Academy, contributing thirty-five portraits between 1769 and 1789. Joshua James Foster, British Miniature Painters and Their Works (London: Sampson Low and Marston, 1898), 62; Matthew and Harrison, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 13:571.

6. Cotes’s enamels display the bright colors he intended for his palette, in contrast to his watercolor portraits that have faded from light exposure over time. Rouquet was active in London from around 1722 to 1752.

7. Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STC/PR/5/11.

8. City of London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P69/MRY1/A/002/MS07667.

9. “. . . Coates, who last week fell a sacrifice to the corroding power of soap-lees, which he hoped would have cured him of the stone. Many a tear will drop on his grave, as he is not more lamented as an artist than a friend to the distressed,” Mary Moser letter to Henry Fuseli, n.d. [Spring 1771?], quoted in John Thomas Smith, Nollekens and His Times, ed. Edmund Gosse (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1895), 82; Jeffares, “Francis Cotes (1726–1770) and His Family,” 72.

10. City of London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P69/GIS/A/003/MS06420/001.

11. Surrey Marriage Bonds and Allegations, ref. DL/A/D/24/MS10091E/93, London Metropolitan Archives.

12. Matthew Pilkington, “Cotes, Samuel,” A General Dictionary of Painters (London: Thomas McLean, 1824), 1:237.

13. Matthew and Harrison, “Cotes, Samuel (1734–1818),” 13:571.

14. As was the case with the Nelson-Atkins miniatures, 2018.11.3 and 2018.11.5, which in a July 17, 1945 sale were listed as being by Samuel Collins; see Catalogue of The Collection of Objects of Vertu (London: Christie, Manson, and Woods, July 17, 1945), lot 129.

15. Daphne Foskett, “Samuel Cotes,” Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 288. Miniatures signed “SC” and dated after 1768 are attributed to Cotes, as well as a few as early as 1757.

16. Leo Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964), 1:168.

Peter Cross was born by about 1645 to Anthony Cross (b. ca. 1585), a freeman of the Drapers’ Company, and Margaret Thrall in St. Edmund’s Parish, Lombard Street, London.¹ It is not known when or how he learned to paint miniatures, making his rise to prominence all the more extraordinary. This lack of clarity about Cross’s origins has been compounded by a muddled account of his life by George Vertue and a misreading of his extravagant initialed monogram, which led to the longstanding belief that Cross’s miniatures were produced by two separate artists, Peter Cross and Lawrence Cross, Peter’s nonexistent son.² The monogram became more elaborate later in his career, appearing initially as “PC” and later, seemingly, as “LC,” due to the addition of extra curlicues. It was not until Daphne Foskett’s discovery of a miniature signed with the artist’s full name on the back, with this later “LC” monogram on the front, that the attribution of Peter Cross’s miniatures was restored to him alone.³

Cross’s work is distinguished by his use of carefully diffused polychromatic stippling, in contrast to the distinctive hatching adopted by his neighbor Samuel Cooper (ca. 1608–1672). Cross lived at Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, within a cluster of miniaturists, including not only Cooper but also Richard Gibson (ca. 1615–1690), Gibson’s daughter Susannah-Penelope Rosse (ca. 1655–1694), and Cooper’s uncle John Hoskins (ca. 1590–1665). They exchanged knowledge, ideas, and even artworks; Cross had at least a dozen miniatures by Samuel Cooper in his collection.⁴

In 1678, Cross was appointed “Lymner in Ordinary [miniature painter] to his Ma[jesty]” King Charles II, succeeding Nicholas Dixon (ca. 1645–after 1708) in that role.⁵ His sitters are a microcosm of the Stuart court and its key figures, from king to courtiers. When Cross died in 1724, he left behind a body of work that epitomized the seventeenth-century miniature. His lushly painted watercolor portraits were laid down on sheets of gessoed vellum, a style that had already been supplanted by miniatures painted in enamel and, more recently, watercolor on ivory, which would soon overtake all other media in British miniature painting.

Notes

1. John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London: H.M. Stationery Office in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997), 275.

2. As Mary Edmond writes, “Vertue is an important source of information; but, as John Murdoch noted, there is complete confusion in his references—and he can hardly have known Peter Cross at all well, since not only was he uncertain about his Christian name; as I shall explain, he also gives the wrong month for his death, and says that he died at his sister’s house, whereas it was his daughter’s.” Mary Edmond, “Peter Cross, Limner: Died 1724,” Burlington Magazine 121, no. 918 (September 1979): 582, 585–86.

3. John Murdoch includes an account of Foskett’s discovery of the portrait of Sir James Ogilby, which she purchased, in his article, “Hoskins’ and Crosses: Work in Progress,” Burlington Magazine 120, no. 902 (May 1978): 288.

4. Cory Korkow, British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art (London: D. Giles in association with the Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013), 108.

5. Quoted in Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures, 275; the archival evidence for this appointment was originally uncovered by Katherine Gibson.

Richard Crosse was born on April 24, 1742, in Knowle, near Cullompton, Devon, the second son of John and Mary Crosse.¹ Like one of his sisters, Crosse was born deaf. His familial resources as the son of a lawyer enabled him to take up painting first as a hobby and then as a profession.²

In 1758, at the age of sixteen, Crosse won a premium, or cash award, at the newly created Society of Arts.³ This led him to London, where he trained at William Shipley’s drawing school and the Duke of Richmond’s gallery.⁴ Two years later, he began exhibiting his work at the society, and by 1763 he was an official member.⁵

Crosse exhibited his miniatures at the Royal Academy of the Arts from 1770 to 1796, which brought him widespread recognition.⁶ This success led to his appointment as official painter in enamel to King George III in 1789.⁷ Other patrons included the actress Sarah Siddons and the Prince of Wales and his brothers.⁸

Crosse’s ledger, now located at the National Art Library, accounts for about one hundred portraits painted each year between 1777 and 1780.⁹ He charged between eight and thirty guineas for miniatures, depending on the size.¹⁰ While his fees were not exorbitant, Crosse was prolific and financially astute.¹¹ His ledgers show that, in addition to securing a comfortable income from miniature painting, he also benefited from sound investments in stocks and shares.¹²

Despite his professional successes, Crosse was disappointed in love. In 1778 his cousin, Sarah Cobley, rejected his marriage proposal because of her existing engagement to the printer and publisher Benjamin Haydon. Crosse retired from painting around 1798, moving to Wells to live with Sarah’s brother, his cousin Prebendary Cobley.¹³ After thirty years apart, Crosse reunited with Sarah, who was still married to Haydon, in 1807, the day before she died.¹⁴ That year, Crosse returned to his family home in Knowle, where he died three years later, in May 1810.¹⁵

Crosse worked in multiple mediums, including watercolor, enamel, and oil.¹⁶ While he primarily painted with watercolor on ivory, he also had success with enamel portraits.¹⁷ Like several of his artistic contemporaries, including Jeremiah Meyer (1735–1789), Crosse used fugitive red pigments that have since faded.¹⁸ This is most noticeable in the often pallid flesh tones of the sitters in his watercolor miniatures, which are further washed out by his preferred greenish-blue backgrounds.¹⁹ He characteristically employed gray shading across his sitters’ hair and faces. His soft modeling transitioned to more linear brushwork in his later miniatures, particularly visible in his rendering of hair.²⁰

Crosse seldom, if ever, signed his work, and many of his works remain unidentified.²¹ The faded appearance of many of his miniatures and the dearth of signatures complicate his legacy and has led some to presume that Crosse’s deafness negatively impacted his artistic output.²² In fact, Crosse’s clear artistic ability was acclaimed during his lifetime, as confirmed by his extensive list of clients, his royal patronage, and his skills as a draftsman and sensitive colorist.²³

Notes

1. Daphne Foskett, Collecting Miniatures (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1979), 375; Basil Long, “Richard Crosse, Miniaturist and Portrait-Painter,” The Volume of the Walpole Society 17 (1928–29): 61. The Crosse family were members of the landed gentry. Richard Crosse had seven siblings: John, Edward, James, Henry, Elizabeth, Alice, and Frances.

2. Daphne Foskett, “Richard Crosse,” in Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 209; John Hall, “Guillie and Arrowsmith, on Instructing the Blind and the Deaf,” The Port Folio 2, no. 2 (August 1822): 120–21; Peter Jackson, “The Late 18th Century (1750–1800),” in Britain’s Deaf Heritage (Pentland Press, 1990), 23–24. Education for Deaf people was still in its earliest stages in Great Britain. Thomas Braidwood opened the first school for the Deaf in Britain in the 1760s, although it was a private and for-profit school. For more information on Braidwood Academy and its emphasis on an oral education, see “About: History and Traditions: Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet,” Gallaudet University, accessed on December 14, 2021, https://www.gallaudet.edu/about/history-and-traditions/thomas-hopkins-gallaudet; and John Crowley, “Education: Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb,” Disability History Museum, accessed on December 14, 2021, https://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/edu/essay.html?id=38. Braidwood taught the Deaf miniature painters Charles Shirreff (ca. 1750–1829) and Thomas Arrowsmith (ca. 1772–1839). It is very likely that Crosse knew Arrowsmith, since both men exhibited miniatures at the Royal Academy between 1792 and 1796. Crosse apparently did not have access to or chose not to attend the Braidwood Academy, even as late as 1807, when Benjamin Haydon described an encounter with Crosse in his autobiography, Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846), ed. Tom Taylor (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1926), 59–60.

3. Long, “Richard Crosse,” 61.

4. James Ayres, Art, Artisans and Apprentices: Apprentice Painters and Sculptors in the Early Modern British Tradition (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 431, 437; Long, “Richard Crosse,” 62; William Henry Pine, “The Duke of Richmond’s Gallery,” Somerset House Gazette 1, no. 3 (October 25, 1823): 39–40. Crosse lived in a house with his brother, James, at Henrietta Street in Covent Garden. John Smart and Richard Cosway trained at Shipley’s school around this same time, between 1755 and 1760.

5. Basil Long, British Miniaturists (London: Holland Press, 1929), 109. Crosse exhibited his work at the Society of Arts from 1760 to 1796. He also exhibited at the Free Society from 1761 to 1766.

6. Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts (London: H. Graves and Company, 1905), 2:209–10.

7. According to the London Gazette, “Lord Chamberlain’s Office, March 17, 1789,” London Gazette, no. 13077 (March 14, 1789): 132; Daphne Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures: A History (London: Methuen, 1963), 131. For a portrait of the king, see Crosse’s miniature of George III in an ermine cloak, titled Miniature, 1793, watercolor on ivory, 6 1/2 x 3 2/5 in. (16.5 x 8.6 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, LOAN:GILBERT.241:1-2008, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O157981/miniature-crosse-richard/. Crosse held the post alongside Richard Collins, who was also appointed painter in enamel to George III in 1789. It is unclear how long Crosse held this appointment, but it presumably ended before his 1798 retirement to Wells.

8. Daphne Foskett, “Richard Crosse,” A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger, 1972), 1:227. Crosse also completed many self-portraits, including one at the Victoria and Albert Museum (P.147-1929). Another was sold at Sotheby’s, London, “The Pohl-Ströher Collection of Portrait Miniatures Part II,” July 4, 2019, lot 54, https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/miniatures-part-2-l19323/lot.54.html. For information on two additional self-portraits, see Foskett, “Richard Crosse,” Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide, 380, plates 109E–F. Foskett and Long argue that Crosse’s brother looked after him in his house on Henrietta Street and that he may have also voiced, or acted as an interpreter, for Crosse, but the accuracy of this claim is unknown.

9. For a copy of Crosse’s ledger, see “Richard Crosse: Diary and Account Book, 1776–1810,” MSL/1929/1244, V&A National Art Library, reproduced in Long, “Richard Crosse,” 67–94. The Victoria and Albert Museum also has Crosse’s painter’s box, folding desk, ivory palette, and revenue stamps.

10. “Richard Crosse: Diary and Account Book;” Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures, 130; Long, “Richard Crosse,” 64. For some of his larger miniatures from the 1780s and 1790s, he used ivory as large as 3 1/2 inches in height. Basil Long cites miniatures by Crosse that are as large as 6 5/8 inches high and, alternatively, small enough to set in a ring.

11. Long, “Richard Crosse,” 75. In 1783, Crosse charged forty-one of his fifty-two sitters eight guineas for one miniature. In comparison, Richard Cosway began charging thirty guineas after 1783.

12. “Richard Crosse: Diary and Account Book.”

13. Long, “Richard Crosse,” 63; Leo Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964), 174.

14. For a description of this encounter, see Haydon, Memoirs, 59–60; biographies of Crosse overwhelmingly focus on documenting this dramatic reunion.

15. Sylvanus Urban, “Obituary, with Anecdotes, of remarkable Persons,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 80, no. 1 (June 1810): 596.

16. For a list of his oil paintings, see Christie, Manson, and Woods, Catalogue of Ancient and Modern Pictures and Drawings, the Property of C. P. Oates, Esq. (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1922).

17. See Richard Crosse, Portrait of the Artist’s brother, possibly James or Edward Crosse, ca. 1770–1780, enamel portrait miniature, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, P.148-1929, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1067911/portrait-of-the-artists-brother-enamel-miniature-richard-crosse/.

18. Foskett, “Richard Crosse,” Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide, 22.

19. Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures, 131.

20. Foskett, “Richard Crosse,” Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide, 377.

21. Long, “Richard Crosse,” 61, 64, 66.

22. Julie Aronson and Marjorie E. Wieseman, Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 132; Foskett, “Richard Crosse,” Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide, 377; Dudley Heath, Miniatures (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), 167, 63. Many of Crosse’s biographers focus on this negativity, most frequently citing his rejected marriage proposal. For example, Foskett wrote that Crosse “had the misfortune to be born deaf and dumb,” and “due, no doubt, to his affliction Crosse’s life was uneventful except for the great tragedy which he sustained when his cousin . . . rejected him.” Although the literature is outdated, Dudley Heath wrote that since Crosse was born deaf, “this fact probably stood in the way of his successful courtship of Miss Cobley,” ignoring the more convincing reason, that she was already engaged to Haydon (Heath, Miniatures, 167). More recently, a 2008 Sotheby’s auction catalogue expanded upon this rejection: “Crosse’s disappointment fostered introversion, a state made more extreme in his having been born a deaf-mute.” Sotheby’s, “Important Miniatures from a Private Collection,” April 16, 2008, lot 23.

23. Thank you to Lucy Crabtree, coordinator of Deaf culture programs, and Madison Zalopany, manager of community and access programs, both at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, for their informative revisions of this biography.

Thomas Day was born in Devonshire, England. Little is known about his birth and early years; however, he studied portrait miniature painting in London under Ozias Humphry (1742–1810) and Daniel Dodd (fl. 1752–1780), who also previously instructed John Smart (English, 1741–1811).¹ Day was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools on February 24, 1770—a date that does not align with the birth year proposed by Daphne Foskett of around 1733 but rather supports a later birth year of around 1752, which would have made him eighteen at the time of his entrance. Further confounding matters, Thomas Day is sometimes conflated with two English painters named Alexander Day, possibly a father and son (1745–1841), the latter of whom was a miniature painter, dealer, and medalist who may have also studied with Ozias Humphry.²

Thomas Day exhibited at the Society of Artists of Great Britain (from 1768 to 1783), the Free Society of Artists (1768–71) and the Royal Academy of Arts (1773–88), all in London, focusing solely on miniatures after 1778 and often exhibiting multiple pictures in a single frame. In addition to painting miniature portraits in watercolor on ivory, Day also executed charcoal drawings and larger portraits in pastels. He died in London in about 1807.

Notes

1. For biographical information on Thomas Day, see Daphne Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger, 1972), 1:525; Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, updated August 11, 2016, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Day.pdf.

2. According to Foskett, there were two artists called Alexander Day in Rome around 1800, possibly father and son. The senior Day was a miniaturist, picture dealer, and friend of Ozias Humphry. Day is the subject of a sensitive portrait drawing at the National Portrait Gallery in London: Unknown, Alexander Day, ca. 1800, 10 1/4 x 7 1/4 in. (26 x 18.4 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw01758/Alexander-Day. The younger Day was a painter, sculptor, medalist, and picture dealer who imported pictures to England, several of which are in the National Gallery. He would have been a child when Humphry was in Rome. See Foskett, Dictionary of British Miniature Painters, 344; “Alexander Day,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T021642; John Ingamells, “Day, Alexander (1745–1841), miniature painter and art dealer,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/7358.

Despite Nicholas Dixon’s plethora of prominent patrons and a six-year tenure (1673–1678) as royal limner to Charles II, the details of his life remain almost entirely unknown. Even near-contemporaries, such as the antiquary and art historian George Vertue, who documented much of what we know of the lives of Dixon’s fellow miniaturists, knew little of Dixon. In fact, Vertue mistakenly conflated him with a nonexistent “Mr. John Dixon,” which contributed significantly to the centuries-long anonymity of the artist, whose biography remains largely subject to educated guesswork.¹ John Murdoch has suggested that Dixon was likely born within ten years of 1645, as his earliest signed miniatures date to the 1660s.²

The 1670s comprise the best-known period of Dixon’s career, providing the most substantial and consistent body of work and some evidence for his life and working practices. Most significantly, in 1673 Dixon was appointed the king’s limner, following the tenure of Richard Gibson (ca. 1615–1690), with an annual salary of two hundred pounds.³ Murdoch and Mary Edmond have theorized that Dixon’s appointment—over better-known artists like Peter Cross (ca. 1645–1724)—may be due to the enduring influence of Samuel Cooper (ca. 1608–1672), who had died the previous year.⁴ Cooper’s technique in the 1660s was so close to Dixon’s refined, courtly style of this period that it seems probable he may have taught the younger artist.⁵ Following Dixon’s departure as the king’s limner in 1678, his style changed dramatically, either because of or in response to his shifting career and patronage. No longer tied to the prescribed aesthetic of court portraiture, Dixon’s later miniatures exhibit a freer, less polished handling.

In his secondary and concurrent role as Keeper of the King’s Picture Closet in the 1670s, Dixon began to dabble in the art market, an activity he continued to engage with after leaving the court. The higher stakes of art dealing perhaps appealed to Dixon, leading to his final, ruinous gamble in 1698, ironically termed his “Hopeful Adventure”: a failed lottery of 1,214 prizes, including his own miniature copies of Old Master paintings.⁶ In a bid to recapture the prominence of earlier royal limners such as Isaac Oliver (French, active England, ca. 1565–1617) and his son Peter Oliver (ca. 1594–1647), whose exquisite cabinet miniatures were prized by Charles I and his circle of connoisseurs, Dixon climbed too high and, despite his talent, fell into obscurity. He died sometime after February 14, 1708, the date of Dixon’s signature on a bill of sale for seventy of his mortgaged miniatures from the lottery.⁷ It seems ironic that Richard W. Goulding, the private librarian to the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, was ultimately able to begin to rehabilitate the career and reputation of Dixon two centuries later due to the remaining thirty cabinet miniatures from that 1708 sale, originally painted by Dixon for the lottery that all but ended his career.⁸

Notes

1. This mistake was uncovered by Mary Edmond in “Nicholas Dixon, limner: and Matthew Dixon, painter, died 1710,” Burlington Magazine 125, no. 967 (October 1983): 610–12.

2. John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: H.M. Stationery Office in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997), 259.

3. Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 81; John Murdoch, “Dixon, Nicholas (c. 1645–1708x20), miniature painter,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/66390.

4. John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures, 259.

5. “On the technical evidence, therefore, Cooper was Dixon’s master, and that was why Dixon succeeded to the king’s limnership. He belonged unmistakably in the tradition.” John Murdoch et al., The English Miniature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 155.

6. Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures, 82.

7. John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, paid 430 pounds for the miniatures. Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures, 82; Richard W. Goulding, “Nicholas Dixon, the Limner,” Burlington Magazine 10 (1911–1912): 24–25; and Richard W. Goulding, “The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures,” The Walpole Society 4 (1916): 25–26.

8. The miniatures were inherited by the Duke of Portland by descent through Lord Oxford. Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures, 82.

Born in Edinburgh to a glove-maker of “narrow circumstance . . . and [a peculiar] . . . cast of mind,” John Donaldson revealed an early proclivity for drawing, producing portraits in India ink as well as copies after Old Masters.¹ These talents not only resulted in prizes for drawing from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures, and Agriculture in Edinburgh in 1756 and 1757; they also provided a means of support for his family.

Donaldson moved to London in 1760 after several years of working in Edinburgh under the engraver Richard Cooper. In London, he found success immediately, exhibiting with the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1761, winning a prize in 1764 and establishing a lucrative portrait painting practice. In addition to painting portraits on ivory, Donaldson also worked in enamel as well as graphite on vellum.

Despite his early success as an artist, his attention shifted, as it had for his father, to more philosophical affairs; he promoted controversial views in support of adultery, in opposition to religion, and on humankind’s morals, often at the expense of his art and his livelihood.² Donaldson also published several essays and poems on beauty and sensibility, and he patented a method of keeping vegetables and meat preserved during long-distance voyages. With failing eyesight and weakening health, Donaldson exhibited his last work at the Royal Academy in 1791. His remaining friends moved him to lodgings in Islington, where he died in poverty on October 11, 1801.

Notes

1. Earl of Buchan [D. W. Erskine] and others, “Memoir of the life of John Donaldson esq., miniature painter, portions being in his own handwriting,” University of Edinburgh, MS La, IV. 26, as cited in Duncan Macmillan, “John Donaldson,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/65009. All subsequent details of Donaldson’s biography are from Macmillan.

2. Macmillan cites James Boswell, who recorded in his journal, “Donaldson the painter drank tea with me. . . . [He] is a kind of speculative being and must forsooth contradict established systems. He defended adultery and he opposed revealed religion.” The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, 1756–1795, vol. 1: 1756–1777, ed. Thomas Crawford (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 210–11, cited in Macmillan, “John Donaldson.”

Henry Edridge, a skilled portrait painter and landscape draftsman, was born in August 1768 in Paddington, Middlesex. His father, also named Henry Edridge, worked as a tradesman in St. James’s, and his mother, Sarah (née Brett), played a crucial role in his early education.¹ At the age of fifteen, the younger Edridge was apprenticed to the mezzotint engraver William Pether (1738–1821), who was also a portrait miniaturist. This apprenticeship honed Edridge’s meticulous eye for detail, setting the foundation for his future artistic endeavors.

In 1784, Edridge enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools, where he copied works by its esteemed president, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792). Reynolds admired Edridge’s work and acquired examples for his own collection. In 1786, Edridge was awarded a silver medal, marking the beginning of his exhibition journey at the Academy. He would exhibit 261 works there during his lifetime.²

Edridge’s reputation was further solidified by his full-length watercolor portraits, a style he began in 1790 and continued to work on until 1810.³ Toward the end of his life, Edridge spent considerable time in France, particularly in Normandy and Paris, where he specialized in views of those cities’ significant Gothic churches. In England, he also sketched landscapes around Fetcham in Surrey and Bushey in Hertfordshire, producing accomplished drawings that feature the rustic charm of his surroundings.⁴

Despite being initially rejected by the Royal Academy as a watercolorist, Edridge was eventually appointed an associate member in 1820, a year before his death.⁵ He died of heart disease on April 23, 1821, at his home on 65 Margaret Street, London, and is buried in St. James’s Church, Bushey Parish, Hertfordshire. Edridge left behind a substantial fortune of twelve thousand pounds, bequeathing it to his widow and executors.

Notes

1. For much of the biographical information, I have consulted Simon Houfe, “Henry Edridge (1768–1821),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/8513. See also S. Houfe, “Henry Edridge, 1769–1821: A Neoclassical Portraitist,” Antique Collector, 43 (1972): 211–16.

2. In 1789, Edridge married Ann at the same time he set up shop in London on his own at 14 Church Street, Soho, and then at 5 Old Compton Street. As cited in Houfe, “Henry Edridge (1768–1821).”

3. The Nelson-Atkins is fortunate to have three full-length drawings by Edridge in its permanent collection: Countess Lauderdale and Children, ca. 1805, 81-30/22; A Gentleman in His Library, ca. 1810, 78-48; and Lady Brome, 1796, 81-30/21.

4. Henry Edridge’s watercolor landscapes realized around Fetcham and Bushey are relatively rare and less well known than his miniatures. These locations served as country retreats for physician, collector, and amateur draughtsman Thomas Monro, who in the 1790s established an informal “academy” for landscape artists at his London house in the Strand. See Anna Cooper and Martin Myrone, “The Social Economics of Artistic Labour: A Technical Case Study of Henry Monro’s Disgrace of Wolsey (1814),” British Art Studies, no. 16, https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-16/coopermyrone.

5. Houfe, “Henry Edridge (1768–1821).”

George Engleheart is one of the most celebrated miniaturists of the eighteenth century, having launched his career on the heels of other important miniaturists, including Richard Cosway (1742–1821), Jeremiah Meyer (1735–1789), and John Smart (1741–1811).¹ Engleheart was born to Francis Engelheart (1714–1773) and Anne Dawney (1713–1780), who baptized him on October 26, 1750, at St. Anne’s Church, Kew, in Richmond.² Young George enrolled at the Royal Academy of the Arts Schools in 1769, its inaugural year, and studied with Irish landscape painter and noted watercolorist George Barret Sr. (ca. 1730–1784). By 1773, the same year Engleheart first exhibited portrait miniatures at the Royal Academy, he began to study with its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792).³

Engleheart’s tutelage with Reynolds ended in 1776, the year Engleheart married Elizabeth Brown.⁴ Her sudden and untimely death three years later halted Engleheart’s submissions to the Royal Academy.⁵ Engleheart found love again in 1781, marrying Elizabeth’s sister, Ursula Sarah Brown. Their union resulted in four children: George, Nathaniel, Henry, and Emma.⁶

Around 1783, Engleheart forged a friendship with the writer William Hayley, who introduced him to artists George Romney (1734–1802), William Blake (1757–1827), and Jeremiah Meyer.⁷ Engleheart and Meyer were friends and had much in common: both studied under Reynolds and shared German descent, and their families were neighbors in Kew.⁸ After Meyer’s death in 1789, Engleheart replaced him as miniature painter to King George III and went on to paint the king at least twenty-five times.⁹

Engleheart was prolific. He meticulously documented his career in a fee book, still in the possession of his family, covering the years 1775–1813. It encompasses a sprawling 4,853 miniatures and provides a critical glimpse into his career.¹⁰ Some of his more prominent patrons, in addition to the royal family, included Catherine Maria “Kitty” Fisher; Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire; Maria Fitzherbert; Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey; and members of the Bertie and Bligh family, to name a few.¹¹

Engleheart’s artistic style comprises three major phases. His early miniatures (ca. 1773–1780) are often signed “G E,” are under two inches high, and are more prosaic than his later works.¹² The middle and most productive time of his career (1780–1795) consists of unsigned, vibrantly colored miniatures, featuring sitters with large, deep-set eyes and thick, dark eyebrows. His brushstrokes loosen and follow the contours of the sitters’ hair and faces.¹³ In this phase, Engleheart adds layers of opaque white to delineate the many tiers of the extravagant fashions of the day.¹⁴ In the third phase of his career (1795–1813), the miniatures grow larger, up to three inches high; they return to a more somber palette; and they are painted in a less flamboyant style. They are also typically signed with an “E” on the front, sometimes with a full inscription and address on the back.¹⁵

Engleheart lived and worked in Hanover Square, London, steps from the Royal Academy, until 1783, when he moved to Hertford Street in Mayfair.¹⁶ While he did not have a large studio of assistants, Engleheart trained his cousin Thomas Richmond (1771–1837) and nephew John Cox Dillman Engleheart (1784–1862) prior to the latter’s acceptance to the Royal Academy Schools in 1801.¹⁷ After retiring in 1813, Engleheart moved to a country home in Bedfont, near Hounslow, eventually moving in with his son in Blackheath, Kent, by 1827, following Ursula’s death.¹⁸ Engleheart died there on March 21, 1829, but was buried in his hometown of Kew, joining the ranks of artists Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Jeremiah Meyer, and Johan Zoffany (1733–1810), already entombed at St. Anne’s Church, where Engleheart was baptized.¹⁹

Notes

1. Daphne Foskett, “George Engleheart,” A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger, 1972), 1:261; V. Remington, “Engleheart, George (1750–1829),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 18:451; George Williamson and Henry Engleheart, George Engleheart 1750–1829: Miniature Painter to George III (London: George Bell and Sons, 1902), 42, 57–60. Engleheart began painting about a decade after Cosway, Meyer, and Smart. Engleheart maintained productive relationships with artists like Meyer, although he had a much-discussed rivalry with Cosway.

2. Vital records of Woking, Surrey Church of England Parish Registers, ref. 6060/1/1; London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. DW/T/6077; Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 3. Biographers often list Engleheart’s year of birth as 1752, due to a November 3, 1769, document of enrollment at the Royal Academy Schools in which his age is listed as “16 last Nov.” Although a 1750 baptismal document confusingly lists Engleheart’s parents as “George & Ann” instead of “Francis & Ann,” a March 28, 1829, burial record lists his age as “78.” This confirms a birth year of 1750. The German spelling of the family name, “Engelheart” or “Englehart,” changed to “Engleheart” in 1780. Francis worked as a plaster modeler at Kew Palace, supposedly producing the decorative ceilings of Hampton Court Palace, and Anne was the daughter of the vicar of Kew. The Englehearts had eight sons, but five died in infancy, leaving Thomas, John Dillman, and George.

3. Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures: A History (London: Methuen, 1963), 120. Under Barret, Engleheart painted landscapes and cattle in watercolor. Although Reynolds was infamous for his lack of engagement with pupils, Engleheart’s copies of Reynolds’s paintings remained with the Engleheart family until his death, suggesting a level of reverence for Reynolds. Williamson and Engleheart reproduce some of these copies in George Engleheart, 46–55. Engleheart primarily painted in watercolor. He also worked in enamel, although his finished works are rare. Only two entries in the artist’s fee book describe enamelwork, in 1778 and 1779.

4. Marriage license dated February 14, 1775, Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/7/5.

5. Foskett, “George Engleheart,” 261; Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 11, 32.

6. Marriage license dated May 27, 1781, Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STJ/PR/6/6; Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, xi, 140. Elizabeth and Ursula were the daughters of Nathaniel Brown, a merchant in Isleworth, and widow Elizabeth Woolley. Woolley first married Joseph Parker in 1740 and had one child, Jane Parker. Jane, the half-sister of Elizabeth and Ursula Brown, was the first to marry into the Engleheart family, wedding John Dillman Engleheart in 1770. For more information on the Engleheart family, see Carmela Arturi and Frederick Roger Phillips, George Engleheart and his Nephew John Cox Dillman Engleheart (Hampshire: Portrait Miniature Club, 2016), 22–28.

7. Foskett, “George Engleheart,” 261; Royal Academy, The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London: T. Cadell, 1783), 15:14–15; Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 12, 14–15. For poems written by Hayley to Engleheart, see Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 18–19. It was also at this time that Engleheart resumed exhibiting at the Royal Academy; he exhibited from 1773 to 1779 and 1783 to 1822.

8. Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 9, 15; G. Malden and F. N. Howes, “Notes on Early Kew and the King of Hanover,” Kew Bulletin 5, no. 3 (1950): 300. The artists’ times in Kew overlapped during the years 1750–1757: Engleheart as a young child and Meyer as a teenager. Meyer moved to London in 1757, and Engleheart followed suit in 1773. Both artists returned to Kew at the end of their lives. After Meyer died, one of his daughters ran away, and Engleheart brought her home.

9. Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures, 148. In comparison, Richard Crosse completed one portrait as painter in enamel to the king.

10. Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures, 140–41. Engleheart’s paint and palette box are located at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.16-1925 (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1043181/paintbox-winsor–newton/) and P.17-1925 (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82399/palette-box-unknown/).

11. Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 24–26.

12. Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures, 122.

13. Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 45. According to the fee book, 1788 was Engleheart’s most productive year, with a total of 228 portraits and prices ranging from eight to ten guineas.

14. Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures, 123; Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures, 141; also referred to as the chapeau de paille phase, with women wearing enormous straw hats.

15. Foskett, “George Engleheart,” 262. British fashion trends shifted to simpler and more conservative clothing after the French Revolution. Most consistent throughout Engleheart’s oeuvre is the use of slanted brushstrokes to depict a lightly clouded blue sky background.

16. Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 16. In 1773, Engleheart’s address was Shepherd Street, Hanover Square, and in 1776 it was Prince’s Street, Hanover Square.

17. Remington, “Engleheart,” 452–53; Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 66. Remington suggests that John Cox Dillman Engleheart (hereafter JCD) contributed the backgrounds to his uncle’s miniatures while under his training. After 1810, JCD strengthened his style and technique and signed his work “JCDE,” as well as including a full inscription on the portrait’s back. It is likely George Engleheart began signing his work with an “E” and adding an inscription in order to distinguish himself from his nephew.

18. Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 19–20. According to Williamson, after Ursula died in 1817, Engleheart moved in with his daughter Emma in Bedfont. Her poor health caused his move to Blackheath to live with his son, Nathaniel.

19. Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, series PROB 11, class PROB 11, piece 1756, National Archives, Kew; Engleheart burial dated March 28, 1829. While Gainsborough was not a resident of Kew, he wished to be buried next to his friend and fellow artist, Joshua Kirby (1716–1774).

John Cox Dillman Engleheart was born on January 2, 1784, and baptized on January 29 at St. Anne’s church in Kew, Surrey.¹ He was the son of John Dillman Engleheart (1735–1810) and Jane Parker (1743–1827), the nephew of miniaturist George Engleheart (1750–1829), and grandson of German plaster modeler Francis Engleheart (1714–1773).² Although John Cox Dillman (JCD) has often been seen as a lesser artist than his uncle, George Engleheart, recent scholarship seeks to acknowledge the former’s triumphs in the field of miniature painting.³

JCD apprenticed in his uncle’s studio from the age of fourteen and learned to make preparatory drawings, a practice he continued throughout his career by completing colorful sketches for more complex miniatures.⁴ He painted his first miniature at fifteen and began his professional career at seventeen, eight years before his uncle had started his own career at twenty-five.⁵ During the period when their professional careers overlapped, JCD earned twice as much as his uncle, despite the quality of George’s later works (F58-60/41).⁶

Although JCD worked in central London, he frequently traveled to Birmingham on horseback, a trip that took at least two days and during which, along the way, he advertised his services with a printed card.⁷ It was in Birmingham that he met Mary Barker (1789–1878), whom he courted for several years before marrying her in 1811, when she was twenty-one.⁸ They had four daughters and one son, named Gardner after JCD’s best friend and brother-in-law.⁹ JCD was financially comfortable due both to his success as a painter and his inheritance from relatives, including his beloved father, who died suddenly in 1810.¹⁰

JCD regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy of the Arts from 1801 until 1828, when he retired because of declining health. According to his personal journals, from the age of nineteen he often felt ill, symptoms his descendants have posthumously diagnosed as severe anxiety.¹¹ JCD’s style, while somewhat resembling his uncle’s work, incorporates more complex backgrounds, including columns and curtains. He also conveyed an increased attention to detail in the way he rendered shawls, fur, and other fashionable accessories. JCD painted his sitters with naturalistic flesh tones and added a flush of pink across their cheeks.¹² He often employed a rectangular format and completed many group portraits.¹³ Like his uncle, JCD also painted eye miniatures, including one of his sister, Mary Cox Dillman Engleheart (1782–1845).¹⁴

John Cox Dillman Engleheart was an incredibly talented miniaturist whose name might have been more widely known than George Engleheart’s had he continued to paint after 1830.¹⁵ Regardless, the quality and degree of finish of his portraits are worthy of praise in their own right. The Starr Collection is unique in that it includes a portrait he likely completed while working as his uncle’s studio assistant (Portrait of a Naval Officer, Possibly Rear Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1802, F58-60/42) and another painted the year of his uncle’s retirement (Portrait of James Temple Mansel, 1813, F58-60/49), illustrating his stylistic progression and growing independence. JCD passed away on October 29, 1862, at the age of seventy-eight, after moving his family to Turnbridge Wells, Kent, to avoid the increasingly populated area of East Acton.¹⁶

Notes

1. Surrey Church of England Parish Registers, ref. 6060/1/1, Surrey History Centre, Woking; Roger and Carmela Arturi Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart (1784–1862),” Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions and Collections, ed. Bernd Pappe and Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten (Petersberg, Germany: Michael Imhof, The Tansey Miniatures Foundation, 2018), 201. Of JCD’s eight other siblings, only he and two others lived beyond the age of twenty-one.

2. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 199. JCD was also a distant relative of Thomas Richmond (see an example of his work: Portrait of a Man, ca. 1810, F58-60/117).

3. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 199.

4. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 199, 200, figs. 3–4. For information on JCD’s early schooling, see Carmela Arturi and Frederick Roger Phillips, George Engleheart and his Nephew John Cox Dillman Engleheart (Hampshire: Portrait Miniature Club, 2016), 118–19. Hundreds of these studies remain with his descendants today.

5. JCD frequently completed the backgrounds of his uncle’s miniatures and even painted entirely new copies; see George Williamson and Henry Engleheart, George Engleheart 1750–1829: Miniature Painter to George III (London: George Bell and Sons, 1902), 131. According to Appendix 3, “Manuscript Lists of Works executed by John Cox Dillman Engleheart,” there is a section of portraits from 1801 to 1803 with the heading “Copied for my Uncle.”

6. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 199. It remains unclear whether JCD was charging double his uncle’s rate or was more prolific.

7. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 199–200. A copy of JCD’s business card is located at the National Art Library, within the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, MSL/1868-7-11/28E, https://nal-vam.on.worldcat.org/search/detail/ 1011992766? queryString=john%20cox%20dillman%20engleheart& clusterResults=false& groupVariantRecords=false.

8. Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754–1937, ref. DRO 34/8, archive roll M179, Library of Birmingham.

9. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 200, 204. John’s eldest sister, Lucy (1779–1850), married William Farnell Gardner.

10. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 199. JCD was twenty-four when his father passed away after a few days of illness. He documented his filial love in the inscription on a portrait: “Portrait of my dear Father done when I was 19.” The endearing portrait is a candid depiction of his father reading at his desk. John Cox Dillman Engleheart, John Dillman Engleheart (the Artist’s Father), 1803, watercolor on ivory, 5 1/8 x 4 1/8 in. (13 x 10.5 cm), private collection. Engleheart was also close with his mother, with whom he lived for some time.

11. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 201.

12. This is striking when compared to the sometimes jaundiced faces of George Engleheart’s sitters.

13. See John Cox Dillman Engleheart, Three Sisters, sold at Bonhams, London, “The Albion Collection of Fine Portrait Miniatures,” April 22, 2004, lot 156.

14. See The Left Eye of the Artist’s Sister, Mary Cox Dillman Engleheart (1782–1845), later Mrs. John Pyne, sold at Christie’s, London, “Important Gold Boxes, Objects of Vertu and Portrait Miniatures,” December 9, 2002, lot 285. It is extremely rare to have not only the artist’s attribution of an eye miniature but also the sitter’s.

15. Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 202; V. Remington, “Engleheart, George (1750–1829),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 18:451. In 1829, JCD wrote in his journal, “My health being so entirely destroyed and with little chance, if any, of an entire recovery, I resolved to give up the practice of my profession for the present at least and to try again the effect of travelling.” JCD traveled to Switzerland and southern Italy with his family in 1828 and 1834. He was still financially comfortable after quitting painting; he lived another thirty-four years after his retirement to a country house in East Acton, which employed a staff of five.

16. “Engleheart, John Cox Dillman Esq.,” National Probate Calendar (London: Principal Probate Registry, 1862), 77; Phillips, “The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart,” 202.

As the son of a watch-dial painter, William Essex was seemingly predisposed to work on a tiny scale.¹ However, his work is notable for its ambitious variations in size; his enamel miniatures are both among the biggest and the smallest ever produced in the medium.² Essex’s larger enamel miniatures, which he often produced collaboratively with his brother Alfred (d. 1871), sought to rival in skill and effect the full-sized oil paintings by artists like Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) and Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) that they typically copied.³ While Essex occasionally painted miniatures in watercolor on ivory, his primary medium of enamel on metal had the benefit of closely approximating the rich coloring, sheen, and longevity of Old Master oil paintings. Like the slightly older Henry Bone (1755–1834), he preferred to reproduce existing works of art, rather than derive original compositions, in order to focus on the technical effects and rigors of enamel. In fact, Essex chose the medium of enamel on copper to paint his own self-portrait in miniature in 1857.⁴

Essex trained with his brother Alfred in the studio of Charles Muss (1779–1824), court enamellist to King William IV. Muss’s connections led to royal appointments for the brothers; William Essex first received commissions from George IV in 1827 and was later appointed enamel painter to Queen Victoria in 1837, and Prince Albert in 1841.⁵ Many of his miniatures remain in the Royal Collection. In Muss’s workshop, the Essex brothers learned methods passed down from seventeenth-century enamellists like Jean Petitot (1607–1691) and his student Charles Boit (1662–1727).⁶

Following the tradition of Petitot, Essex copied well-known portraits of celebrated figures of the day. This practice is exemplified by miniatures of Sir Thomas More and Sir Walter Scott, both after portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), and a framed trio of miniatures of Lord Byron, after an original portrait by Thomas Phillips (1770–1845); Essex painted Byron at least five times.⁷ In his work for the British royal family, Essex replicated portraits of Queen Victoria by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805–1873) to be distributed as gifts and copied many historic portraits in the queen’s collection.⁸ Other notable subjects included William Shakespeare, after the “Chandos” portrait; David Garrick, after Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788); and the Duke of Wellington, after Lawrence; as well as numerous portraits of family pets.⁹ Essex often painted these subjects on a smaller scale, typically affixed to a stickpin, to enable wider, faster distribution, which both propelled and benefited from the British public’s growing enthrallment with celebrity culture and sentimental souvenirs.

Essex regularly exhibited his works at the Royal Academy of the Arts beginning in 1818, and later at the Royal Society of British Artists and the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom, exhibiting for the final time in 1864.¹⁰ He held a private exhibition of his works in 1839, for which he also printed a catalogue.¹¹ Despite his earlier success, later in life, Essex was forced to ask Queen Victoria for an increase to his pension.¹² His predominant use of enamel, rather than watercolor, enabled him to continue his career long after miniatures had been superseded by the more accessible medium of photography—but this did not last, for Essex or his fellow miniaturists, regardless of their chosen medium. He died in poverty in Brighton in 1869.

Notes

1. “Obituary,” The Intellectual Repository and New Jerusalem Magazine 17, no. 196 (April 1, 1870): 199.

2. According to Erika Speel, “His smallest portraits were on oval gold plaques up to 1.7 cm (c. 1/2 in.) high. The usual size of his portraits was on plaques up to 8 cm high (3 1/4 in.).” Erika Speel, Dictionary of Enamelling: History and Techniques (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998), 51.

3. Vanessa Remington, “Essex Family,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/66793.

4. Illustrated in Remington, “Essex Family.” The self-portrait’s current location is unknown.

5. Erika Speel, Painted Enamels: An Illustrated Survey 1500–1920 (London: Lund Humphries, 2008), 110.

6. On Muss, see Joshua James Foster, British Miniature Painters and their Works (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1898), 64.

7. The triptych was sold at Christie’s, London, May 23, 1978, lot 66.

8. The sentimental role of many of Queen Victoria’s commissions for Essex, including a series of portraits of each of her children at the age of four, mounted in a pair of bracelets, is detailed in Laura Forsberg, Worlds Beyond: Miniatures and Victorian Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021), 43–44.

9. William Essex, Portrait of William Shakespeare, 1854, 5/8 in. (16 mm.) high, previously with Philip Mould, http://www.historicalportraits.com/Gallery.asp?Page=Item&ItemID=2092&Desc=William-Shakespeare-%7C-William-Essex; William Essex, Portrait of David Garrick, ca. 1830, 1 5/8 in. (4.2 cm), sold at Christie’s, London, December 18m, 1973, lot 62; William Essex, Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, 1846, enamel on copper, 4 1/2 x 2 7/8 in. (11.5 x 7.3 cm), Saint Louis Art Museum, 28-1933.56.

10. Remington, “Essex Family.”

11. “Obituary.”

12. Remington, “Essex Family.”

Robert Field was born around 1769, possibly in London or Gloucestershire, England.¹ He entered the Royal Academy Schools in London on November 19, 1790,² and produced numerous mezzotints that were published in London in 1792–93. In 1794, he immigrated to the United States on the Republic, which landed at Baltimore.³ Field spent fourteen years in the United States. From 1795 to 1800 he was in Philadelphia, where he lived with fellow émigré artists Walter Robertson (ca. 1750–1801)](https://www.nelson-atkins.org/starr4/biographies/#section-walter-robertson-irish-ca-1750-1801) and John James Barralet (ca. 1747–1815) and served as a founding member of the Columbianum, America’s first artists’ society, led by American portrait and miniature painter Charles Willson Peale.⁴ Following the move of the nation’s capital, Field went to Washington from 1800 to 1802, where he supported himself making small-scale copies after Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of George Washington.⁵ He settled next in Baltimore from 1802 to 1803 and then Boston from 1805 to 1808. During his American sojourn, he painted numerous political figures, including Washington and Thomas Jefferson, among many other members of high society.

Field moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1808, where as one of the foremost American miniaturists he may have been the most professionally trained painter to establish himself in Canada in the early 1800s.⁶ There he painted a portrait of the lieutenant governor, Sir John Wentworth, and this distinguished patronage facilitated the start of his career in his new locale. Field executed engravings and miniatures on ivory and paper, both as original works of art and as copies after oil paintings. He was only in Halifax for eight years (1808–16);⁷ however, he was incredibly prolific during his time there, completing as many as 150 full-scale and miniature portraits.⁸ Field moved to Jamaica in 1816 in search of new patrons, having apparently exhausted the market in Halifax. He died in Kingston three years later of yellow fever.

Notes

1. There is no definitive source for Robert Field’s birth year or place. One of Field’s earliest biographers, Harry Piers, repeated speculation that Robert Field could have been born in Gloucester, near the Bristol Channel; however, he acknowledged that this information was speculative. See Harry Piers, Robert Field: Portrait Painter in Oils, Miniature, and Watercolors and Engraver (New York: Frederic Fairchild Sherman, 1927), 1–2. The Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art both give Gloucestershire as his birthplace.

2. Sandra Paikowsky, “Field, Robert,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, online edition (Toronto and Quebec City: University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003), http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/field_robert_5E.html.

3. Piers, Robert Field, 5.

4. There is speculation that Field was in or briefly went to New York; however, Piers was unable to find evidence to support this. See Piers, Robert Field, 8.

5. Based on the location of sitters in Field’s portraits in late 1800, after the nation’s capital moved from Philadelphia to Washington, Piers speculates that Field went to Georgetown, Washington, and the adjoining state of Maryland and remained in that area until 1805. See Piers, Robert Field, 28.

6. Paikowsky, “Field, Robert.”

7. Field had studios in Halifax in various locations, including near Alexander Morrison’s bookstore, 1808; Dutchtown, 1808–10; Hollis Street, 1811; the corner of Barrington and Salter Streets, 1813–14; and Dutchtown and Upper Water Street, 1815–16; see Robert Field: 1769–1819, exh. cat. (Halifax: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 1978), 11.

8. Harry Piers, “Artists in Nova Scotia,” in Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society (Halifax: Nova Scotia Historical Society, 1914), 18:118.

The miniaturist Paul Fischer was born Johann Georg Paul Fischer in Hanover, Germany, on September 16, 1786.¹ Recent research indicates that his father, known variously as an engraver, line-engraver, and copper engraver, was Carl Friedrich Fischer (ca. 1738–1787), who married Marie Elisabeth Kleinen in 1781.² This discovery aligns with the common narrative that the artist’s father died soon after his birth;³ Carl Fischer died in 1787, when Paul was fourteen months old.⁴

At fourteen, Paul Fischer became a pupil of Hanoverian court painter Johann Heinrich Ramberg (1763–1840), perhaps through familial connections. Ramberg had studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London under the auspices of George III, who reigned over England and Hanover from 1760 to 1820. Likely aided by Ramberg, Fischer garnered royal patronage on his 1810 arrival in London, beginning with official commissions from Queen Charlotte. Fischer’s two primary interests in landscape and portraiture are represented in his earliest works in the English Royal Collection, with two views of Windsor Castle and a portrait miniature of George III after Sir William Beechey (1796–1856) in what would become his standard rectangular bust-length format.⁵

Fischer continued to receive regular commissions from the royal family, including a series of portrait miniatures of George IV and his brothers. Many of these, along with other royal portraits, were reproductions of large-scale oil paintings by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), Beechey, and Thomas Phillips (1770–1845). In August 1819, Fischer painted the first portrait of the infant Queen (then Princess) Victoria, a rare example of Fischer painting from life.⁶ From 1817 to 1852, Fischer consistently exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists, showcasing portrait miniatures and occasional watercolor landscapes. He died at his London home on September 12, 1875.⁷

Notes

1. Film no. 184950, Evangelisches Kirchenbuchamt (Evangelical Church Register Office), Hanover, accessed through ancestry.com.

2. Film no. 184950, Evangelisches Kirchenbuchamt, Hanover.

3. Film no. 184951, Evangelisches Kirchenbuchamt, Hanover. The records for the Fischers’ marriage on March 1, 1781; the birth and baptism of their child Johann Georg Paul Fischer on September 16, 1786, and September 22, 1786, respectively; Carl Fischer’s death on November 24, 1787, and burial three days later; and Marie Fischer’s death on August 21, 1806, are all documented at Sankt Ägidien, Hanover. The medieval Aegidienkirche or Aegidian Church, as it is known today, was destroyed in 1943 and later reconstructed. For other biographies of Fischer, see Vanessa Remington, “Fischer, (Johann Georg) Paul (1786–1875),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9485; “Fischer, T. Paul, or Paul Johann Georg,” in Benezit Dictionary of Artists, October 31, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00064749; Basil Long, British Miniaturists (London: Holland Press, 1929), 153–54.

4. Furthermore, biographies of Paul Fischer commonly state that he was the youngest of three sons, and Carl and Marie Fischer had two other children, Friedrich Conrad Fischer, born in 1781, and Johann Heinrich Rudolph Fischer, born in 1784, followed by Paul in 1786. See, for example, Remington, “Fischer.”

5. Paul Fischer, Windsor Castle: Slopes in Home Park, September 1810, watercolor, 9 1/2 x 13 in. (24.2 x 33 cm), Royal Collection, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/14/collection/917422/windsor-castle-slopes-in-home-park; Paul Fischer, Windsor Castle, the North Terrace, 1810, watercolor, 11 3/5 x 15 2/5 in. (29.4 x 39.2 cm), Royal Collection, https://www.rct.uk/collection/917426/windsor-castle-the-north-terrace; Paul Fischer, George III, 1810, watercolor on ivory laid on card, 5 1/16 x 3 7/8 in. (13.1 x 9.9 cm), Royal Collection, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/1/collection/421026/george-iii-1738-1820.

6. Paul Fischer, Princess (1819–1901), later Queen Victoria, 1819, watercolor on ivory, 7 1/8 x 5 1/4 in. (18.2 x 13.4 cm), Royal Collection, https://www.rct.uk/collection/420266/princess-1819-1901-later-queen-victoria. On December 6, 1873, Fischer wrote to Queen Victoria, “I was favoured to paint the very first portrait of Her Majesty, when in her Cradle: a large miniature on ivory, which you will find among the Rarities of Windsor Castle.” Vanessa Remington, Victorian Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (London: Royal Collection Enterprises, 2010), 1:259.

7. “On the 12th inst., at 4, Upper Spring-street, Portman-square, within four days of the 90th anniversary of his birth, George Johann Paul Fischer, Court Painter to H.M. King George IV,” “Deaths,” The Times, London, September 17, 1875, 1.

Thomas Flatman was a man of many talents. In addition to being a miniature painter, he qualified as a barrister (lawyer), although he seems never to have practiced, and he had avid interests in astrology and theology.¹ Born in London on February 21, 1635, the son of a court clerk, Flatman attended Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he was elected a fellow in 1656, although he resigned by 1658.² He also may have received a master’s degree from St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, in 1666. In 1655, he paid to be admitted to the Inner Temple, a professional association for barristers and judges that required membership in order to practice law, and he was called to the bar in 1662.³ He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1668.⁴ On November 26, 1672, he married Hannah Carpenter at St. Botolph, Aldersgate, and they had several children. They lived in Three Leg Alley, in the parish of St. Bride’s, where Flatman died on December 8, 1688.

Flatman’s earliest miniatures date to around 1660, and they owe a debt to Samuel Cooper’s (English, ca. 1608–1672) leadership in the field. Flatman’s brushwork was wiry, however, in contrast to Cooper’s smooth handling, leading many scholars to believe that Flatman learned to draw from an engraver or from studying the linear style of engravings.⁵

Flatman’s involvement in miniature painting and the law may have supported his acute intellectual and cultural abilities, but they were not his primary creative pursuits.⁶ He was also a celebrated author, and his collection titled Poems and Songs, published in 1674, with subsequent expanded editions, contained an important preface about the aesthetic underlying the Pindaric free-verse form.⁷ Flatman contributed to the translation of Ovid’s epistles and anonymously wrote eighty-two weekly numbers of a pro-government pamphlet from 1681 to 1682. Flatman’s fascination with painting may have been shaped by his Neoplatonic leanings, evident in his verses about the interconnection of all things and the artist’s power to confer a kind of eternal life upon the person depicted.⁸

Notes

1. Graham Reynolds, “A Miniature Self-Portrait by Thomas Flatman, Limner and Poet,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 89, no. 528 (1947): 64.

2. John Murdoch, “Flatman, Thomas (1635–1688),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004; updated November 14, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9675.

3. Murdoch indicates that on May 31, 1655, Flatman had paid three pounds, six shillings, and eight pennies to be entered at the Inner Temple; he was called to the bar, describing himself as “of London, a gent,” on May 11, 1662. See Murdoch, “Flatman, Thomas (1635–1688).”

4. Reynolds, “A Miniature Self-Portrait by Thomas Flatman,” 64.

5. Murdoch specifically proposes that Flatman may have learned from instructional texts found in handbooks or even from a portrait engraver like William Faithorne (1616–1691), for whom he wrote a valedictory verse in the The Art of Graveing and Etching (1662). This aspect of his style remained fairly constant throughout his career, even in his later miniatures from the 1680s. It may also be viewed as a reflection of the late seventeenth-century interest in conspicuous or brilliant execution, known as pittoresco. See Murdoch, “Flatman, Thomas (1635–1688),” 5.

6. See John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publications, 1997), 205.

7. The Pindaric free-verse form is a type of poetry that does not follow a specific rhyme or meter pattern but is structured around the themes of victory and celebration. This form is named after the ancient Greek poet Pindar, known for his odes that celebrate athletic and artistic achievements. The Pindaric free-verse form typically consists of irregular stanzas with varying line lengths and rhythms, and it often employs repetition and elevated language to convey a sense of grandeur and exaltation.

8. Murdoch, “Flatman, Thomas (1635–1688).”

Virtually nothing is known about English artist Thomas Forster. His birth year is an approximation based on an account by antiquarian George Vertue of having seen “the head of Mr. Forster done by himself on Vellum. Aeta. [age] 31 1708.”¹ This challenges the account of biographers C. F. Bell and Rachel Poole, who drew up a list of plumbago portraits by Forster and dated the earliest one to 1690, making the artist only thirteen when he drew an exquisite portrait of Dorothy Yates.² However, Bell and Poole’s next dated work is not until 1695, which suggests an erroneous read of the date for the earlier work. The majority of the artist’s other works fall between 1695 and 1712.³ None of his known drawings, which include a number of portraits of members of the Bulteel family, bears a date after 1712, hence the estimation that Forster lived at least until that year—although a number of the drawings are undated and could possibly have been made later.⁴

Forster likely spent the bulk of his career in London.⁵ However, scholars believe he may have had a connection with Northumberland because “Forster” was a common surname in that region.⁶ To date, no information to substantiate this claim has been discovered.⁷

Notes

1. “Vertue Note Books, Volume IV,” Volume of the Walpole Society 24 (1935–1936): 114.

2. C. F. Bell and Rachel Poole, “English Seventeenth-Century Portrait Drawings in Oxford Collections, Part II,” Volume of the Walpole Society 14 (1925–1926): 73–80.

3. See Bell and Poole, “English Seventeenth-Century Portrait Drawings,” 73–80.

4. Katherine Coombs, “Thomas Forster,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9917.

5. It is possible Forster traveled to Ireland under the patronage of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormond (1855–1745). Bell and Poole note that Forster made many portraits of Butler, who lived in Dublin but also had a home in London. See Bell and Poole, “English Seventeenth-Century Portrait Drawings,” 74. While a number of Forster’s sitters can be connected with Butler and with Ireland, there is no evidence he visited that country, as noted by David Blayney Brown, “Thomas Forster,” in Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, 1996), 11:320.

6. Bell and Poole, “English Seventeenth-Century Portrait Drawings,” 73.

7. See Coombs, “Thomas Forster.”

Genealogical records have confirmed life dates for Alexander Gallaway, revealing his baptism on July 7, 1759, at St. Ninians Parish in Stirlingshire, Scotland.¹ He was born to Alexander and Janet Gallaway, and his siblings included Elizabeth, William, Jean, James, and Thomas.² Gallaway’s wife, Ann Rowand (1761–1857), was baptized in the same parish of St. Ninians.³ They married in Glasgow on June 18, 1779, and probably had seven children together.⁴

While nothing is known about Gallaway’s early artistic education, his portraits are so refined in their technique that it seems likely he received academic training. He may have studied with or under Scottish miniature painter John Bogle (1738–1804), who trained at Glasgow’s Foulis Academy in the 1760s, based on their similar approach to painting sitters’ faces.⁵ Some of Bogle’s miniatures also include comparable architectural backgrounds. The earliest evidence of Gallaway’s career in the arts is in 1793, when he published an advertisement in the Glasgow Courier for his drawing academy with the landscape artist Hugh W. Williams (1773–1829).⁶ The Nelson-Atkins owns one of the earliest dated examples of Gallaway’s work in miniature, signaling a departure from his drawing school to painting commissions full-time.⁷

Gallaway probably remained in Glasgow until 1804, at which point he and his family moved to Edinburgh. He lived at 6 St. James’s Square, Edinburgh, from 1805 to 1811, overlapping with fellow miniaturist Nathaniel Plimer (English, 1750–1822), who lived a few doors down from 1806 to 1812.⁸ They may have exchanged artistic ideas or practices, since they share a similar painterly technique. While in Edinburgh, Gallaway exhibited at the city’s Society of Artists of Great Britain from 1808 to 1814.⁹ Gallaway moved back to Glasgow around 1815, according to a local directory that lists his occupation as “portrait & miniature painter.”¹⁰ His last known portrait miniature dates to 1817.¹¹ There are no known records of Gallaway’s art or life after this time.

Notes

1. Elizabeth (baptized 1754), William (born 1755), Jean (1757–1818), James (baptized 1762), and Thomas (baptized 1766). “Alexander Gallaway,” Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1564–1950, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. Thanks, also, to Frances Rouse, researcher of Gallaway, for insight into the artist’s biography; Rouse to the author, February 28, 2023, NAMA curatorial files.

2. “Elisabeth Gallaway,” baptized on January 25, 1754; “William Gallaway,” born on October 24 and baptized October 28, 1755; “Jean Gallaway,” born October 10 and baptized October 14, 1757; “James Gallaway,” baptized on August 8, 1762; and “Thomas Gallaway,” baptized on February 2, 1766, all according to Scotland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1564–1950, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. Jean was buried on February 3, 1818; Edinburgh Burial Registers, ref. BR0001, City of Edinburgh Archives.

3. Ann Rowand was baptized on August 10, 1761, at St. Ninians, Stirlingshire, by her parents Andrew Rowand and Mary Campbell; Scotland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1564–1950, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. Gallaway painted Colonel John Campbell, Ann Rowand’s cousin; see Daphne Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 217.

4. Alexander (1781–after 1851), Mary Wallace Brown (1783–1816?), Jean Pollock or Betson (1786–1826), Andrew (1788–after 1836), Janet Ann Edington (b. 1797), Ann (1800–1863), and Catherine Hadaway (1803–1867). According to “Osborne/Bauernfeind Family Tree,” on Ancestrylibrary.com. Mary Gallaway married William Wallace Brown on March 26, 1804, in Glasgow; Scotland, Select Marriages, 1561–1910. See also her possible burial record for May 22, 1816, Edinburgh Burial Registers, ref. BR0001, City of Edinburgh Archives. “Andrew Gallaway,” born on June 17, 1788; Scotland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1564–1950. Andrew’s last residence date was on November 28, 1836, in St. Ninians, Stirlingshire: Male Heads of Families 1834–1842, ref. CH2/337/11, https://www.oldscottish.com/st-ninians.html#HoFs; Catherine Hadaway passed on April 18, 1867; Statutory Deaths, ref. 644/07/0327, according to “Ellis Family Tree,” Ancestrylibrary.com.

5. Stephen Lloyd, Portrait Miniatures from the National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2004), 48.

6. The advertisement ran on February 26, 1793; see Holger Hoock, “Modelling Academies for the British School,” in The King’s Artists: The Royal Academy and the Politics of British Culture 1760–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 105n112. Gallaway and Williams published another advertisement on May 31 and June 3, 1794. It stated, “Miniature Painting / By Mr. Gallaway, and / Views of Any Particular Place, / Taken from Nature, / By Mr. Williams. / Specimens to be seen at the Academy.” Quoted in Foskett, Miniatures, 217.

7. A portrait of a woman sold at Bonhams “The Albion Collection of Fine Portrait Miniatures,” April 22, 2004, lot 143, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11185/lot/143. While it is signed and dated “AG / 1794,” it does not align with the style of Gallaway’s signature and numbering.

8. Helen Smailes and Peter Black, Andrew Geddes, 1783–1844 (Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 2001), 24. Plimer lived at 1 St. James’s Square.

9. Stephen Lloyd and Kim Sloan, The Intimate Portrait: Drawings, Miniatures and Pastels from Ramsay to Lawrence (Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 2008), 68.

10. “Gallaway, A. portrait and miniature painter, Union pl.,” The Glasgow Directory (Glasgow: W. Lang, 1816), 61, https://digital.nls.uk/directories/browse/archive/90712736. Gallaway lived on 32 Hutcheson Street in 1815 before moving to Union Place in 1816. The two addresses were less than half a mile away from each other.

11. See the exceptional portrait by Gallaway, A Gentleman, 1816, watercolor on ivory, 2 3/8 in. (6 cm) high, sold at Bonhams “Fine Portrait Miniatures,” May 23, 2007, lot 101, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/15263/lot/101. A rectangular portrait of a woman holding a book, signed and dated 1817, sold at Christie’s, London, October 7, 1980, lot 279, according to Lloyd and Sloan, The Intimate Portrait, 68. Frances Rouse’s research points to a death date for Gallaway of 1835, but this has not yet been substantiated. According to Rouse, “Alexander Gallaway, A Portrait in Miniatures: An Introduction to the Scottish Artist,” (F. Rouse, 2014), digitized on StudyLib, https://studylib.net/doc/7108003/edited-outline-of-the-situation-so-far.

William Grimaldi was born on August 26, 1751, the fourth but eldest surviving son of Alexander Grimaldi, 7th Marquess Grimaldi and his second wife, Esther (née Barton).¹ He inherited talent and a strong artistic heritage from his father, a painter,² and grandfather, the artist Alessandro Maria Grimaldi (1659–1732). In 1764, the young Grimaldi apprenticed with his uncle, the etcher and watercolor miniaturist Thomas Worlidge (1700–1766), who had trained under Alessandro.³ When Worlidge died in 1766, Grimaldi continued his training under the guardianship of his aunt.⁴

While the origins of Grimaldi’s training in enamels remain unknown,⁵ we know he refined his skills by copying works of prominent painters, including John Hoppner (1758–1810), William Beechey (1753–1839), and Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792).⁶ It is likely that Reynolds played a pivotal role in connecting Grimaldi with royal patrons, including the Prince of Wales, later King George IV, and Frederick, the Duke of York.⁷

Throughout his life, Grimaldi exhibited his miniatures consistently, beginning at the Free Society of Artists (1768–70), then the Society of Artists of Great Britain (1772), and finally the Royal Academy of the Arts (1786–1830).⁸ He erroneously signed “Grimaldi A.R.” to indicate the Académie Royale in Paris, of which he was not a member, exemplified in Portrait of a Woman. He also traveled extensively, accompanying his father to Paris, where they lived from 1777 to 1783.⁹ After Grimaldi returned to England, he married Frances Barker on November 13, 1783.¹⁰ They had four children, including Louisa Frances (1785–1873), who later pursued portrait miniature painting.¹¹

Upon his father’s death in 1800, Grimaldi inherited the title of 8th Marquess but chose not to use it.¹² He died at the age of seventy-eight at his home in Chelsea, London, on May 27, 1830.¹³ A catalogue of his completed works was published by his descendants in 1873, estimating that Grimaldi executed more than one thousand miniatures during his lifetime.¹⁴

Notes

1. The artist is sometimes referred to at the Royal Academy as William de Grimaldi, or di Grimaldi. He dropped the prefix by 1790. See “Index,” The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London: T. Cadell, 1786), 18: unpaginated; Vanessa Remington, “Grimaldi, William, Marquess Grimaldi in the Genoese Nobility,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/11633.

2. According to his marriage license, “Grimaldi Alex: Painter of Shore / ditch [illeg.] & Esther Barton (spinster) [illeg.],” Marriage and Baptism Registers, 1667–1754, piece 217 (1744 Jun–1746), National Archives, Kew.

3. Alessandro Maria Grimaldi trained Worlidge, who later married his daughter, Arabella Grimaldi. “Grimaldi, William, Marquess Grimaldi in the Genoese Nobility,” Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sidney Lee (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1900), 63:28. For an example of his work, see Thomas Worlidge, Samuel Foote, ca. 1725–1765, watercolor on ivory, 2 3/8 x 2 in. (6 x 5.2 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.9-1942, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070281/samuel-foote-portrait-miniature-thomas-worlidge.

4. Arturi Phillips, “William Grimaldi (1751–1830),” A Private Portrait Miniature Collection (blog), June 12, 2017, https://portraitminiature.blogspot.com/2017/06/william-grimaldi-1751-1830.html.

5. Grimaldi’s enamel works are scarce; he only painted thirty-eight of them. Many of these enamels suffered flaws during the firing process, leading to cracks that necessitated retouching with watercolors. Alexander Beaufort Grimaldi, A Catalogue, Chronological and Descriptive of Paintings, Drawings, and Engravings, by and after William Grimaldi, R.A., Paris (London: Privately printed, 1873).

6. William Grimaldi, after John Hoppner, Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, early 19th century, watercolor and bodycolor on ivory, 4 7/8 x 3 3/4 in. (12.4 x 9.5 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 6296, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw00453; William Grimaldi, after Sir William Beechey, Queen Charlotte (1744–1818), 1801, watercolor on card, 14.5 x 12.1 cm, Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 404301, https://www.rct.uk/collection/420657/queen-charlotte-1744-1818; William Grimaldi, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lady Hester Stanhope (1776–1839), 5 1/8 in. (13 cm) high, sold at Bonhams, London, “Portrait Miniatures & Silhouettes,” March 4, 2003, lot 188, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/10077/lot/188.

7. Grimaldi was officially appointed miniature painter to the Duke of York in 1790, the Duchess of York in 1791, and enamel painter to the Prince of Wales in 1804. Derek Winterbottom, The Grand Old Duke of York, digital edition (South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books, 2016), appendix. See William Grimaldi, Prince William Frederick, later Duke of Gloucester, ivory, oval 4 1/8 in. (10.5 cm), sold at Christie’s, London, “A Life’s Devotion: The Collection of the Late Mrs. T. S. Eliot,” November 20, 2013, lot 151, https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-5733195.

8. He exhibited in 1786–1793, 1795–1796, 1798–1812, 1815–1824, and 1830, according to Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work (London: Henry Graves and George Bell and Sons, 1905), 326–27. See also Julie Aronson and Marjorie E. Wieseman, Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 200.

9. Phillips, “William Grimaldi (1751–1830).”

10. Frances Barker (1750–1813); “William Grimaldi” marriage license, England, Select Marriages, 1538–1973, FHL film no. 1736877, ref. Bk1/DCB/BT1/152/726, digitized on ancestrylibrary.com.

11. Louisa Frances, William (1786–1835), Henry (1792–1806), and Stacey (1790–1863), who succeeded to the title of Marquess Grimaldi, a title that his older brother William did not use. Louisa Frances married John Edmeads; see Remington, “Grimaldi, William.” For an example of Louisa’s work, see Mary Ann Grimaldi, after Louisa Edmeads, William Grimaldi, 1832, 9 1/8 x 12 1/2 in. (23.2 x 31.8 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 3114, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02758. Grimaldi may have also trained Elizabeth Dawe; see G. C. Williamson, Catalogue of the Collection of Miniatures: The Property of J. Pierpont Morgan (London: Chiswick Press, 1906), 2:72, no. 306.

12. Sylvanus Urban, “Obituary,” The Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1830, 567.

13. General Register Office: Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths Surrendered to the Non-Parochial Registers Commissions of 1837 and 1857, class RG 4, piece 3998, National Archives, Kew; Urban, “Obituary,” 567.

14. Grimaldi, A Catalogue, 3.

Gustavus Hamilton was born in County Meath in Ireland, approximately thirty miles northwest of Dublin, in or about 1739. He was one of the youngest children of the Reverend Gustavus Hamilton, vicar of Errigal and rector of Gallon, and his wife, Jane Cathcart. He received instruction in art from Robert West (active 1740–1770) in the Dublin drawing school in George’s Lane, where talented but impoverished students had their fees paid by the Royal Dublin Society in an attempt to encourage the advancement of Irish fine art.¹ Hamilton won several prizes for drawing in 1755 and 1756 and set up a fashionable miniature-painting practice in central Dublin, where he spent his entire career.² Hamilton regularly submitted miniatures to the Society of Artists in Ireland (newly formed in 1764) from 1765 to 1773 and died shortly thereafter, on December 16, 1775, aged thirty-six. Hamilton’s miniatures present sitters who often appear stiffly posed, with enlarged black pupils and brown eyelashes on the upper register. They are generally small in scale, with many intended for lockets or bracelets, a style that was made fashionable by George III’s 1761 wedding gift to Queen Charlotte. Hamilton generally signed his miniatures “G. Ham.,” “G Ham^tn,” or “G.H.,” with a date.

Notes

1. Walter G. Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists (Dublin and London: Maunsel & Co: 1913), 1:426–27.

2. Paul Caffrey, John Comerford and the Portrait Miniature in Ireland c. 1620–1850 (Kilkenny: Kilkenny Archaeological Society, 1999), 23.

While Solomon Alexander Hart is better known as a history painter and engraver, portrait miniatures formed a small but significant aspect of his oeuvre. In fact, the first work he exhibited at the Royal Academy of the Arts in 1826 was a miniature of his father, the engraver and Hebrew teacher Samuel Hart (active 1785–1830), who studied miniature painting under Abraham Daniel (d. 1806).¹ Solomon’s father wanted to him to continue his legacy as an engraver, but the cost of an apprenticeship was prohibitive.²

The support of the painter James Northcote (1746–1831), however, led to the younger Hart’s admission to the Royal Academy Schools in 1823. During that time, Hart supported himself and his father by coloring theatrical prints and painting miniature copies of old master paintings on ivory, endeavors that may have led to his 1827 commission to paint a miniature of the actor Edmund Kean.³ Three years later, Hart’s ambitious submission to the Society of British Artists annual exhibition, Interior of a Polish Synagogue at the Moment when the Manuscript of the Law is Elevated, was met with acclaim and put Hart on track to be a noted engraver and painter of historical scenes.⁴

In 1840, Hart was elected a member of the Royal Academy, becoming the first Jewish academician. By the mid-1850s he was a respected lecturer at the academy, and he became its librarian in 1864, a post he maintained until his death in London on June 11, 1881.⁵ His obituary eulogized his devotion to the academy and its books, noting that he “found chaos and left a library.”⁶

Notes

1. Daphne Foskett, Collecting Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1979), 248.

2. Helen Valentine, “Hart, Solomon Alexander,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/12489.

3. Evelyn Friedlander and Helen P. Fry, The Jews of Devon and Cornwall (Bristol, UK: Redcliffe Press, 2000), 43.

4. Solomon Alexander Hart, Interior of a Polish Synagogue at the Moment when the Manuscript of the Law is Elevated, 1829–1830, oil on canvas, 32 x 24 1/2 in. (81.3 x 67.3 cm), Tate Britain, London, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hart-interior-of-a-polish-synagogue-at-the-moment-when-the-manuscript-of-the-law-is-n00424.

5. Valentine, “Hart, Solomon Alexander.”

6. “Mr. S. A. Hart, R.A.,” Athenaeum (June 18, 1881): 821.

Thomas Heaphy was born in London on December 29, 1775, the son of John Gerrard Heaphy and Katharine Gerard.¹ John Heaphy apprenticed his son to a dyer in the silk industry and then to the engraver John R. M. Meadows.² Heaphy was more interested in painting, and he joined John Boyne’s drawing class in Bloomsbury.³ When his apprenticeship with Meadows ended in 1796, Heaphy joined the Royal Academy Schools.⁴ Heaphy married Mary Stevenson on November 27, 1799, and together they had six children: Thomas Frank, John, Charles, Mary Ann Musgrave, Ellen Heaphy, and Elizabeth Murray.⁵ Heaphy’s wife died in 1820, and Heaphy later married Harriet Jane Mason.⁶

Heaphy first exhibited a self-portrait in watercolor at the Royal Academy in 1797.⁷ In 1802, he exhibited a portrait of the Russian Ambassador Count Woronzow, which brought him widespread recognition.⁸ This led to his appointment as portrait painter to the Princess of Wales the following year.⁹ During his appointment, he painted several other portraits of society members, which expanded his patron base to Scotland.¹⁰ Heaphy joined the Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1807, where he regularly exhibited scenes of working-class life.¹¹

In 1812, Heaphy traveled to Spain to paint British Army officers during the Peninsular War, serving as staff artist to Sir Arthur Wellesley, later 1st Duke of Wellington.¹² After returning, he began one of his most important paintings, a large portrait commissioned by George III of Wellesley with his general staff.¹³ Heaphy was never paid, and he tried for six years to get an engraving of the image, eventually publishing the engraving himself.¹⁴ Heaphy also became a leading figure in the Society of British Artists, a rival to the Royal Academy, and the society appointed him as its first president in 1824.¹⁵

Heaphy is best known for his watercolor portraits on paper, with fewer known miniatures on ivory. He charged about one guinea per hour for lessons in painting miniatures, and between ten and fifty guineas for a commissioned miniature.¹⁶ Heaphy’s works are typically naturalistic, using a muted color palette.¹⁷ He often inscribed his name and address on the backing cards of miniatures.¹⁸

Heaphy took a break from painting in the 1820s and focused on developing land in the St. John’s Wood district of London, becoming a speculator for London’s first deliberately planned suburb.¹⁹ In 1831, he went to Italy for a year to paint copies of Old Masters, where he befriended the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott.²⁰ After returning to England, Heaphy painted only occasionally.²¹ He died at his home on St. John’s Wood Road on October 23, 1835, at the age of fifty-nine, survived by his second wife, Harriet Jane.²² An obituary published in The Gentleman’s Magazine memorialized Heaphy’s protean talents as “by no means exclusively confined to art; he was equally at home if quarrying for stone, or constructing a pleasure-boat, or building a house, or devising an improved axle, or laying down a railway.”²³

Notes

1. Daphne Foskett, “Thomas Heaphy,” A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), 1:320; Henry Colin Gray Matthew and Brian Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 147. Heaphy’s mother’s name is sometimes spelled Katherine Gerrard.

2. Iain Sharp, Heaphy: Explorer, Artist, Settler (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008), 14.

3. “Thomas Heaphy,” Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (London: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1891), 25:332; William Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835): First President of the Society of British Artists (London: The Royal Society of British Artists’ Art Club Publications, 1933), 11.

4. Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835), 12.

5. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P69/BOT1/A/01/MS 3857/2, London Metropolitan Archives; Matthew and Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” 147; Sharp, Heaphy, 11–12, 21–22; Leo Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe: In the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964), 1:340. Mary Stevenson was the sister of one of Heaphy’s classmates at Simpson’s art school. Thomas Frank (1813–1873), Mary Ann (1800–1847), and Elizabeth (1815–1882) followed in their father’s footsteps and excelled in miniature painting. Mary Ann exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1821 to 1847. Elizabeth exhibited from 1834 to 1847 and was elected to the New Society of Painters in Water Colours. Charles (1820–1881) was the only child to enter the Royal Academy Schools. As well as being the first New Zealander to be awarded the Victoria Cross, Charles Heaphy also recorded in watercolor paintings the early days of European settlement in New Zealand. For more information, see Charles Heaphy, Narrative of a Residence in Various Parts of New Zealand (London: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1842).

6. Matthew and Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” 147; José Luis García Pérez, Elizabeth Murray (Las Palmas, Gran Canaria: Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, 1980), 606; Sharp, Heaphy, 21. Thomas and Harriet Jane married in 1833 and had two sons together, William and Henry.

7. Joshua James Foster, “Thomas Heaphy,” A Dictionary of Painters of Miniatures (1525–1850) (London: Philip Allan & Co., 1926), 143; The Exhibition of the Royal Academy 29 (1797): 16, 35; Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835), 23.

8. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy 34 (1802): 28.

9. Schidlof, Miniature in Europe, 1:340.

10. Among them were the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch; see Paul Boucher et al., A Passion for Opera: The Duchess and the Georgian Stage, exh. cat. (Northamptonshire: Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust, 2019), 23.

11. Matthew and Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” 147; Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835), 12–13. Heaphy resigned from the Society in 1812.

12. Foskett, “Thomas Heaphy,” 320.

13. The National Portrait Gallery lists the portrait as painted in oils, while Matthew and Harrison describe the work as a large watercolor. Matthew and Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” 147; National Portrait Gallery, “Peninsular and Waterloo officers: Watercolour Drawings by Thomas Heaphy, 1813–14: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington,” https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw06655.

14. Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835), 21–22, 28, 31–33. Many of the portrait studies are located at the National Portrait Gallery, London, but the location of the original painting is unknown. George III commissioned the work for 1,400 guineas and died before the payment was made. Heaphy wrote to the Duke of Wellington for money, but he claimed ignorance on the matter. The picture, therefore, remained with Heaphy until he died, at which point his widow sold it at auction.

15. Matthew and Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” 147; “Society of British Artists,” The Times (London), April 19, 1824; Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835), 23, 26. The Society held its first exhibition on April 14, 1824, and received critical acclaim for its art submissions, room designs, and lighting. Heaphy submitted ten works for the first exhibition and held the position of president for one year before resigning.

16. Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835), 19. These terms were issued by Heaphy in 1811.

17. Matthew and Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” 147.

18. Foskett, “Thomas Heaphy,” 320. For a similar inscription, see Thomas Heaphy, Portrait Miniature of a Lady, 1803, watercolor on ivory, oval, 3 x 2 1/4 in. (7.6 x 5.7 cm), London, Victoria and Albert Museum, P.150-1929, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1069675/portrait-miniature-of-a-lady-portrait-miniature-thomas-heaphy/.

19. This is present-day Regent’s Park. Matthew and Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” 147; Sharp, Heaphy, 12.

20. Daniel Grader, Life of Sir Walter Scott by John Macrone (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 47, 119, 143–48; Foskett, “Thomas Heaphy,” 320; Trevor Royle, The Mainstream Companion to Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Random House, 2012). Heaphy also brought two of his children to Italy, Thomas Frank and Elizabeth Heaphy. John Macrone provides transcriptions of Heaphy’s written anecdotes. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) was a longtime friend of the Cranstoun family and the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. Heaphy painted Helen D’Arcy Cranstoun, wife of Professor Dugald Stewart, in 1802 and their son in 1805. Scott was one of Stewart’s pupils. Curiously, Scott’s 1805 poem, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” tells the story of a feud between two Border Clans, or families originating in the Anglo-Scottish Border region, the Buccleuchs and the Cranstouns.

21. Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835), 27.

22. Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, series PROB 11, class PROB 11, piece 1854, National Archives, Kew. The sale is described in Whitley’s book on Heaphy: “Six months after Heaphy’s death, on May 4th, 1836, all his pictures, finished and unfinished, drawings, prints and studio properties, were sold by auction at Foster’s, in Pall Mall”; Whitley, Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835), 27. See also Foskett, “Thomas Heaphy,” 320; Matthew and Harrison, “Thomas Heaphy,” 147; and Schidlof, Miniature in Europe, 1:340.

23. Edward Cave, “Obituary: Thomas Heaphy, Esq.,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 4 (December 1835): 661.

Nicholas Hilliard was born in Exeter in about 1547 to a prominent family of goldsmiths—a rather unassuming beginning for an artist whose painted portrait miniatures would come to epitomize English art.¹ In 1562, Hilliard was apprenticed to Robert Brandon, jeweler to Queen Elizabeth I. Brandon played a significant role in Hilliard’s later career as a miniaturist. In 1569, Hilliard became a freeman of the Goldsmiths’ Company.² By 1571, Hilliard had begun painting miniatures in earnest. That year, he produced his first limnings of Elizabeth I.³

Despite writing an extensive treatise on limning later in his career, Hilliard did not mention who trained him, though he repeatedly asserted the importance of copying from other masters, such as Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528) and Hans Holbein (German/Swiss, 1497/8–1543).⁴ Hilliard may have been largely self-taught, with some training by another court miniaturist like Levina Teerlinc (d. 1576).⁵ Beyond the legacy of Hilliard’s exquisite body of work, his treatise has had a longstanding impact on the art of miniature painting, elevating its pursuit from a form of manual labor to a higher calling.⁶

In 1576, Hilliard married Alice Brandon, the daughter of his former master. The newlyweds sailed to France in search of commissions.⁷ On their return to London, Elizabeth’s patronage continued.⁸ She appointed Hilliard a member of the royal household and granted him an annuity of forty pounds as her “goldsmith and our limner.”⁹

Notwithstanding this support, the later years of Hilliard’s career were mired in financial difficulties.¹⁰ After Elizabeth’s death, her successor James I continued Hilliard’s appointment as royal limner, but the artist’s work fell out of fashion. After a period of ill health, Hilliard died and was buried on January 7, 1619. He left an estate that was notably modest relative to his astronomical success and continued legacy as a multi-hyphenate limner, goldsmith, jeweler, calligrapher, and designer who inspired generations of portrait miniaturists.

Notes

1. Goldsmithing ran on both sides of Hilliard’s family. His father was an Exeter-based goldsmith, Richard Hilliard (d. 1594), who married Laurence Wall, the daughter of John Wall, Richard’s former master. Elizabeth Goldring, Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 20.

2. Hilliard’s goldsmithing extended to the making of cases for his miniatures. The Victoria and Albert Museum has a rare surviving example: Nicholas Hilliard, The Drake Jewel, 1580–1590, watercolor on vellum with enameled gold, a sardonyx cameo, pearls, and table-cut rubies and diamonds, 2 3/4 x 4 3/5 in. (7 x 11.7 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O11103/the-drake-jewel-pendant-hilliard-nicholas.

3. This first miniature is now lost. Hilliard’s first extant miniature of the queen dates to the following year: Nicholas Hilliard, Queen Elizabeth I, 1572, watercolor on vellum, 2 x 1 7/8 in. (5.1 x 4.8 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02073/Queen-Elizabeth-I. See Goldring, Nicholas Hilliard, 106–9.

4. Dürer also trained as a goldsmith. Hilliard’s treatise was not published until 1981. Despite the long delay in publication, Goldring writes that “it was cited liberally by—and clearly was well-known to—numerous seventeenth-century writers on art,” as it circulated in manuscript form; Goldring, Nicholas Hilliard, 16. See Nicholas Hilliard, A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning, ed. R. K. R. Thornton and T. G. S. Cain (Ashington: Mid Northumberland Arts Group, 1981).

5. Goldring refutes the common argument—which Hilliard himself promulgated—that he was “wholly self-taught, an autodidactic genius”; while he must have had some training, his interaction with Teerlinc is without concrete evidence. Goldring, Nicholas Hilliard, 74–77. See also Graham Reynolds’s assertion that Hilliard was “largely self-taught”; Graham Reynolds, “Hilliard family [Hillyarde],” Grove Dictionary of Art (February 8, 2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T038153.

6. Hilliard, Treatise, 75. For Hilliard, the lifestyle of a limner was a highly regimented one, almost monastic in its simplicity and devotion. His dictates ranged from requiring scrupulous cleanliness and moderation in diet and sleep to banning “violent exercise in sports.” Such austerity, however, did not extend to the limner’s materials, which Hilliard specified should be the finest and most precious available.

7. Mary Edmond theorized convincingly that Elizabeth was also keen for Hilliard to send her portraits of her latest marital prospect, François, duc d’Alençon; Mary Edmond, Hilliard and Oliver: The Lives and Works of Two Great Miniaturists (London: Robert Hale, 1983), 61.

8. Karen Hearn, Nicholas Hilliard (London: Unicorn, 2005), 14.

9. Mary Edmond, “Hilliard, Nicholas (1547?–1619), miniature painter,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13320.

10. Hilliard, whose desire to present himself as a gentleman was not without cost, was rather whimsical in his expenditures. In the 1570s, he speculated disastrously in a failed Scottish gold mining scheme. He is thought to have charged about three pounds for an unframed miniature, but payments from the Crown were not as regular as Hilliard would have liked. Hearn, Nicholas Hilliard, 14–15.

William Armfield Hobday was born in Birmingham, the eldest son of a wealthy local spoon manufacturer named Samuel Hobday (1746–1816).¹ He showed a natural talent for drawing at an early age and was sent to London to study with the engraver William Barney (1754–after 1798). Hobday spent six years there, supplementing his formal study with the Royal Academy of the Arts schools, where he exhibited his miniatures and watercolor portraits at its annual exhibitions starting in 1794.

Despite establishing a successful clientele, Hobday was prone to excessive habits and lived recklessly, primarily through his father’s largesse. In 1804, he left London for Bristol, where he remained for fourteen years. In 1817, he returned to London and took a large house in a fashionable part of town, hoping to attract a wealthy clientele. Although he enjoyed some success, he made poor financial decisions, and in 1820 he declared bankruptcy.²

Hobday married Elizabeth Ivory around 1800, and they had several children, including George Armfield Smith (1808–1893), who became a prominent animal painter. Upon Ivory’s death in 1829, he married Maria Pearce Ustonson from Exeter shortly thereafter, in 1830. The union produced a son,³ but unfortunately Hobday died less than a year later on February 17, 1831, of tuberculosis.

Notes

1. Hobday was the eldest of four sons; see M. Arnold, “Memoir of William Armfield Hobday,” Arnold’s Magazine of the Fine Arts, and Journal of Literature and Science 2, no. 11 (1831): 384.

2. Hobday moved to the exclusive neighborhood of Pall Mall in 1821 and took a large house with a gallery attached, where he hoped to mount exhibitions of works for sale. It did not prove successful, and this in combination with a failed speculative venture on a large panoramic exhibition left him financially destitute. See Arnold, “Memoir of William Armfield Hobday,” 388–89.

3. Alfred Hobday Wright (1824–1884), who became a lithographer in Clerkenwell, London. See Stuart Hobday, “A Brush with History,” The Biochemical Society 29, no. 3 (June 2007): 44.

Horace Hone was born on February 11, 1754, in London, to portrait and miniature painter Nathaniel Hone (Irish, 1718–1784) and Mary Earle (d. 1791) (Fig. 1).¹ Nathaniel, one of the founding members of the Royal Academy of the Arts (RA), presumably trained his sons, Horace and John Camillus Hone (1758–1836), as they both pursued careers in miniature painting.² Horace and John were also frequent models for Nathaniel’s paintings, including a portrait of Horace sketching a bust.³

Horace Hone married Sophia Ursula Dapper (d. 1837) on October 12, 1779.⁴ Their daughter, Mary Sophia Matilde, was born shortly thereafter, on July 19, 1780.⁵ Hone exhibited at the RA from 1772 to 1782, after which he moved his family to his father’s hometown of Dublin, Ireland.⁶ They may have lived in the house on Cork Street that his father bequeathed to him in 1784.⁷ Hone resumed exhibiting at the RA in 1795, the same year he was appointed miniature painter to the Prince of Wales, later King George IV, and he continued to exhibit there until 1822.⁸

Hone’s friendship with the painter and diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) provides additional insight. Writing in 1804, Farington described Hone’s move from Dublin back to London with a stop in Bath in between: “Mrs. Hone & Miss Hone called. They are come from Bath & have taken lodgings in Piccadilly & Hone is to follow them next week, being determined to try what London will do as the state of Dublin is now so dangerous.”⁹ After the Acts of Union came into force in 1801, prices in Ireland increased, and Hone’s practice declined.

Farington also documented Hone’s apparent struggle with his mental health, writing on August 6, 1810: “Hone called, & spoke of having been in a very nervous, Hysterical state, the effect of anxiety of mind, but had been relieved by medicines prescribed by Doctor Reynolds who He had known 35 years.”¹⁰ In addition to a nervous constitution, Hone also suffered from symptoms of gout, which likely contributed to his death at the age of seventy-one.¹¹ He was buried on May 28, 1825, at St. George’s in Hanover Square, Westminster.¹²

Notes

1. Mary, or Molly’s, maiden name was sometimes spelled Earl; see Brendan Rooney, “Hone, Nathaniel (1718–1784),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13658. Hone is referred to as Nathaniel Hone the Elder to differentiate him from his great grandnephew, Nathaniel Hone the Younger (1831–1917). We know Horace’s birthdate because of records from the Royal Academy Schools. Upon his entrance on October 19, 1770, he recorded his age as “17 11th Febry next.” See Sidney C. Hutchison, “The Royal Academy Schools, 1768–1830,” Volume of the Walpole Society 38 (1960–62), 136.

2. John’s year of birth is typically listed as 1759, but baptismal records show that while he was baptized on January 18, 1759, he was actually born on December 31, 1758. Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STJ/PR/1/4, City of Westminster Archives Centre.

3. Nathaniel Hone the Elder, Portrait of a Boy (Horace Hone), Sketching, ca. 1766, oil on canvas, 50 3/8 x 41 5/16 in. (128 x 105 cm), National Gallery of Ireland, NGI.1297, http://onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/2672.

4. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P89/MRY1/168, London Metropolitan Archives. Dapper died in 1837.

5. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P90/PRC/002, London Metropolitan Archives.

6. Paul Caffrey, “Hone, Horace,” Dictionary of Irish Biography (October 2009), https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.004082.v1. Caffrey states that Hone received an invitation from the Countess Temple when her husband was appointed viceroy in 1782. He cites Anthony Pasquin, Memoirs of the Royal Academicians; Being an Attempt to Improve the National Taste (London: Symonds, M’Queen, and Bellamy, 1796), 31, but this has not been confirmed.

7. “I bequeath to Horace Hone my second son the house which I possess in Cook Street Dublin,” quoted in “Will of Nathaniel Hone of Marylebone, Middlesex,” no. 6240957, PROB 11/1121/425, National Archives, Kew.

8. Rooney, “Hone, Nathaniel.” He became an associate member in 1779. Other noteworthy clientele include the actress Sarah Siddons, the 1st Earl of Charlemont, the Countess of Lanesborough, and the 4th Duke of Rutland, among others. Caffrey, “Hone, Horace.”

9. Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, ed. James Greig (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926), 2:191. The entry continues, “He [James Gandon, architect] has purchased a House at Larcan 5 miles from Dublin where He does not dare to live on acct. of the bad disposition of the Irish people. He proposes to come to England.” Farington wrote on February 14, 1804, “The price of living in Ireland is now equeal [sic] to that of England” (191). He also wrote on March 1, 1804, “Horace Hone came from Bath on Tuesday” (196).

10. Farington, The Farington Diary, 100–1. John Cox Dillman (JCD) Engleheart (1784–1862) was another miniaturist who struggled with severe anxiety, https://www.nelson-atkins.org/starr4/biographies/#section-john-cox-dillman-engleheart-english-1784-1862. Interestingly, both Horace Hone and JCD Engleheart grew up in the shadows of their more well-known relatives.

11. James Gandon, The Life of James Gandon, Esq, ed. Thomas Mulvany (Dublin: Hodges and Smith, 1846), 140–41.

12. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. DL/T/089/020, London Metropolitan Archives.

Nathaniel Hone is remembered as being one of the founding members of the Royal Academy of the Arts (RA)¹ and for courting controversy with its president Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), when Hone submitted a painting satirizing him and fellow academician Angelica Kauffman (Swiss, 1741–1807) in 1775.² Descended from a merchant family with ties to goldsmithing, Hone was born on April 24, 1718, in Dublin, the eldest son of Nathaniel Hone (1674–1743)³ and Rebecka Brindley (Fig. 1).⁴

Hone worked in multiple mediums; his oeuvre included oil, pastel, watercolor and enamel portrait miniatures, and engraving.⁵ While it remains unclear how he received his training in the arts, Hone may have studied with the pastelist Robert West (Irish, d. 1770), in Dublin, who founded a drawing school there in the late 1730s.⁶ In London, Hone possibly received training in enamel from Swedish enamellist George Michael Moser (1706–1783) or German enamellist Christian Friedrich Zincke (ca. 1684–1767).⁷

Hone married Mary Earle (1720–1769) on October 8, 1742, in York, England.⁸ Earle was, supposedly, the illegitimate daughter of John Campbell, the 4th Duke of Argyll (ca. 1693–1770) and therefore was endowed with a small fortune.⁹ They settled in St. James’s Place, London, shortly after their marriage and had at least ten children, including the miniaturist Horace Hone (1754–1825).¹⁰ The elder Hone remarried a widow, Ann Jones, after Mary’s death in 1769.¹¹

Hone’s younger brother Samuel (1726–1754) was a member of Florence’s Accademia del Disegno in 1752 and arranged for Nathaniel’s election to this prestigious academy in absentia.¹² Hone also exhibited at the Society of Artists of Great Britain from 1760 to 1768 before defecting to join the RA, where he was extremely prolific.¹³

Hone was known to court attention, whether through controversy or by shaping his image through a plethora of self-portraits, many of which he exhibited in a self-organized exhibition, the first of its kind, in 1775.¹⁴ Hone’s interest in defining his image continued after his death on August 14, 1784, in a posthumous public sale of his works that he mandated as part of his will.¹⁵

Notes

1. S. C. Hutchison, “The Royal Academy Schools, 1768–1830,” Volume of the Walpole Society 38 (1960–1962): 136.

2. The painting in question is The Conjurer (1775; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), which was seen to attack Reynolds and his penchant for “borrowing” motifs from the Old Masters. An early version included a nude caricature of Kauffman, which hinted not only at the age difference between her and Reynolds but also their rumored affair. See Angela Rosenthal, Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 226–27.

3. Nicola Figgis, “Nathaniel Hone,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009, https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.004084.v1; Brendan Rooney, “Hone, Nathaniel (1718–1784),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13658. Nathaniel probably had three younger brothers: Joseph (1720–1799), Samuel (1726–1754), and Brindley (1734–1812). The family’s life dates were confirmed by three family trees digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com: “Fréamh,” “Joslin and Dick,” and “Baker–Bass.”

4. Walter G. Strickland, “Nathaniel Hone, Portrait Painter,” A Dictionary of Irish Artists (Dublin and London: Maunsel & Company, 1913), 522; J. E. Fletcher, “The Spanish Gospel of Barnabas,” Novum Testamentum 18, no. 4 (October 1976): 317. Nathaniel and Rebecka married on October 17, 1711, in Dublin, Ireland. According to Fletcher, Hone’s father was a merchant and treasurer of the Eustace Street Presbyterian Chapel.

5. It is also important to note that Hone and the Irish pastellist and enamellist Rupert Barber (Irish, 1719–1772) overlapped in Dublin and in London and that some of his early works and Hone’s are often conflated. See Representations of Swift, ed. Brian Connery (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 126.

6. Holger Hoock, The King’s Artists: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Politics of British Culture 1760–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 98. West later taught pupils at the Dublin Society school, which became the National College of Art and Design.

7. Hone, who was a subscriber to the Saint Martin’s Lane Academy in London, may have come into contact with Moser when the latter’s academy merged with the Saint Martin’s Lane Academy around 1735. Zincke was known to have had apprentices working in his studio, and he taught William Prewett (fl. 1730–1750), the earliest English-born enamellist, as well as Jeremiah Meyer (1735–1789). See Paul Caffrey, “Nathaniel Hone RA: An Enamel Self-Portrait in Vandyke Dress,” Irish Arts Review 24, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 103.

8. “Nathaniel Hone,” England, Select Marriages, FHL Film Number 1655607, ref. item 1, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com.

9. Neil Jeffares, “Hone, Nathaniel,” Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800 (London, 2006), online edition, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/HONE.pdf. Mary is sometimes referred to as “Molly,” and her last name is also spelled Earl.

10. Rooney, “Hone, Nathaniel (1718–1784).” “Mary Hone,” England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, FHL film number: 990827; “Amelia Josepha Hone”, London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. DRO/140/A/03/001, London Metropolitan Archives; “Samuel Augustus Hone” England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, FHL film number: 580904, 508905; “Apelles Earl Hone” England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, FHL film number: 845241; “Floretta Augusta Hone” England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, FHL film number: 845241; “Juliana Veneranda Rebekah Hone” England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, FHL film number: 918606; “Lydia Dorothea Catharina Hone,” England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, FHL film number: 918606, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. See, also, “Joslin and Dick Family Tree,” digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. Their children included Mary Metcalfe (1743–1825), Amelia Josepha Rigg (1747/48–1795), Nathaniel (1750–1800), Horace, and John Camillus Hone (1758–1836). His other children, who did not survive into adulthood, include Samuel Augustus (1748–1751), Appelles Earl (1750–1754), Floretta Augusta (1751–1753), Juliana Veneranda Rebekah (1755–1759), and Lydia Dorothea Catharina Hone (1756–1775). For more information, see Maggie Keenan’s biography on Horace Hone, https://www.nelson-atkins.org/starr3/Georgian-Era/F58-60-78/

11. Ann Jones married her first husband, William Tinswood (d. 1767), on April 28, 1763; see London and Surrey Marriage Bonds and Allegations, ref. MS10091/109, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com; “William Tinswood,” burial record, June 27, 1767, Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STP/PR/4/5, City of Westminster Archives Centre.

12. Hone was endorsed by Ignazio Hugford (Italian, 1703–1778) while he was living and working in London. The date of Hone’s election was January 14, 1753, and on February 6, 1753, he sent Samuel five pounds in Florence. This is according to Hone’s diary, located at London’s British Library, MS 44,025. See also Michael Wynne, “Members from Great Britain and Ireland of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno 1700–1855,” Burlington Magazine 132, no. 1049 (August 1990): 535.

13. Rooney, “Hone, Nathaniel (1718–1784).” Hone was one of two Irish foundation members. Hone was highly productive during his tenure with the RA, exhibiting sixty-nine paintings in fifteen years.

14. Rooney, “Hone, Nathaniel (1718–1784).” The exhibition was held at 70 St. Martin’s Lane, London, and was accompanied by a catalogue with an introduction by the artist.

15. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. Dro/029/036, London Metropolitan Archives; “Will of Nathaniel Hone of Marylebone, Middlesex,” no. 6240957, PROB 11/1121/425, National Archives, Kew. Hone’s art collection was sold in two auctions, in February and March of 1785.

John Hoskins the Elder was one of the most successful portrait miniaturists of the seventeenth century. He enjoyed court patronage from the late 1620s, during the reigns of James I and Charles I, picking up the mantle from his artistic forbears, Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1618) and his pupil Isaac Oliver (1565–1617). Hoskins was probably born in Wells, Somerset, around 1590 to a father of the same name. Little is known about Hoskins’s early upbringing, other than that he had a sister, Barbara, whose two children, miniaturists Alexander (ca. 1609–1660) and Samuel Cooper (1608–1672), became his wards.¹ Hoskins married twice and had a son, John Hoskins the Younger (1617–1692), and daughter, Christiana (b. 1654).²

From at least 1634, Hoskins and his family lived and worked in Bedford Street, Covent Garden. By 1640, Hoskins was scheduled to receive an annuity of two hundred pounds from Charles I, “provided that he work not for any other without his Majesty’s license.”³ With the changing political and economic climate during the English Civil War (1642–1651), Hoskins never received the funds. At the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy (1661), Hoskins requested back payment of £4,150, which he never received, for twenty-one years of work since entering into the agreement.⁴ He made his will on December 30, 1662, and died on February 22, 1665, reportedly “sick and impoverished.”⁵ He is buried at St. Pauls, Covent Garden.

Hoskins’s style evolved from his early, formal portrait miniatures, from around 1615, that show a debt to the English painter William Larkin (1580–1619) as well as Hilliard and Oliver. Hoskins’s midcareer work from the 1630s registers the naturalism of court painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641). This was also a period of great success for Hoskins, who had more portrait commissions than he could handle.⁶ From this period into the 1640s and thereafter, Hoskins may have relied on studio assistants—possibly his nephews Alexander and Samuel Cooper as well as his own son, John Hoskins the Younger—to satisfy demand.⁷

Notes

1. According to many scholars, there is no record of Barbara’s or her husband’s deaths, but they clearly relinquished their parental rights. Richard Graham wrote that Samuel and his younger brother, Alexander, were “bred up under the Care and Discipline” of their uncle at a young age; see Richard Graham, “A Short Account of the Most Eminent painters, both Ancient and Modern,” in Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy, Art of Painting and the Lives of the Painters, trans. Mr. Dryden (London: W. Rogers, 1695), 338–39, cited in Emma Rutherford, “Samuel Cooper; Reconstructing a Life,” in Emma Rutherford and Bendor Grosvenor, Warts and All: The Portrait Miniatures of Samuel Cooper (ca. 1608–1672) (London: Philip Mould, 2013), 10.

2. Christiana was baptized on June 24, 1654, at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, to John and Sarah Hoskins. See Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STP/PR/1/1A, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London. I am grateful to Maggie Keenan, Starr Research Assistant I, for sharing this information. This archival source also records the birth year of John Hoskins the Younger. For further biographical information about John Hoskins the Elder, see John Murdoch, “John Hoskins (known as John Hoskins the elder, Old Hoskins),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13839.

3. John Murdoch, “John Hoskins.” Murdoch quotes this passage but does not cite his source specifically.

4. Marjorie Wieseman, “John Hoskins,” in Julie Aronson and Marjorie E. Wieseman, Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Cincinnati Art Museum, 2006), 213. Wieseman does not cite individual footnotes but rather has a list of references.

5. Murdoch, “John Hoskins.” He makes his “dearly beloved wife,” Sara Hoskins, the executor of his will, which gives son John Hoskins “the sum of twenty pounds of lawfull money of England to be paid to him within one yeare after my death to buy him a Ring to wear in remembrance of me or otherwise to dispose of the sum as he shall think good or fit.” “Johannes Hoskins,” Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, series PROB 11, class PROB 11, piece 316, National Archives, Kew. I am grateful to Maggie Keenan, Starr Research Assistant, for sharing this information with me.

6. There is evidence that Hoskins had too much work to do himself. Lord Wentworth, later Earl of Strafford, wrote to his agent on August 17, 1636: “I pray to get Hauskins to take my picture in little from my original that is at length [by Van Dyck], and to make it something like those that he last drew, and desire Sir Anthony from me to help him.” Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith and Claud Golding, More Famous Trials, ed. Earl of Birkenhead and Claud Golding (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1938), 181, as cited in Murdoch, “John Hoskins.”

7. See John Murdoch et al., The English Miniature (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 95–104.

Little is known about English portrait miniature painter Thomas Hull. Recent research, however, provides more insight into this artist, who painted John Quincy Adams in London in 1796.¹ Adams, who would go on to be elected as the sixth president of the United States in 1825, was the US ambassador to the Netherlands at the time of the portrait. He was sent to London from the Netherlands in 1795 to discuss the Jay Treaty with Great Britain, whereupon he met and fell in love with Louisa Catherine Johnson (1775–1852).² Adams commissioned Hull for a miniature to exchange with his newly betrothed. Thirty-four years after their commission, the miniatures were stolen from Adams’s trunk on its way to Washington: “The lock of the Trunk had been picked. My wife’s miniature and mine, given to each other before marriage, those of her father and mother, relics of their parental affection . . . all stolen. The loss is more than money can repair.”³

Born in London on August 24, 1754, Thomas Henry Hull was the son of Thomas Hull and Jane Herman. He married Mary Sparke on March 22, 1780, and together they had at least eight children.⁴ Hull regularly exhibited portrait miniatures at the Royal Academy of the Arts between 1775 and 1827, except for a gap between 1800 and 1827, leading earlier scholars to believe that he died in 1800, when in fact he died in 1828, in Vauxhall, Lambeth, at the age of seventy-four.⁵

Notes

1. Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John Quincy Adams with His Wife (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 34, 36. Louisa’s portrait was painted by an artist named Birch. Hull also painted Adams’s father-in-law, Joshua Johnson, and that miniature is now located in the Adams-Clement Collection. The present location of the John Quincy and Louisa Adams portraits is unknown.

2. The Jay Treaty was a 1794 treaty to resolve remaining issues of the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Louisa was the second daughter of American merchant Joshua Johnson.

3. Oliver, Portraits of John Quincy Adams with His Wife, 36.

4. “Marriage Bonds and Allegations, January–March 1780,” London Metropolitan Archives.

5. Harry Blattel, “Hull, Thomas H.,” International Dictionary of Miniature Painters, Porcelain Painters, Silhouettists (Munich: Arts and Antiques Edition, 1992), 485; Daphne Foskett, “Hull, Thomas H.,” A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), 1:344; Algernon Graves, “Thomas H. Hull,” The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904 (London: Henry Graves and Co. and George Bell and Sons, 1906), 190; Basil Long, British Miniaturists (1929; repr., London: The Holland Press, 1966), 229; Charles Mackie, Norfolk Annals: A Chronological Record of Remarkable Events in the Nineteenth Century (Norwich: Norfolk Chronicle, 1901), 1:276; London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. DW/T/820, London Metropolitan Archives.

Ozias Humphry was born in Houghton, Devon, in 1742 to a peruke-maker and mercer, George Humphry and his wife, Elizabeth Hooper.¹ He enrolled at William Shipley’s (English, 1714–1803) drawing school in London in 1757 alongside a distinguished cohort of fellow painters, including John Smart (1741–1811), Richard Cosway (1742–1821), and William Pars (English, 1742–1782).² He ended his studies with Shipley within a year and followed Shipley’s suggestion that he continue his schooling at the Duke of Richmond’s newly opened cast gallery.³ By 1760, he was training with the miniaturist Samuel Collins (ca. 1735–1775) in the fashionable resort town of Bath. Two years later, Collins’s departure enabled Humphry to take on his teacher’s well-heeled clientele.

Along with this new class of patrons, Humphry was also moving in more elevated artistic circles, meeting the painters Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) and William Hoare (English, ca. 1707–1792) at the home of his landlord, the composer Thomas Linley.⁴ By 1764, Humphry had gained confidence and moved to London with the support of eminent painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (English, 1723–1792), initially supporting himself by making miniature copies of Reynolds’s work. The following year, Humphry began exhibiting at the Society of Artists of Great Britain and was successful enough to accept Alexander Day (English, ca. 1753–1841) as an apprentice. He soon counted King George III and Queen Charlotte among his patrons.⁵

In 1772, Humphry’s career was derailed by an eye injury caused by a riding accident. While he continued to attempt to paint miniatures, he transitioned to full-scale oil painting to mitigate the strain on his eyes. He traveled to Italy the following year with his friend, the painter George Romney (English, 1734–1802), and his pupil, Day, to study the Old Masters, but he continued to be drawn to miniatures.⁶

Upon his return to London in 1777, Humphry began exhibiting oil portraits, becoming an associate of the Royal Academy of the Arts in 1779, where he exhibited until 1783.⁷ Humphry struggled to recapture the success he had attained as a miniature painter and suffered a significant decrease in income. He began experimenting with pastels in the hope of compensating for this loss.⁸

Like the painters Tilly Kettle (English, 1734–ca. 1786) and Johann Zoffany (German, active in England, 1733–1810) before him, Humphry sought to enrich himself in India.⁹ He received permission for his journey from the Honourable East India Company (HEIC)’s board of directors on July 28, 1785, the same date as his competitor John Smart. Humphry arrived in Calcutta in advance of Smart, spending several months anxiously plotting to detain his fellow miniaturist and worrying about his diminished prospects. Humphry was an accomplished miniaturist, praised for the subtlety and grace of his portraits, but he recognized that Smart’s talent surpassed his own. He might have distinguished himself from Smart as an oil painter, but he largely painted miniatures in India, likely due to his greater aptitude and reputation in that medium. He enjoyed much success there, painting some of the subcontinent’s most high-ranking rulers and officials, including the Nawab of Oudh and Sir John MacPherson, acting Governor General of Bengal, before returning to London in 1788.¹⁰

That year, Humphry was made a full member of the Royal Academy. In despair of recapturing his success at miniature painting, Humphry soon directed his full attention to painting in pastel, where he found renewed acclaim.¹¹ In 1792, he was named “Portrait Painter in Crayons to His Majesty.” He continued to exhibit at the Academy, but his ability to paint an accurate likeness deteriorated along with his eyesight, which led to his retirement in 1797. Sadly, Humphry’s increasingly neurotic personality seems to have resulted in two failed engagements and waning support from his formerly robust clientele. His later years were mired in financial difficulties and legal disputes with prominent patrons, including the Nawab of Oudh, the Prince and Princess of Orange, and the Duke of Dorset. He died on March 9, 1810, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy through his papers and correspondence, which provide a uniquely detailed account not only of his own life but also the experiences of his fellow artists in late eighteenth-century India and London.

Notes

1. George Humphry’s name is sometimes spelled Humphrey, as spelling of names varied widely at the time.

2. Vanessa Remington writes, “The intention was that these studies would enable Humphry to produce patterns for his mother’s lace-manufacturing business, but when he returned to Honiton, following the death of his father, he made clear his desire to train as a painter.” Vanessa Remington, “Humphry, Ozias (1742–1810), miniature and portrait painter,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, October 4, 2007, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14165.

3. Neil Jeffares, “HUMPHRY, Ozias,” Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800, updated September 21, 2021, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Humphry.pdf.

4. Humphry had taken up lodgings with Linley after Collins left Bath. Jeffares, “HUMPHRY, Ozias.”

5. Humphry exhibited at the Society of Artists until 1771. Remington, “Humphry, Ozias.”

6. According to Neil Jeffares, “despite his intentions he seems to have made more miniatures than oil paintings in Italy.” During his four years in Italy, he was appointed a member of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence. Jeffares, “HUMPHRY, Ozias.”

7. Remington, “Humphry, Ozias.”

8. Jeffares suggests that this may have been as much as five hundred pounds per year. Jeffares, “HUMPHRY, Ozias.”

9. Unlike Smart, whose motivations for traveling to India can only be guessed, Humphry was urged to travel to India by John Boydell, Sir Robert Strange, and Sir Elijah Impey. Jeffares, “HUMPHRY, Ozias.”

10. Humphry sued both MacPherson and the Nawab for nonpayment. Evan Cotton, “An Artist and His Fees: The Story of the Suit Brought by Ozias Humphry, R.A., Against Sir John Macpherson in the Supreme Court at Calcutta: in March, 1787,” Bengal Past and Present 34, no. 67 (July–September 1927): 1–19.

11. At about this time, he wrote, “I feel something like a returning passion for painting again (though nothing like a rage), I have a notion I shall find myself impatient to get back to London, to execute the large commissions I have, and make one more effort, if I die for it. I feel . . . very little disposed to adopt miniature painting for life. I could not live under the disgrace of it, and it is certain that, if I cannot stir up a little more flame for my profession than I have felt lately, I may as well unstring my lyre at once, and sing no more.” Quoted in George C. Williamson, Life and Works of Ozias Humphry, R.A. (London: John Lane, 1918), 75.

The acclaimed miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Isabey was born on April 11, 1767, in Nancy, France. At ten years old, he joined the workshop of his father’s friend, the landscape painter Jean-Baptiste-Charles Claudot (1733–1805). Claudot’s teacher was Jean Girardet (d. 1778), court painter to the King of Poland.¹ Isabey received a broad artistic education from Girardet and Claudot for eight years before traveling to Paris in 1785 in hopes of studying with the miniaturist François Dumont (1751–1831), but his growing ambition eventually led him to enter the workshop of the celebrated history painter Jacques Louis David (1748–1825).² With David, he gained connections and acquired a tight academic style.³ Isabey was soon a favorite at the court of Versailles and in Paris, fielding commissions from courtiers such as the duc d’Angoulême and the duc de Berry, who introduced him to Queen Marie Antoinette.⁴ In 1798, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845) painted many of the most influential artists of the period gathered in Isabey’s studio.⁵

Isabey supplemented his income from portrait commissions by teaching at Madame Campan’s prestigious school for aristocratic girls in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he served as the drawing master for Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837), the stepdaughter of Napoleon Bonaparte, future Emperor of France. In later years, Hortense provided Isabey entrée to the imperial court, where he quickly found favor with Napoleon and his wife, the Empress Joséphine, an influential patron of the arts. Isabey became the emperor’s official draftsman in 1804 and was also in charge of organizing events at the Tuileries, St-Cloud, and Malmaison in addition to his artistic duties.⁶ The following year, he was made First Painter to the Empress. In this role, he produced many portraits of Joséphine in various sizes and media.⁷

Unlike his teacher David, Isabey largely stayed out of politics and skillfully gained the favor of a rapid succession of opposing regimes and rulers, even receiving a royal appointment from Louis XVIII in 1816 despite his long service to Napoleon.⁸ Isabey’s ascendency among miniaturists in France and beyond—he painted the Austrian imperial family in Vienna in 1812—began to slip by the 1830s, however, as portrait miniatures fell out of fashion, along with the light and delicate style with which Isabey had made his career.⁹

Notes

1. Cyril Lécosse notes that Claudot, as a friend of the family, probably played a formative role in the young Isabey’s artistic ambitions. Cyril Lécosse, Jean-Baptiste Isabey: Petits Portraits et Grands Desseins (Paris: CHTS Editions, 2018), 32.

2. Isabey jointed Claudot’s studio after Girardet’s death in 1778. Lécosse, Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 34.

3. Marie-Claude Chaudonneret, “Jean-Baptiste Isabey,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T041671. There is some debate on the extent of Isabey’s studies with Dumont, who had also been a student of Girardet. Chaudonneret writes that “in 1786 he received lessons from the painter François Dumont,” but other sources debate this. If he did receive some lessons from Dumont, their duration was likely limited. On Dumont’s reticence to teach Isabey, see Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard, Les Peintres en Miniature 1650–1850 (Paris: Les Éditions de l’Amateur, 2008), 212.

4. He attended the salons of Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier, among others; Chaudonneret, “Jean-Baptiste Isabey.” Tony Halliday has discussed some of the rapturous Salon criticism directed at Isabey in the 1790s; see Tony Halliday, Facing the Public: Portraiture in the Aftermath of the French Revolution (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000), 133.

5. These included a self-portrait of Boilly, Isabey’s friend François Gérard, Anne-Louis Girodet, Carle Vernet, the designers Percier and Fontaine, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the acclaimed actor François-Joseph Talma, and Isabey himself. Louis-Léopold Boilly, Réunion d’artistes dans l’atelier d’Isabey, 1798, oil on canvas, 28 1/10 x 43 7/10 in. (71.5 x 111 cm), Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 1290bis, https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010059929. Unlike many of his fellow miniaturists, who are too often relegated, with the medium itself, to a lesser status, Isabey was well established in broader French artistic circles.

6. In French, his title was officially Dessinateur du Cabinet de l’Empereur, des Ceremonies et des Relations Exterieurs. Chaudonneret, “Jean-Baptiste Isabey.”

7. In addition to the portrait miniatures in watercolor and, occasionally, enamel for which he is best known, Isabey was also a talented draftsman and printmaker; he further dabbled in oil painting. For Napoleon, Isabey expanded his skills into the realms of theatrical, interior, and event design.

8. In 1816, he was named Peintre du Cabinet du Roi et des Menus Plaisirs, continuing his former role as both court painter and event designer. Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard, Les Peintres en Miniature, 296.

9. Isabey returned to Vienna in 1814 to paint the delegates of the Congress of Vienna at Talleyrand’s behest. See Daniel Harkett, “The Art of Diplomacy: Jean-Baptiste Isabey at the Congress of Vienna,” A History of the European Restorations: Governments, States and Monarchy, ed. Ambrogio A. Caiani and Michael Broers (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 67–77.

Nicholas Jean and Marie Grandin baptized their son Philip Jean on November 30, 1755, in St. Ouen, Jersey, Channel Islands.¹ Philip Jean may have spent his youth serving in the Royal Navy under Admiral Lord Rodney, but his career path shifted to painting full time by the 1780s.² He spent most of his life in Jersey, marrying Anne Magdeleine Noël (1758–1787) on March 18, 1781,³ and raising two children there.⁴ Jean also spent a significant amount of time in London, exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1787 to 1802. Although he maintained a London address throughout his early Royal Academy years—50 Margaret Street, Cavendish Square—he remarried in Jersey in 1788, following his first wife’s death.⁵

Jean was incredibly prolific, exhibiting not one or two miniatures annually at the Royal Academy, but rather groups of five or eleven miniatures at a time.⁶ Jean likely began by painting fellow Jerseyans and naval officers but found success mid-career in painting members of the royal family, including King George III, Queen Caroline, and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, in the 1790s.⁷ A review of his portrait of Princess Sophia of Gloucester at the 1795 RA exhibition confirms the esteem his work garnered: “When we saw a picture of Mara from this Artist a few years ago, we expected to see him rise very high in fame as a painter of Miniatures. Our expectations have not been disappointed, but, on the contrary, he has even exceeded those expectations.”⁸

Jean’s style is notable for its soft palette and loose cross-hatching, similar to the method employed by Richard Cosway, which may explain the royal family’s fondness for work by both artists. Jean’s brushstrokes are always visible, especially in the curved lines under his sitters’ eyes and the shadows beneath their chins.⁹ He painted in watercolor on ivory while also working on larger oil paintings.¹⁰ His backgrounds typically consist of long, diagonal dashes that reach from the top right to the bottom left. A few of his more accomplished miniatures include figures set within an architectural setting or landscape background. He often signed his work “P. Jean” or “P. J.,” followed by a date.¹¹ Jean died in Hampstead, Kent, on September 12, 1802; his only surviving son, Roger Jean, continued in his father’s profession as a painter of portrait miniatures.¹²

Notes

1. “Philippe Jean baptismal document,” St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, Jersey Parish Registers, ref. G/C/02/E1/4. Philip is also spelled “Philippe,” as Jersey was largely a French-speaking country at this time. Jersey is part of the Channel Islands and is a Crown Dependency that is not part of the United Kingdom; it is located near the northwest coast of France.

2. The archives of Philippe d’Auvergne, Duke of Bouillon, who spent the majority of his life in the Royal Navy, may confirm Jean’s enlistment. His archive includes two letters from Philip Jean—“Philip Jean. London, 26 April 1796,” ref. PC 1/117A/351; and “Philip Jean. London, 16 June 1797,” ref. PC 1/118C/2, National Archives, Kew—which may suggest a friendship between the two. The National Maritime Museum argues that Jean practiced as a miniaturist in peacetime; according to the object description of Philippe Jean, George Phillips Towry (1729–1817), ca. 1800, 3 x 2 1/2 in. (7.6 x 6.4 cm), National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, BHC3058, https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-14531.

3. “Philippe Jean marriage license,” St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, Jersey Parish Registers, ref. G/C/17/A3/1. Jean’s portrait of Anne sold at Christie’s, “The Gordon Collection of Portrait Miniatures,” November 19, 2007, lot 71, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4994061.

4. Jean’s children were Roger (1783–1828) and Anne Marthe Jean (1787–1788). “Roger Jean baptismal document,” St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, Jersey Parish Registers, ref. G/C/03/A2/5; “Anne Marthe Jean baptismal document,” St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, Jersey Parish Registers, ref. G/C/03/A2/5.

5. “Philippe Jean marriage license,” St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, Jersey Parish Registers, ref. G/C/09/A1/5. He married Marie de Ste. Croix (1763–1820) and they had four children together: Mary (1789–1821), Harriot (1790–1838), Philip (1792–1800), and Henriette Elizabeth (1797–1873). He later listed his address as 10 Hanover Street, Hanover Square.

6. See The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London: T. Cadell, 1792), 10, no. 270, as A frame, containing his Royal Highness Prince William, son of his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, a lady of quality, a nobleman, and eight others.

7. Philippe Jean, George III (1738–1820), 1796, oil on canvas, 118 1/8 x 59 1/16 in. (300 x 150 cm), Royal Court House, Jersey, PW/0000/00044; Philip Jean, Queen Caroline (1768–1821), when Princess of Wales, 1795, watercolor on ivory, 2 15/16 x 2 1/5 in. (7.5 x 6.4 cm), Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 420194, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/2/collection/420194/queen-caroline-1768-1821-when-princess-of-wales; The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London: T. Cadell, 1790), 12, no. 331, as Portrait of His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester; The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London: T. Cadell, 1792), 10, no. 274, as Portrait of her Royal Highness the Duchess of Gloucester. It is difficult to identify early, unsigned Jean miniatures due to the range of his painterly style.

8. Basil Long, British Miniaturists (London: Holland Press, 1929), 240.

9. Jean’s oil paintings are a different quality; the color is richer and his brushstrokes are smoother.

10. Some of his miniatures were made into engravings; see Peltro William Tomkins, after Philip Jean, Sir John Dick Bart, 1793–1840, stipple engraving, British Museum, London, 1891,0414.25, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1891-0414-25.

11. As an example, the date was either written as “pinxit 1787” or just “1787.”

12. “Philip Jean burial document,” England, Select Deaths and Burials, 1538–1991 (online database) (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2014), FHL film number 1751588, ref. 1, digitized on ancestrylibrary.com. He was buried five days later, on September 17. While miniatures by Roger Jean are few and far between, there is a signed example at the National Portrait Gallery, London: Roger Jean, Thomas Love Peacock, ca. 1805, watercolor on ivory, 3 x 2 3/8 in. (7.6 x 6 cm), NPG 3994, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw04907/Thomas-Love-Peacock?search=sp&sText=NPG+3994&firstRun=true&rNo=0.

Known as King Charles I’s “other” painter, Cornelius Johnson was born in London in 1593.¹ He was the son of Johanna le Grand and Cornelius Johnson (d. in or before 1605), an exile from Antwerp whose grandfather was from Cologne. Baptized on October 14, 1593, at Austin Friars, a reformed church in London frequented by Protestant migrants, Johnson remained associated with this church throughout his tenure in London.²

Notwithstanding his English birth, many scholars agree that Johnson probably trained in the Netherlands with Delft-based artist Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt (1566–1641) and then, when back in London, with second-generation Netherlandish immigrant Marcus Gheeraerts II (1561/2–1636).³ Johnson was the first British-born artist to sign his paintings, which he generally dated as well.⁴ He was also known for his meticulous skill in rendering sumptuous fabric and lace; his body of work thus forms a reliable index of trends in fashion. Johnson painted various types of portraits, including miniatures in oil on metal, which was an unconventional technique for English artists.⁵

Before becoming one of Charles I’s painters in 1632—the same year Sir Anthony Van Dyck (Flemish 1599–1641) arrived at the English court and soon monopolized court commissions—Johnson primarily painted sitters from the upper levels of society. He married Elizabeth Beck or Beke (d. after 1661) of Colchester on July 16, 1622, and they had two sons. Cornelius, baptized in 1634, later became a painter.⁶

When the English Civil War broke out in Britain in 1642, Johnson and his family fled to the northern Netherlands. He changed his signature to Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen upon the outbreak of the Anglo-Dutch wars in 1652 to emphasize his Germanic roots and distance himself from his English connections.⁷ Johnson spent the remainder of his life in the Netherlands, where he died in Utrecht on August 5, 1661.

Notes

1. Johnson was born in London and not in Amsterdam, as English antiquarian George Vertue (1684–1756) thought. “Vertue Note Books, Volume II,” Volume of the Walpole Society 20 (1931–1932): 23; "“Vertue Note Books, Volume V,” Volume of the Walpole Society 26 (1937–1938): 90.

2. Karen Hearn, “Johnson, Cornelius [Cornelius Jansen, Janssen, or Jonson van Ceulen],” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14657.

3. Leading Johnson scholar Karen Hearn indicates that is has not been possible to establish definitively where and with whom Johnson trained. Gheeraerts was the official portraitist to James I’s (1566–1625) queen, Anne of Demark (1574–1619) and was well known to Johnson’s family, serving as witness to the baptism of Johnson’s niece Elizabeth Russell in 1612. See Karen Hearn, Cornelius Johnson (London: Paul Holberton, 2015), 10–11. See also Christopher Brown, “British Painting and the Low Countries 1530–1630,” in Karen Hearn, ed., Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England, 1530–1630, exh. cat. (London: Tate Gallery, 1995), 28.

4. Hearn, Cornelius Johnson, 8.

5. During this time, portrait miniatures were in high demand in England, and Samuel Cooper (English, ca. 1608–1672) established his studio just as Johnson fled to the northern Netherlands during the English Civil War. Johnson, like Cooper, was able to provide his patrons with high-quality portraits in a portable form. In addition, Johnson had familial connections with portrait miniaturists such as Isaac Oliver (French, active England, ca. 1565–1617), who was godfather to Johnson’s nephew. As a result, Johnson was well versed in the significance of portrait miniatures in English culture and their popularity during this period. For more information on the context of Johnson’s work, see Hearn, Cornelius Johnson.

6. Johnson does not appear again in any type of documentary evidence until 1619, when he witnessed the baptism of a nephew in London; Hearn, “Johnson, Cornelius.” Their firstborn son, named James, who Hearn believes died young, was baptized on September 30, 1625, at St. Anne’s Church, where their second born, Cornelius, was also baptized.

7. Hearn, Cornelius Johnson, 10.

Anthelme François Lagrenée was born in Paris on December 14, 1774, to a family of artists. Trained as a history painter, Lagrenée studied with François-André Vincent (1746–1816) and his father, Louis Jean François Lagrenée (1725–1805), director of the French Academy in Rome and court painter to Empress Elizabeth of Russia.¹ In 1811, Lagrenée married Anne-Louise Florine Bazire, a dancer and actress at the Paris Opéra and Comédie-Francaise theater.² Mademoiselle Bazire, as she was known on stage, probably connected Lagrenée to renowned French actors such as François-Joseph Talma and Mademoiselle Mars, whom he painted “in large,” meaning full-scale portraits, to great acclaim.³ In addition to his theatrical portraits, Lagrenée was known for his skill in animal painting, exemplified by portraits of soldiers on horseback, perhaps influenced by his years in the French military.⁴ Lagrenée also specialized in cameo-style miniatures.⁵

Lagrenée exhibited works at various Salons between 1799 and 1831, with miniatures on view at his very first showing.⁶ While he began painting miniatures in the 1790s after leaving the army, Lagrenée did not make them his primary focus until about 1823, when he traveled to Russia to paint for Tsar Alexander I and his court.⁷ Not much is known about his time in Russia, but Lagrenée apparently lived in St. Petersburg for several years. The miniatures from his Russian period suggest that he was strongly influenced by the miniatures of Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767–1855). He died of cholera in Paris on April 27, 1832, at the age of fifty-eight.⁸

Notes

1. Lagrenée senior was also director of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia. See Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard, Les Peintres en Miniature: 1650–1850 (Paris: Les Éditions de l’Amateur, 2008), 321.

2. Anthelme Lagrenée married Bazire (ca. 1790–1872), a “danseuse à l’Opéra de Paris, élève au Conservatoire, Comédienne” (dancer at the Paris Opera, student at the Paris Conservatory, and comedic actress), on November 14, 1811, at the Eglise de la Madeleine in Paris. They lived at 9 Rue Boissy d’Anglas in Paris. Bazire had debuted at the Comédie Francaise in 1808. It is believed that Bazire’s sister Caroline was the actor François-Joseph Talma’s mistress at the end of his life, further supporting this connection. The Lagrenées’ daughter, Agathe Lagrenée (1815–1876), married the painter Joseph Guichard (1806–1880) on January 8, 1839, at the Eglise St. Germain des Près in Paris. Another child, Louis Auguste Lagrenée, was born in 1814 and may not have lived beyond infancy. See Dominique de Rivoyre, “Anne-Louise Bazire,” profile, Geneanet, accessed May 9, 2024, https://gw.geneanet.org/domiri?lang=en&iz=71624&p=anne+louise&n=bazire.

3. Lagrenée painted Talma in Hamlet (1814), Mlle. George as Camille in Horace (1819), and Mlle. Bourgoin in the role of Aldéir in Tippo-Saëb (1819), a play by Etienne de Jouy. All three paintings are in the collection of the Comédie-Française, Paris.

4. Henri Bouchot, “Le Portrait-Miniature en France,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 11, no. 6 (1894): 250–51.

5. For example, Anthelme François Lagrenée, Portrait de l’Impératrice Marie-Louise à L’imitation du Camée, watercolor on ivory, 5 1/3 x 4 1/10 inches (13.5 x 10.5 cm), sold at Drouot, “Dessins et Tableaux anciens Objets d ’art Mobilier,” November 21, 2014, lot 59, Artnet, accessed April 27, 2023, https://www.artnet.com/artists/anthelme-françois-lagrenée/portrait-de-limpératrice-marie-louise-à-WIfKt4TOlOWy1nVBf7Ntw2.

6. Lagrenée exhibited at the Salons of 1800, 1801, 1802, 1804, 1806, 1812, 1814, 1819 and 1831. These are documented in the Salon livrets, or catalogues, for each of those years, reproduced in sixty volumes by H. W. Janson, Catalogues of the Paris Salon: 1673–1881 (New York: Garland, 1977).

7. “Lagrenée, Anthelme François,” Benezit Dictionary of Artists, October 31, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00103063.

8. Lemoine-Bouchard, Les Peintres en Miniature, 321.

Bernard Lens III was the most successful member of the artistic dynasty of the Lens family. According to an inscription on the back of a self-portrait he painted in 1721, Lens III was born in London on May 29, 1682, the son of Bernard Lens II (1659/60–1725), a drawing instructor and mezzotint engraver.¹ In 1698, at the age of sixteen, Lens III was apprenticed to his father’s engraving partner, John Sturt of the Goldsmiths’ Company. He remained there until 1729, aged forty-seven, when his son Peter Paul Lens (ca. 1714–1755) began his own artistic apprenticeship with Sturt.² It remains uncertain whether Lens III received any training in watercolor painting; nevertheless, he has the distinguished honor of being the first British artist to use ivory as a support in place of vellum from 1708, following the example of the Italian artist Rosalba Carriera (1673–1757).³

Lens served as a portrait miniature painter in ordinary to Kings George I and II and worked as a drawing master to the princesses Mary and Louisa, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Duchess of Portland, as well as English socialite and collector Horace Walpole, among others.⁴ Lens continued to paint original portrait likenesses throughout his career; however, he also had a thriving business in painting copies of historic miniatures after old master paintings, continuing a long tradition begun by Peter Oliver (ca. 1589–1647), who made copies for Charles I of paintings in the king’s collection.⁵

In 1760, Lens married Katherine (or Catherine) Woods, and they had at least three sons, two of whom also painted miniatures.⁶ While the legacy of the Lens family lived on through successive generations of artists, notwithstanding the excision of his son Peter Paul from his will, Lens III succumbed to his prolonged affliction with dropsy on December 24, 1740, aged fifty-nine.⁷

Notes

1. See Bernard Lens III, Self-Portrait, 1721, watercolor and bodycolor on vellum, 1 3/4 x 1 3/8 in. (4.5 x 3.5 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 1624), https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw03876/Bernard-Lens-III. The work is signed in monogram and dated, left, level with his collar, “BL./1721”; inscribed on the back of the card “Bernard Lens/Pictor Painted by/himself Oct ye. 31: 172[1]/Born may: ye. 29: 1682.” This reference was erroneously cited as May 27, 1682, in Julie Aronson and Marjorie E Wieseman, Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum, exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Cincinnati Art Museum, 2006), 226.

2. Katherine Coombs, “Lens [Laus] Family,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last updated January 3, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/66537.

3. Carriera was probably the first artist to use ivory in place of vellum as a support, in a self-portrait she painted for the Academy of St. Luke in 1704. See Coombs, “Lens [Laus] Family,” 3.

4. Lens III also taught miniature painting to such talented amateurs as Catherine da Costa and Sarah Stanley, the daughter of Sir Hans Sloane. See Marjorie E. Wieseman, “Bernard Lens’s Miniatures for the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9, no. 1 (Winter 2017): https://doi.org/10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.18. See also John Wilmerding, Essays in Honor of Paul Mellon, Collector and Benefactor (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1986), 203.

5. Coombs, “Lens [Laus] Family,” 3.

6. Their sons were Bernard IV (1707–1747), Andrew Benjamin (ca. 1713–ca. 1779), and Peter Paul (ca. 1714–1755); see Coombs, “Lens [Laus] Family,” 1.

7. For a reference to Bernard Lens’s will, see Maggie Keenan, "Peter Paul Lens (English, ca. 1714–1755),” biography, 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. 4, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), n. 5, https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5000.

Infamous for his participation in (and possible formation of) a devil-worshipping club, Peter Paul Lens was probably born in 1714, the third son of miniaturist Bernard Lens III (1682–1740) and Catherine Woods.¹ The younger Lens began an apprenticeship with his father in London when he was fifteen, alongside the future author and antiquarian Horace Walpole.² Lens eventually moved to Dublin in 1737, where he became a leader of the notorious Blasters and the Hellfire Club, organizations frequently accused of libertinism and of undermining godly trust, among other things.³ Although present-day scholars struggle to separate fact from fiction, these clubs’ associations with the devil were rampant during Lens’s day.⁴

In fact, the Irish House of Lords described Lens as a self-professed “votary of the devil” and subsequently issued a warrant for his arrest, causing him to flee Ireland and return to London in 1738 (Fig. 1).⁵ The warrant reads, “Several loose and disorderly persons have of late erected themselves into a society or club under the name of Blasters, and have used means to draw into this impious society several of the youth of this kingdom,” alleging that Lens “hath offered up prayers to him and publicly drunk to the devil’s health.” Lens’s provocative behavior continued in London: while seated across from a clergyman in an Ivy Lane eatery, he proclaimed “of all fun whatever, nothing is so great to me as roasting a parson.”⁶ Despite this, Lens apparently maintained his portrait business by having a friend show his portrait to potential customers in a packed theater. When asked who completed the painting, the friend would reply, “Mr. Lens,” and when asked where this person lived, he would proclaim, “If any person here can tell. Pray speak out. That we may know where to find such an ingenious man.”⁷

Lens’s father effectively excised his son from his will, revising it nine months after the chicanery in Ireland and almost certainly in response to it. Lens’s two older brothers received a total of £950, while Lens received only one shilling. Despite this slight, or perhaps in an effort to avoid such a slight, Lens painted a miniature of his father in 1739, one year before his father’s 1740 death.⁸ New research about Peter Paul Lens’s personal life reveals that he married fifteen-year-old Clarinda Vanderman on January 13, 1746, in Westminster, after a possible previous union with Elizabeth Gosbell, which resulted in a son.⁹ Lens died and was buried on December 26, 1755, in St. Martin-in-the-Fields.¹⁰

Notes

1. Basil Long, British Miniaturists (London: Holland Press, 1929), 269; Martyn Powell, The Politics of Consumption in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 82–83. We know Peter Paul Lens’s year of birth from a 1729 dated miniature of his mother that lists his age as fifteen. The miniature is now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; see Catherine Lens, 1729, P.100–1962. Bernard and Catherine’s (ca. 1681–1748) oldest son was Bernard IV (1707–1747), and their middle son was Andrew Benjamin (ca. 1713–ca. 1799), who was also a miniaturist.

2. Kingsley Adams and W. S. Lewis, “The Portraits of Horace Walpole,” The Volume of the Walpole Society 42 (1968–1970): 6, plate 1; Katherine Coombs, “Lens [Laus] family,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 33:382; Austin Dobson, Horace Walpole: A Memoir (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company 1893), 19. Bernard Lens’s other pupils included children of the royal family. See Peter Paul Lens, Studies of Human Head with Canine Features, 1728, graphite and pen on paper, 8 1/8 x 12 3/4 in. (20.6 x 32.4 cm), Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, B1977.14.5691, https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:6338.

3. David Ryan, Blasphemers & Blackguards: The Irish Hellfire Clubs (Dublin: Merrion Limited, 2012), 44; Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, ed. A. C. Elias Jr. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997): 2:110. Richard Parsons, the 1st Earl of Rosse (1702–1741), was also a founder of the club. Walpole’s older brother, Edward (1706–1784), was close friends with painter James Worsdale (ca. 1692–1767), who was also involved in the club, and poet Matthew Pilkington (1701–1774). Pilkington’s wife, Laetitia (ca. 1709–1750) is famous for her memoirs, which not only document much of what we know about Jonathan Swift but also mention a time in Dublin when Lens walked in on Matthew Pilkington committing adultery with another woman, or, as she puts it, “administering Christian Consolation to each other.”

4. Ryan, Blasphemers & Blackguards, 46, 48. Lens was likely an atheist with an interest in joining in protest against Ireland’s censorious social environment. He earned the reputation of being a “rude fellow,” “unconstrained by notions of propriety.” Ryan argues that Lens acted as the Hellfire Club’s court jester, “coining new oaths and outrageous profanities that expressed the club’s disdain for institutional religion.”

5. The proclamation was delivered at the Council-Chamber on March 24, 1738 (misprinted as 1737). Bernard Lens’s final will was dated December 13, 1738 (Wills and Probate, 1507–1858 [1738], London Metropolitan Archives). See also Aisling Tierney, “The Hell-Fire Clubs: Historical Archaeology, Material Culture and Transgression of the Eighteenth Century” (PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2016), 115, 252. Worsdale was never legally accused of his acts in the Blasters. This may be due to Worsdale’s aristocracy; Lens’s low-ranking social status did not offer him the same protection. George Vertue described Lens as a “reprobate” and “an Ingenious Youth. Whose vile, athestical conversations and behavior, publickly practiced (for some such wicked blasphemous affair in Ireland. He was forc’d to fly away)”; “Vertue Note Books: Volume III,” Volume of the Walpole Society 22 (1933–1934): 88, 100, 106.

6. For the full, comedic quote, see “Anecdote of Lens, the Famous Miniature Painter,” County Magazine 2 (July 1788): 100.

7. Ibid.

8. Peter Paul Lens, Bernard Lens III (1682–1740), 1739, gouache on vellum laid onto card, 4 1/8 x 3 1/2 x 1/4 in. (10.5 x 8.9 x 0.6 cm) overall, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, B1974.2.68, https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:11619.

9. “I give to my Son Peter Paul Lens the sum / of Two Hundred pounds. . . . I give to my Daughter in Law / Clare the Wife of my said son Peter Paul Lens the Sum of five / pounds”; “Will of Catherine Lens, Widow of Saint James, Middlesex,” January 18, 1748, National Archives, Kew, PROB 11/767/216. There is evidence of a Peter Lens marrying Elizabeth Gosbell on June 27, 1744, at St. James and the two having a son named Samuel Reubens Lens, born on October 16, 1745. Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London, ref. STM/PR/1/12, STM/PR/1/19, and SGCM/PR/1/2. Scholars have previously noted that Lens’s death was sometime after 1750, based on an advertisement in the London Public Advertiser on December 1, 1754, which suggested that he was still active at that date.

10. Coombs, “Lens [Laus] family,” 381; Peter Paul Lens, William Sancroft (1617–1693), Archbishop of Canterbury, 1754, oil on canvas, 87 13/16 x 58 in. (223.5 x 147.3 cm), Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, ECP 8. Lens also copied some of his painted blue backgrounds from his father, who found inspiration from Tudor miniatures. Despite primarily painting miniatures in watercolor on ivory, a medium his father pioneered in Britain, Lens curiously completed a life-size oil painting of the Archbishop of Canterbury a year before Lens’s death.

Notwithstanding a career cut short by tuberculosis at the age of twenty-nine, Edward Greene Malbone was one of the most distinguished miniaturists of his generation. Born the son of a merchant, the third child of six, in Newport, Rhode Island, Malbone exhibited an early talent for painting.¹ With encouragement from Newport artist Samuel King (1749–1819) but no formal training, Malbone left for the neighboring city of Providence at the age of seventeen to establish himself as a working artist. At nineteen, he earned forty dollars per likeness in Boston, which likely buoyed his confidence to seek patronage in other major cities, including New York and Savannah, Georgia.

Malbone’s American success facilitated a year’s study in England in 1801, where he was mentored by Benjamin West (1738–1820) and studied the works of Richard Cosway (1742–1821) and Samuel Shelley (1756–1808). During Malbone’s time in London, his style evolved from crisp outlines and fine stippling to delicate cross-hatching and a more luminous use of color through layers of transparent washes.

Malbone returned to the United States in December of 1801 and began the most prolific period of his career, completing three miniatures a week for the next five months.² Due to the onset of tuberculosis, however, he was unable to maintain this pace, and by 1805 his output dropped off dramatically. He succumbed to the disease in Savannah on May 7, 1807. His miniatures remain highly prized for their delicate draftsmanship and convincing likenesses. Although he had no formal students, he advised William Dunlap (1766–1839), John Wesley Jarvis (1780/1781–1839), and Charles Fraser (1782–1860), who remarked on Malbone’s death that his passing “has deprived this country of an ornament which ages may not replace.”³

Notes

1. Malbone’s father, John Malbone, began life as the son of a wealthy merchant and landowner whose fortunes were greatly reduced when the British occupied Newport. See Ruel Pardee Tolman, The Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone, 1777–1807 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1958), 7–9.

2. The artist’s account book records this prolific period of his life. For a reproduction, see Tolman, Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone, 84–122. (The original account book survives at the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library in Winterthur, Delaware.)

3. Tolman, Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone, 60.

Jeremiah Meyer was born in Tübingen, Germany, the son of the portraitist to the Duke of Württemberg.¹ In 1750, at the age of fifteen, Meyer traveled to England, where he trained with the enamellist Christian Friedrich Zincke (ca. 1684–1767) from 1757 to 1758.² In 1763, he married the English flower painter Barbara Marsden (1743–1818). By this time, Meyer was actively engaged in London’s art scene. He studied at William Hogarth’s (1697–1764) St. Martin’s Lane Academy and joined the Incorporated Society of Artists, where he exhibited enamels in 1760 and 1764. He became a director of the society in 1765, and after it disbanded, he became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy (RA) in 1768. Meyer exhibited there regularly, establishing a pension fund for the RA in 1775. Indeed, his importance there is demonstrated by his inclusion in fellow German artist Johann Zoffany’s (1733–1810) famous group portrait, The Royal Academicians (1772).³

Meyer had a long and fruitful relationship with the royal family, beginning with his commission to paint a portrait of King George III set in a pearl bracelet as an engagement gift for Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1761.⁴ Meyer was so esteemed by the king that he was selected in 1761 to draw his profile for a new series of coinage. In 1764, he was appointed Miniature Painter to the Queen and Enamel Painter to the King.

While Meyer’s initial training was in the highly specialized art of enamel painting, and most of his earliest portraits are rendered in enamel, he had the versatility to expand his repertoire to meet the growing demand for miniatures painted in watercolor on ivory. Meyer liberated ivory miniatures from their stiff and stilted beginnings of dots and dashes to a more fluid technique that enabled greater freedom of expression, paving the way for artists of the next generation like Richard Cosway and John Smart. Sadly, many of Meyer’s watercolor miniatures suffer from condition issues, particularly fading in the flesh tones because of his use of fugitive pigments, which can make it difficult to get a sense of their former vibrance.

The best testament to the beauty and innovation of Meyer’s work comes from his admiring contemporaries, such as the anonymous reviewer who wrote that Meyer’s:

. . . Miniatures excell [sic] all other in pleasing Expression, Variety of Tints, and Freedom of Execution, being performed by hatching and not stipling [sic] as most Miniatures are. Indeed, in this branch of the Art Mr. Meyer seems to stand unrivalled, and I believe he may justly be reckoned the first Miniature Painter in Europe.⁵

Notes

1. His father was Wolfgang Dietrich Majer (1698–1762). Majer was described by Edward Edwards as “a painter of small subjects, of no great talent.” Edwards quoted in Katherine Coombs, “Meyer, Jeremiah (1735–1789), miniature painter,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/18636. We are grateful to Peter Knaus for his generosity in sharing his new research, with Luise Schreiber-Knaus, on Meyer’s father’s identity, and other crucial details of his life and work, to be published in a forthcoming publication on Meyer. A preview of their exciting new findings is published in Peter Knaus and Luise Schreiber-Knaus, “The Life and Career of Jeremiah Meyer RA (1735–1789) During the Reign of King George III,” Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions, Techniques, and Collections, eds. Bernd Pappe and Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2023), 109–20.

2. Peter Knaus has confirmed Meyer’s departure for London on October 20, 1750, through the existence of a letter in the Tübingen archives. Peter Knaus and Luise Schreiber-Knaus, “The Life and Career of Jeremiah Meyer RA,” 109.

3. Johann Zoffany, The Royal Academicians, 1771–72, oil on canvas, 39 13/16 x 58 1/16 in. (101.1 x 147.5 cm), Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 400747, https://www.rct.uk/collection/400747/the-academicians-of-the-royal-academy. Meyer and his family were in fact painted by several of his fellow artists, including Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) and Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1735–1811), whose portrait of Meyer hangs at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, 82-21/25. Although Dance-Holland’s painting was unfinished, William Pether’s (English, ca. 1738–1821) print after it enjoyed wide distribution across Britain.

4. “Lord Harcourt delivered the king’s engagement presents to Mecklenburg-Strelitz on 6 August 1761. This pearl bracelet can be seen in a portrait of the future queen that was painted in around 1761 by Johann George Ziesenis (1761–1776).” See Johann Georg Ziesenis, Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, ca. 1761, oil on canvas, 53 1/8 x 38 1/8 in. (134.9 x 96.8 cm), Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/25/collection/403562/queen-charlotte-1744-1818-when-princess-sophie-charlotte-of-mecklenburg-strelitz. Peter Knaus and Luise Schreiber-Knaus, “The Life and Career of Jeremiah Meyer RA,” 112.

5. This oft-quoted passage appears throughout the literature on Meyer, as, for example, in Stephen Lloyd and Kim Sloan, The Intimate Portrait (Edinburgh: NGS Publishing, 2008), 48.

Isaac Oliver, the best-known student of Nicholas Hilliard (ca. 1547–1619), went on to establish his own highly influential style of miniature painting shaped by his origins in continental Europe. Oliver was born in about 1565 in Rouen, France, to Pierre Olivier,¹ a Huguenot goldsmith who spent time in Geneva, and his wife Epiphane. When Oliver was a young child, his family moved to London, probably around 1568. Oliver probably began his apprenticeship with Hilliard in the late 1570s.²

By the age of about twenty-two, Oliver had begun to establish an independent career as a miniaturist; his first known miniature is dated 1587.³ The continental influence from France, the Netherlands, and Italy is evident in Oliver’s work from the start, but it probably also developed through exposure to Oliver’s own diverse community of Huguenot artists and other immigrants in London.⁴ While Oliver began his career painting members of the merchant class, by the 1590s he was becoming established as a significant miniaturist with prominent patrons.⁵

With the accession of King James VI in 1603, the court transitioned to one with a queen who had her own strong artistic preferences. In 1605, Anne of Denmark appointed Oliver “Painter for the art of limning,” and her son, Prince Henry, began commissioning works from Oliver at the precocious age of fourteen, in 1608.⁶ Oliver’s many portraits of Queen Anne and her ladies in lavish costumes document her love of court masques. Oliver was skilled at adapting his style to his patrons’ individual preferences, and his ambitions extended beyond limned portraits into larger-scale drawings of mythological, religious, and genre scenes.

In late 1606, after thirty-eight years in England, Oliver decided to make his residency official by securing the right of denization. The question of Oliver’s nationality is complex. While he is historically included in the ranks of England’s greatest artists and spent nearly all of his life there, the continental influence in his work remains strong. He even signed a 1596 miniature as “Isacq Oliuiero Francese.”⁷ He died in London and was buried on October 2, 1617.⁸ Of Oliver’s three surviving sons, the eldest, Peter (ca. 1594–1647), was his artistic heir and inherited his father’s drawings and unfinished limnings.

Notes

1. Spelling of names was inconsistent in this period.

2. The Olivers moved to London around the same time that Hilliard was completing his apprenticeship and setting out as an independent artist. Hilliard and Pierre Olivier were part of the Geneva expatriate community in the late 1550s, and they may have reconnected in London. The exact dates of Oliver’s apprenticeship to Hilliard are unknown, as the goldsmiths’ guild records from the relevant years (1579–92) were lost in a fire. He probably studied with Hilliard for about eight years, the same duration of his fellow student Rowland Lockey’s (ca. 1565–1616) agreement with Hilliard. Mary Edmond, “Oliver, Isaac (c. 1565–1617),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, May 24, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/20723.

3. While the styles and techniques of Hilliard and Oliver have traditionally been pitted against each other, depending on which artist was more fashionable at the time, it has more recently been recognized that both artists stand apart in their extraordinary talent and influence. Hilliard preferred capturing his sitters in daylight from a north- (or “northerly”) facing window, leading to a flatter, more stylized appearance, while Oliver chose to use a direct light source, resulting in deeper shadowing and more of a highly modeled surface. Graham Reynolds, “Oliver Family [Ollivier],” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T063450.

4. It does appear, however, that Isaac Oliver went to Europe; in 1596, he was in Venice. Jill Finsten, Isaac Oliver: Art at the Courts of Elizabeth I and James I (New York: Garland, 1981), 2:41.

5. Oliver’s aristocratic clientele included the queen’s favorite: Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. On his influence on Oliver’s miniature painting practice, see Catharine MacLeod, “Isaac Oliver and the Essex Circle,” British Art Studies, issue 17 (September 2020), https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-17/cmacleod.

6. MacLeod, “Isaac Oliver and the Essex Circle.”

7. Graham Reynolds writes: “In the mid-1590s Oliver visited Venice, a fact recorded by his inscription on the back of the miniature of a man called (in an inscription added later) Sir Arundel Talbot (1596; Victoria and Albert Museum). By spelling his name Isacq Oliviero and adding Francese, Oliver was asserting that he was still a Frenchman in exile.” Reynolds, “Oliver Family.” This is the only known example of Oliver signing his work in such a way, which is one reason why his nationality still teeters, in scholarship, between France and England.

8. Oliver was buried at his home parish of St. Ann, Blackfriars, the neighborhood of many other foreign-born artists and miniaturists at various points, including the court painter Sir Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641) and miniaturists John Hoskins (ca. 1590–1665), Samuel Cooper (1609–1672), and Bernard Lens (1682–1740).

The recent discovery of Peter Paillou’s baptismal records confirms that the portrait miniature painter was born in London on December 1, 1756.¹ Paillou’s family were Huguenots who fled persecution in France and settled in London.² Paillou’s father, Peter Paillou (ca. 1712–1782), was also an artist, well known for his watercolor paintings of birds and animals. The elder Paillou likely guided his son’s interests toward the arts, enrolling him in the Royal Academy Schools in 1784, where he exhibited portrait miniatures of physicians, scientists, socialites, and members of the nobility—including a posthumous portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots—annually from 1784 until 1800.³

Paillou left London for Glasgow around 1800,⁴ announcing his arrival in a local newspaper and noting that “he is desirous of practicing his profession in this city for a short time”; he listed his price as eight guineas for a miniature and ten guineas for an oil painting (Fig. 1).⁵ Commissions were difficult to obtain, however. A recently discovered letter to “Anne my Dear Wife,” written from Perth, Scotland in 1826, relayed the artist’s consternation at his lack of work.⁶ It also established that Paillou had a wife, probably the same woman named Anne that he mentions in his will, written eleven years before.⁷

Paillou’s portrait miniatures are recognizable through their dramatic and distinctive sunset backgrounds, a possible nod to his father’s use of vibrant colors.⁸ This strong palette relates to his period in Scotland (ca. 1800–1834), with some of his portraits exhibiting unintentionally strident colors in the sitters’ hair, possibly a consequence of his use of the fugitive pigment red lake, which can create unexpected effects when it fades from mixed hues.⁹ Paillou was extremely attentive to the material of his sitters’ clothes, from the textured fabric of a woman’s dress to the decorative pin in a gentleman’s cravat, and he frequently signed his works “P. Paillou” followed by a date. Paillou died in Glasgow on July 13, 1834, at the age of seventy-seven.¹⁰ Anne’s life dates remain unknown; she may have predeceased Paillou, as he left his two properties to Anne’s sister and the remainder of his estate and pictures to his own two sisters.¹¹

Notes

1. Daphne Foskett, “Paillou, Peter, junior,” Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), 1:433–34. Paillou’s entrance into the Royal Academy Schools in 1784 lists his age as twenty-seven, but a newly discovered baptismal record specifies a birthdate of December 1, 1756, and a baptismal date of January 2, 1757. See “Pierre Antoine Paillou,” England Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, FHL film number 942.1 L1 B4H V. 26, digitized on Ancestry.com. For more on Paillou’s biography, see Publications of the Huguenot Society of London, ed. William Minet and Susan Minet (Manchester: Sherratt and Hughes, 1922), 26:104; and Victoria Dickenson and Jennifer Garland, “Taylor White’s ‘Paper Museum,’” Royal Society 75, no. 4 (December 20, 2021), https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2021.0020.

2. Dickenson and Garland, “Taylor White’s ‘Paper Museum,’” 608n31. The family’s home at Paradise Row, Islington, where they lived between 1776 and 1780, is marked with a plaque by the Huguenot Society.

3. Foskett, “Paillou, Peter, junior,” 434.

4. Evidenced by his portrait of a Scottish sitter dated 1800; see Paillou, Portrait Miniature of a Young Man Called Thomas Ritchie, 1800, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 in. (7.5 cm) high, previously in the collection of Philip Mould.

5. The Glasgow Courier, April 23, 1803, cited in George Fairfull-Smith, The Wealth of a City: A ‘Glance’ at the Fine Arts in Glasgow (Glasgow: Glasgow Art Index, 2010), fig. 114, 93–94.

6. The letter is addressed to “Mrs. Paillou / N2 Queen Street,” Paillou’s established address in Glasgow. The letter accompanied a rare oil painting and the only known portrait of the artist: Peter Paillou, Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 14 9/16 x 12 3/16 in. (37 x 31 cm), sold at Bonhams, “Scottish Art” sale, October 11, 2017, lot 2, https://www.bonhams.com/auction/24089/lot/2/peter-paillou-british-1757-1831-self-portrait.

7. “Will of Peter Paillou of Glasgow, Lanarkshire,” PROB 11/1852/107, National Archives, Kew. In it, he bequeaths his friend Anne Peters his chime clock made by Mr. Holmden, furniture, plates, and linen. The clockmaker John George Holmden (ca. 1770–1846) was Paillou’s brother-in-law and is mentioned several times in his will; “John George Holmden and Charlotte Paillou marriage license,” London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P76/JS1/034, London Metropolitan Archives. Anne appears to be a live-in companion who likely predeceased him. Paillou’s will ends in a codicil, with the reversion of his two properties to Anne’s sister, Elizabeth, “who has three children and nothing but the produce of her own labour to bring them up with.”

8. Author Thomas Pennant (1726–1798) described Paillou Senior as “an excellent artist, but too fond of giving gaudy colours to his subjects.” Quoted in Foskett, “Paillou, Peter, senior,” 433. Paillou Senior illustrated the works in Pennant’s acclaimed book British Zoology (London: J. and J. March, 1761–1766).

9. See Peter Paillou Junior, Portrait Miniature of a Gentleman, 1805, watercolor on ivory, 2 3/4 in. (6.7 cm), sold at Chiswick Auctions, March 25, 2020, lot 103, https://www.chiswickauctions.co.uk/auction/lot/lot-103---peter-paillou-junior-british-c1757-d-after/?lot=57376&so=0&st=&sto=0&au=523&ef=&et=&ic=False&sd=1&pp=48&pn=3&g=1; Peter Paillou Junior, Portrait Miniature of a Gentleman, 1813, watercolor on ivory, 2 3/4 in. (7 cm), sold at Chiswick Auctions, March 25, 2020, lot 101, https://www.chiswickauctions.co.uk/auction/lot//?lot=57374&so=0&st=&sto=0&au=523&ef=&et=&ic=False&sd=1&pp=48&pn=3&g=1. According to John Twilley, “These cases also could be explained most-directly as a consequence of fading of lake (a red one used in combination with an inorganic green to make brown).” Twilley to Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, November 15, 2022, Nelson-Atkins Curatorial files.

10. His will is recorded in Glasgow on September 1, 1834. Paillou’s death date is listed in Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Exhibition Illustrative of Old Glasgow (Glasgow: William Hodge, 1896), 483.

11. “Will of Peter Paillou of Glasgow, Lanarkshire.” Sophia (b. 1759) married James Dredge on July 11, 1790, and had a daughter, Maria Ann Augusta Dredge. Matilda, according to his will, had a daughter named Caroline. Paillou had at least one other sibling, Charlotte (b. 1762), who may have died before he wrote his will. See London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P82/GIS/A/02, London Metropolitan Archives; and London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P89/MRY1/009, London Metropolitan Archives.

A member of the artistic dynasty of the Peale family, Anna Claypoole Peale became one of the first women elected to membership in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, along with her sister Sarah Miriam Peale, in 1824. Unlike most other women of her era, whose education was segregated by gender and limited to training related to their role within the domestic sphere, Anna learned the spirit of entrepreneurship from an early age, exhibiting and selling her work from the age of fourteen. She became a very public figure and one of the most successful and prolific miniature painters in the United States in the early 1800s. More than two hundred signed examples of her work exist today.¹

One of five daughters born to James Peale (1749–1831) and Mary Chambers Claypoole (1753–1829) in Philadelphia, Anna Claypoole Peale was the only child named after her mother’s family. The Claypooles immigrated from England to Pennsylvania in the 1600s and claim as their family heroine Elizabeth Cromwell Claypoole (1629–1658), the second daughter of Oliver Cromwell, who reportedly interceded with her father on behalf of royalist political prisoners. Anna proudly included the “C” in her signature, linking her to that determined ancestor.² Peale’s artistic talents were recognized early on and nurtured by both her uncle, the artist Charles Willson Peale, and her father, with whom she began an apprenticeship in miniature painting around age fourteen. She began by painting fabric for shawls, but like her father, she eventually specialized in portrait miniatures. Hallmarks of her style include a distinctive wiry brushstroke and a love of dark, richly colored backgrounds. In 1818, her uncle Charles took her to his Washington, DC, studio to further her career, and by the 1820s she had a thriving practice, traveling to Boston, Baltimore, and New York to paint portraits. She counted presidents, generals, and members of the highest levels of society among her sitters, sustaining herself financially as a single female professional, which facilitated her independence.

Peale waited until she was nearly forty years old to marry, at which point she suspended her artistic practice. In 1829, she married the Reverend William Staughton, who died just three months later. Peale returned to Philadelphia to continue her studio portrait practice until 1841, when she married brigadier General William Duncan. They enjoyed nearly a quarter-century together before his death in 1864. Neither union resulted in children. After Duncan’s death, Peale resumed painting briefly, in oils, having retired from painting miniatures possibly due to diminished eyesight and commissions.

Notes

1. Anna not only operated outside the domestic sphere; she chose the very visible path of portrait painter, requiring her to advertise and negotiate commissions. She listed her vocation, name, and address in catalogues in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New York. See Anne Sue Hirshorn, “Anna Claypoole, Margaretta, and Sarah Miriam Peale: Modes of Accomplishment and Fortune,” in The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1770–1870, ed. Lillian B. Miller, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Trust for Museum Exhibitions, 1996), 231. For a more in-depth discussion on Anna’s life, along with that of her sisters, Margaretta and Sarah Miriam Peale, see the entire chapter, pp. 221–47.

2. Hirshorn, The Peale Family, 221.

An incredibly prolific man—both in the arts and as a father of seventeen children, several of whom became artists—Charles Willson Peale was a man of multiple talents. Born in Queen Anne County, Maryland, on April 15, 1741, to Charles Peale (1709–1750)¹ and Margaret Triggs (1709–1791), the young Peale worked initially as a saddle maker, opening his own shop at age twenty. He turned to painting after finding the quality of paintings unsatisfactory during a trip to Norfolk. With an instruction book and limited training from painter John Hesselius (1728/9–1778), Peale quickly mastered the craft, which he honed through painting signs and studying the work of American artist John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), whom he met in Boston in 1765. Following a two-year course of study in London with Benjamin West (1738–1820) from 1767 to 1769, Peale returned to Maryland, where he quickly became one of the leading portraitists there and in Virginia, and Philadelphia, where he moved with his family in 1776.

Peale served with the Pennsylvania militia in battles against the British, and he brought his portrait miniature case with him to paint portraits of fellow officers, ultimately gaining several commissions to paint major civil and military personalities. He assembled these portraits into a “Gallery of Great Men” for his natural history museum, the Columbianum, which he opened in 1795. The effort occupied a great amount of time and required much financial support.

Peale married three times. His first wife, Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), was the mother of eleven children, six of whom lived to maturity. Three of their sons—Raphaelle (1774–1825), Rembrandt (1778–1860), and Rubens (1784–1865)—became artists. Although Peale married two more times and had six more children, only one, Titian Ramsay II, followed an artistic path.²

Peale prided himself on educating his daughters as well as his sons, but it was his nieces Anna Claypoole Peale (1791–1878), Margaretta (1795–1882), and Sarah Miriam (1800–1885)—daughters of his brother James Peale (1749–1831), also an artist—who emerged as some of the first professional female painters in America.³

Notes

1. Son of Charles Peale (1688–1734), rector of Edith Weston, Rutlandshire, England.

2. Peale married Rachel Brewer on January 12, 1763; Elizabeth DePeyster (1765–1804) on May 30, 1791; and Hannah Moore (1755–1821) on August 12, 1805. See Lillian Miller, ed., The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1770–1870, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Trust for Museum Exhibitions, 1996), 12.

3. Biographies of Charles Willson Peale are abundant. For a comprehensive overview of his life and career, see Charles Coleman Sellers, “Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 42, no. 1 (1952): 1–369.

Best remembered today as the younger brother of artist Charles Willson Peale, James Peale held his own on the battlefield of the Revolutionary War, as a successful artist, and as a father to a successive generation of artists carrying the Peale name. Born in Chestertown, Maryland, as the second child of Charles Peale and Margaret Triggs, James lost his father when he was still an infant, after which the family moved to Annapolis. In 1762, James began to serve in apprenticeships there, first in a saddlery (like his older brother) and later in a cabinetmaking shop. After his brother Charles returned from London in 1769, where he had studied with Benjamin West (1738–1820), James served as his studio assistant and learned how to paint. James worked in his brother’s studio until January 14, 1776, when he accepted a commission in the Continental Army. He resigned his army commission in 1779 for reasons that remain unclear, and he moved to Philadelphia to live with his brother. In 1782, James married Mary Chambers Claypoole, who also came from a family of artists, after which he established his own household and artistic career as a portrait painter.¹ They had seven children—including the portrait miniaturist Anna Claypoole Peale (1791–1878)—of whom only three married.²

In 1786, James was liberated from his older brother Charles’ dominating shadow in a public division of labor, articulated by Charles, wherein Charles would paint larger oils and James would paint portraits in miniature. This allowed James the opportunity to develop his own style in the 1790s. His earlier works, largely indebted to his older brother, demonstrate a tight control of brushwork and a palette of deep, rich tones, whereas his later works are freer in handling, with forms less sharply defined and an earthier palette.³ Later, his failing eyesight necessitated a return to larger-scale work, including still-life painting. He painted still lifes between 1795 and 1828, in the autumn of his life, with the fruits and vegetables he depicted in evidence of full ripeness—and some, like him, with signs of the onset of decay.⁴

Notes

1. See John Dwight Kilbourne, Virtutis Praemium: The Men Who Founded the State Society of Cincinnati of Pennsylvania (Rockport, ME: Picton Press, 1998), 1:331.

2. See Charles Coleman Sellers, “Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 42, no. 1 (1952): 1–369. A Peale family genealogy can be found in Charles Coleman Sellers, An Artist of the Revolution, vol. 2, Later Life (1790–1827) (Philadelphia: Feather and Good & American Philosophical Society, 1947), 412–23.

3. Linda Crocker Simmons, “James Peale: Out of the Shadows,” in The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1770–1870, ed. Lillian B. Miller, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Trust for Museum Exhibitions, 1996), 217.

4. William H. Gerdts, Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life, 1801–1939 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981), 62, as cited in Simmons, “Out of the Shadows,” 218.

Born in Geneva, Switzerland, to French Huguenot parents, Jean Petitot revolutionized enamel miniature painting.¹ Petitot trained as a goldsmith and jeweler in Geneva² before relocating to Paris around 1633. In Paris, he probably encountered the enameller Jean Toutin (1578–1644).³ In any case, after Petitot arrived in London in about 1637,⁴ he almost certainly came across Toutin’s son Henri, who painted King Charles I in enamel in 1636.⁵

Petitot’s time in England was formative. With Charles I’s support and under the guidance of royal portraitist Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), Petitot used his training as a goldsmith to create exquisite enamel portrait jewels, in terms of both their surface and their framing, achieving the luminosity of oil painting in this challenging medium.⁶ Collaborating with chemist Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, he developed new enamel shades, bringing a fresh naturalism to his works.

In England, Petitot formed a lasting partnership with enameller Jacques Bordier (1616–1684).⁷ However, the English Civil War (1642–1651) forced him to flee to Paris, where Petitot found favor with King Louis XIV. To meet the demand for royal portraits, Bordier, who had also returned to France, probably assisted him with backgrounds, allowing Petitot to concentrate on facial details.⁸ While he used portraits by artists like Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674) and Pierre Mignard (1612–1695) as references, Petitot’s finest works transcend mere copies, capturing the king with remarkable nuance.⁹

In 1685, when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, Petitot’s life took a turn. He refused to renounce his Protestant faith, resulting in expulsion from the Académie Royale and imprisonment at For-l’Évêque.¹⁰ Despite appeals to the monarch and his noble clientele, Petitot remained incarcerated until 1687, when he found refuge in Switzerland.¹¹ He died in 1691, leaving an unmatched legacy of technical and stylistic innovation in enamel miniature painting.

Notes

1. Petitot’s father was the Burgundian sculptor and architect Faule Petitot (ca. 1572–1629). “Petitot, Jean, the Elder,” Benezit Dictionary of Artists, October 31, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00139895.

2. Petitot apprenticed under his uncle, the goldsmith Jean Royaume (d. 1654). Clare Vincent, Jan Hendrik Leopold, and Elizabeth Sullivan, European Clocks and Watches in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015), 124. His training continued until about 1626, when Petitot set out to produce his own work.

3. Toutin had recently begun mounting his small enamels into jewelry. “Petitot, Jean,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T066745. See also Priscilla Grace, “A Celebrated Miniature of the Comtesse d’Olonne,” Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 83, no. 53 (Autumn 1986): 9.

4. According to R. W. Lightbown, city records indicate that “by 1637 ‘Mounsr Pattatto’ [sic] was already established on the east side of St. Martin’s Lane [in London] and paying 4s for Scavenger’s Rates.” Scavenger’s rates were collected from householders by each parish in London. The fees went toward the scavengers who were paid to keep the streets clean. R. W. Lightbown, “Jean Petitot and Jacques Bordier at the English Court,” The Connoisseur, no. 168 (1968): 84.

5. It has been suggested that Petitot received training from either Jean or Henri (sometimes spelled Henry) Toutin (1614–after 1683). While there is no direct evidence to support this, it is likely that he knew their groundbreaking work. See R. W. Lightbown, “Les Origines de la peinture en émail sur or: Un traité inconnu et des faits nouveaux,” Revue de l’Art, no. 5 (1969): 46–49. See also Henri Toutin, Charles I, 1636, enamel on gold, 2 7/8 x 2 1/16 inches (7.4 cm x 5.3 cm), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-4370.

6. Charles I probably commissioned a series of enamels after Van Dyck’s portraits of the royal family; “Petitot, Jean,” Grove Art Online. Per Benezit, Charles knighted Petitot; “Petitot, Jean, the Elder,” Benezit Dictionary of Artists.

7. Lightbown, “Jean Petitot and Jacques Bordier at the English Court,” 82–91. Lightbown shows that Bordier left England in August 1638 and was later reunited with Petitot in France.

8. Petitot’s workshop practice is not dissimilar from that of large-scale oil portraitists like Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and his former student Van Dyck, who had some role in Petitot’s training in England. One of Petitot’s sons, also named Jean, later joined his father and Bordier in painting miniatures. According to Pierre Jean Mariette, “Petitot [was assisted by] Jacques or Pierre Bordier, [also] from Geneva, and his brother-in-law, as they had married two sisters. [Bordier] painted the backgrounds, part of the draperies and sketched the heads, and Petitot then returned to the whole and finished the work which he brought to perfection.” Pierre Jean-Mariette, Abecedario (Paris: J. B. Dumoulin, 1857–1858), 118. Translation author’s own. The breadth of Petitot’s practice, and the similarity of his works to those by Bordier and Jean Petitot II, has led to more recent difficulties in attributing and identifying works from this busy workshop.

9. “Petitot, Jean,” Grove Art Online.

10. “Petitot, Jean, the Elder,” Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Petitot, a devout Protestant, recorded meditations on his life and faith in the manuscript, Prayers and Christian Meditations for the Family in Times of Health, Illness and Death, that he compiled for his relatives. According to Benezit, the frontispiece displays a self-portrait of Petitot and his wife, Marguerite.

11. Petitot was released only after being forced to sign an act of abjuration renouncing his Protestantism. He continued to work in Geneva as late as 1687, when he painted Jean Sobieski and his wife in Geneva; “Petitot, Jean, the Elder,” Benezit Dictionary of Artists.

Andrew Plimer was the youngest of four sons born to Nathaniel (ca. 1727–1816) and Elizabeth Plimer¹ in Shropshire, England, and he was baptized there on December 29, 1763.² Nathaniel was a clockmaker and probably trained his sons in the same profession.³ One son, Abraham (1757–1827), appears to have pursued his father’s career in clockmaking, whereas Andrew and Nathaniel (1750–1822) ventured into painting portrait miniatures.⁴

Art historian George Charles Williamson asserted that Andrew Plimer was initially a manservant but later trained under miniaturist Richard Cosway (1742–1821). While some of Plimer’s work resembles Cosway’s in style, his early training has not yet been proven.⁵ Plimer worked at a studio in London while exhibiting at the Royal Academy of the Arts intermittently between 1786 and 1810.⁶ One of his students, Mary Ann Knight (1776–1851) introduced him to her sister, Joanna Louisa Knight, and the two married on February 21, 1801. They had five children together.⁷ The family moved to Brighton as early as 1834 but may have moved elsewhere later, as Plimer’s death notice refers to him as “an eminent miniature painter in Exeter.”⁸ Plimer died in Brighton on January 29, 1837, and was buried at St. Andrew’s churchyard shortly after.⁹

Most scholars separate Plimer’s style into two categories: his early, pre-1790, signed miniatures and his later unsigned and undated works.¹⁰ His sitters in the early signed works appear more individualized.¹¹ Plimer’s 1790s portraits display three-quarters profiles on larger ivory with formulaically hatched backgrounds. By 1810, his works had grown significantly in size, perhaps due to fading eyesight.¹² He experimented with, and excelled at, group compositions and seemed to prefer painting portraits of children.¹³

Notes

1. “Nathaniel Plimmer [sic],” Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P291/A/4/1, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury. Plimer is sometimes spelled “Plymer” or “Plimmer.” Nathaniel and Elizabeth married on August 24, 1745. Her maiden name is listed as Hazeldine. Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P129/A/1/6, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury.

2. “Andrew Plymer,” Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P291/A/1/3, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury. In addition to Abraham, Nathaniel, and Andrew, William (1747–1801) was the fourth son, born two years after Nathaniel and Elizabeth’s marriage. William was baptized on December 13, 1747 (Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P129/A/1/6, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury) and buried on July 3, 1801 (Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P291/A/1/5, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury).

3. See Nathaniel Plimmer, Thirty-Hour Longcase Clock, ca. 1770–1780, brass, 77 1/2 x 21 1/4 x 10 5/8 in. (197 x 54 x 27 cm), British Museum, London, 2010,8029.23, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_2010-8029-23. The British Museum lists “Plimmer’s” birth year as 1750, but this most likely refers to his son of the same name. George Charles Williamson, Andrew and Nathaniel Plimer: Miniature Painters; Their Lives and Their Works (London: George Bell and Sons, 1903), 7, 9, 34. Williamson tells a fantastical story of the early lives of the two Plimer brothers, saying they left home to join a group of Romani Travelers. Despite this being a narrative repeated throughout the Plimers’ biographies, it has yet to be substantiated.

4. See Abraham Plimer, 8-Day Longcase Plimer (Wellington), 18th century, Shropshire striking 8-day brass dial longcase clock, 86 x 18 in. (218.4 x 45.7 cm), sold at Corner Farm Antiques, Shropshire, Shrewsbury, SKU: CFA 6324.

5. Williamson mentions a letter from miniaturist Richard Cosway (1742–1821) in which he describes finding Plimer attempting to copy his work and “doing it with such skill and with such ‘applomb’— to use the misspelt word which appears in one of Cosway’s letters.” This letter has yet to be located. Williamson, Andrew and Nathaniel Plimer, 11.

6. Andrew Plimer exhibited at the Royal Academy in the following years: 1787–1788, 1792–1794, 1796–1797, 1799–1803, 1805–1807, and 1810; see The Exhibition of The Royal Academy, digitized on https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/search/exhibition-catalogues. For Plimer’s studio, see Vanessa Remington, “Plimer, Andrew 1763–1837,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 44:581. See also the exceptional portrait he exhibited in his final year at the Royal Academy: Andrew Plimer, A Devonshire Farmer, ca. 1810, watercolor on ivory, 5 11/16 x 4 1/8 in. (14.4 x 10.5 cm), sold at Christie’s, “Treasured Portraits from the Collection of Ernst Holzscheiter,” July 3, 2018, lot 15, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6151725.

7. Wicken Parish Registers, ref. 364P/6, Northamptonshire Record Office. Mary Anne Knight was listed as a witness on their marriage license. Their children were Louisa (1801–1864), Joanna (1803–1846), Charlotte (1804–1845), Andrew Marshal (1805–1811), and Selina (1809–1841); London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. DL/T/090/003, London Metropolitan Archives; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STJ/PR/1/6, City of Westminster Archives Centre; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STJ/PR/1/6, City of Westminster Archives Centre. There is a portrait identified as Selina Plimer, but the portrait depicts a young child with angel wings, so this may in fact depict Plimer’s son, Andrew Marshal, who died at the age of six. Andrew Plimer, Portrait of Selina Plimer, ca. 1800, watercolor on ivory, 3 1/16 x 2 7/16 in. (7.8 x 6.2 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1955-1-3, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/54865.

8. Plimer worked from a studio at 32 Great Maddox Street around 1786 and then on Golden Square from 1787 to 1810. “1834 London Poll Books,” London Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Library. For the death notice, see “Jan. 29. At Brighton, aged 74, Andrew Plimer, esq. many years ago an eminent miniature painter in Exeter,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 7 (March 1837): 334.

9. Sussex Parish Registers, ref. PAR 386/1/5/1, East Sussex Record Office, Brighton.

10. Remington, “Plimer, Andrew 1763–1837,” 581.

11. There are at least two examples of him signing his work “A. Plimer”: Andrew Plimer, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1800, watercolor on ivory, 2 3/8 x 2 in. (6 x 5.1 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1942-101-31a https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/47343; and Portrait of a Man, ca. 1800, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/16 x 2 1/16 in. (6.2 x 5.2 cm), Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1942-101-31b, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/47344.

12. Portrait of a Lady, 1826, watercolor on paper, 9 1/4 x 7 1/8 in. (23.5 x 18 cm), previously in the inventory of Philip Mould, London, https://historicalportraits.com/artists/97-andrew-plimer/works/3334-andrew-plimer-portrait-of-a-lady-seated-wearing-a-white-1826/. Note the overlapping, cursive “AP” in this piece, as well.

13. See Andrew Plimer, Lady Affleck and her Daughters, ca. 1795, watercolor on ivory, 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (11.4 x 8.9 cm), Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA, 24.20.

Portrait miniature painters and brothers Nathaniel and Andrew Plimer were two of four sons born to Nathaniel (ca. 1727–1816) and Elizabeth Plimer (ca. 1727–1790)¹ in Shropshire, England; the younger Nathaniel was baptized there on February 22, 1750.² The elder Nathaniel was a clockmaker and probably trained his sons in the same profession.³ Abraham appears to have pursued his father’s career in clockmaking, while Nathaniel and Andrew (1763–1837) became painters of portrait miniatures.⁴

Nathaniel Plimer exhibited at the Royal Academy intermittently from 1787 to 1802 and then, finally, in 1815. He also briefly exhibited at the Society of Artists of Great Britain from 1790 to 1791.⁵ Plimer worked at a studio at 31 Maddox Street around 1787–98, across the street from his brother, Andrew.⁶ He spent many years in Edinburgh, which explains his gap in exhibiting at the academy.⁷

New research has revealed the name of Nathaniel Plimer’s spouse, Ann Weaver, whom he married at St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, on June 27, 1785.⁸ They had at least five children together: William, Anne, Nathaniel, Adela, and Andrew.⁹ Nathaniel’s son and namesake continued the family tradition in the arts, listing his occupation as a house and sign painter, specifically a “paper hanger gilder”; an 1861 census recorded his profession as “artist decorator.”¹⁰ Adela Plimer married the Scottish painter and printmaker Andrew Geddes (1783–1844) in 1827, an introduction that probably occurred after her uncle Andrew sat for Geddes (Fig. 1).¹¹

Nathaniel Plimer died in 1822, according to the description of a self-portrait exhibited by Adela in 1865—the earliest known record listing his year of death.¹² Like Andrew, Nathaniel signed his early (ca. 1787–1788) miniatures with his initials and the year.¹³ His style is harder to pinpoint than his brother’s, but his brushwork is softer, and his sitters’ eyes are slightly enlarged, with exaggerated bottom eyelashes. Fewer miniatures are attributed to him than to his better-known brother.

Notes

1. “Nathaniel Plimmer,” Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P291/A/4/1, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury. Plimer is sometimes spelled “Plymer” or “Plimmer.” Nathaniel (ca. 1727–1816) and Elizabeth (ca. 1727–1790) probably married on August 24, 1745. Her maiden name is listed as Hazeldine. Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P129/A/1/6, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury; Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P291/A/1/4, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury.

2. This is new research by the author. According to “Nathaniel Plimer,” Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P129/A/1/7, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury. In addition to Abraham, Nathaniel, and Andrew, William (1747–1801) was the fourth son, born two years after Nathaniel and Elizabeth’s marriage. William was baptized on December 13, 1747 (Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P129/A/1/6, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury) and buried on July 3, 1801 (Anglican Parish Registers, ref. P291/A/1/5, Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury).

3. See Nathaniel Plimmer, Thirty-Hour Longcase Clock, ca. 1770–80, brass, 77 1/2 x 21 1/4 x 10 5/8 in. (197 x 54 x 27 cm), British Museum, London, 2010,8029.23, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_2010-8029-23. The British Museum lists Plimmer’s birth year as 1750, but this most likely refers to his son of the same name. George Charles Williamson, Andrew and Nathaniel Plimer: Miniature Painters Their Lives and Their Works (London: George Bell and Sons, 1903), 7, 9, 34. Williamson tells an imaginative story of the two Plimer brothers, saying they left home at a young age to join a group of Romani Travelers, but this has yet to be substantiated. Williamson also states that Nathaniel worked under enamellist Henry Bone (1755–1834), but no known enamels by Nathaniel exist.

4. See Abraham Plimer (1757–1827), 8-Day Longcase Plimer (Wellington), 18th century, Shropshire striking 8-day brass dial longcase clock, 86 x 18 in. (218.4 x 45.7 cm), for sale at Corner Farm Antiques, SKU: CFA 6324, https://www.cornerfarmantiques.com/p/cfa-6324---8-day-longcase-plimer-wellington.

5. Nathaniel Plimer exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1787–90, 1793–98, 1801–02, and 1815.

6. Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors (London: Henry Graves and George Bell, 1906), 6:163. Andrew worked from a studio at 32 Great Maddox Street around 1786.

7. “Plimer, N. portrait painter, 1, James’ square,” quoted in “Edinburgh Directors,” The Post-Office Annual Directory (Edinburgh: J. Stark, 1806), 154; Helen Smailes, Peter Black, and Lesley Stevenson, Andrew Geddes, 1783–1844: Painter-Printmaker: “A Man of Pure Taste” (Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 2001), 24. Plimer lived in Edinburgh for at least ten years, from 1804 to 1813/14.

8. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P71/MMG/055, London Metropolitan Archives.

9. William (1786–1788) was born May 22 and baptized July 23, 1786, at St. George, Hanover Square; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/2/4, City of Westminster Archives Centre. He died as a child and was buried on April 6, 1788; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/8/3. Anne (1788–ca. 1867) was born February 27 and baptized April 1, 1788, at St. George, Hanover Square; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/2/5. She married Andrew James in 1827; London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P90/PAN1/063, London Metropolitan Archives. Nathaniel (1789–1866) was baptized December 28, 1789, at St. George, Hanover Square; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/2/5, City of Westminster Archives Centre. He married Anne Grnby in Wales on September 25, 1836; “1861 Wales Census,” Glamorgan, Llanblethian, class RG9, piece 4075, folio 30, page 2, GSU roll 543230, National Archives, Kew. Adela (1791–1881) was born August 22 and baptized September 29, 1791, at St. George, Hanover Square; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/2/5. Andrew (1793–after 1851) was born June 18 and baptized August 11, 1793, at St. George, Hanover Square; Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/2/5, City of Westminster Archives Centre; “1851 Scotland Census,” St. George, Edinburgh, ref. 1B, page 14, line 9, roll CSSCT1851_179, General Register Office for Scotland, Edinburgh.

10. “Plimer, Nathaniel,” Pigot and Co.’s National Commercial Directory (Manchester: Pigot and Company, 1830), 853; “1861 Wales Census.”

11. Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/7/15.

12. Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures on Loan at the South Kensington Museum (London: Whittingham and Wilkins, 1865), 202, no. 2226, as Nathaniel Plimer, the Artist.

13. See Nathaniel Plimer, William Vallance of Sittingbourne, 1787, watercolor on ivory, 1 11/16 x 1 1/4 in. (4.3 x 3.2 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, P.152-1931; and Mrs. William Vallance of Sittingbourne (née Mary Ann Beckett), 1788, watercolor on ivory, 1 1/2 x 1 5/16 in. (4 x 3.3 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, P.153-1931.

The Irish-born artist John Ramage traveled around the North American colonies and Canada, fleeing creditors and unsuccessful marriages and switching political allegiances, for most his life.¹ Few genealogical records document Ramage’s childhood, but it is known that he entered the Dublin School of Drawing in 1763 at the age of fifteen, suggesting a birth year of around 1748.² He studied under portrait and historical painter Jacob Ennis (1728–1770), and his contemporaries at the school included miniaturists Charles Forrest (active 1765–1787) and Walter Robertson (ca. 1750–1801).³

According to Ramage’s will, he married one Elizabeth Liddel but abandoned her to pursue a painting career in Canada.⁴ Ramage then relocated to Boston, where he joined the Royal Irish Volunteers and married for a second time, to Maria Victoria Ball, on March 3, 1776.⁵ When British forces evacuated the city a few days later, he fled Boston for Halifax unaccompanied. Within a year, Ramage had married a “Miss Taylor.”⁶ Ball later confirmed his bigamy and obtained a divorce: “She found her Husband really married to Mrs. Taylor. . . . [they] have since left Halifax, to avoid the further Pursuits of the Law.”⁷ Ramage married for the fourth and final time on January 29, 1787, to Catharine Collins in New York City.⁸

While the scandals of Ramage’s personal life often consume his narrative, he was nonetheless a talented miniaturist, his reputation solidifying after painting the first presidential portrait of George Washington.⁹ Ramage’s experience as a goldsmith also enabled his production of cases for miniatures, and he was adept at creating hairwork.¹⁰ Despite this notoriety, Ramage died impoverished in Montreal on October 24, 1802, after a long illness.¹¹

Notes

1. Ramage was initially a Loyalist, but he realigned as an American patriot after moving to New York around 1777. Shortly before his death, he applied for a Loyalist land grant in Canada. John Hill Morgan, A Sketch of The Life of John Ramage: Miniature Painter (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1930), 27–32.

2. Paul Caffrey, “John Ramage: The Wandering Portraitist,” Irish Arts Review 19, no. 1 (Summer 2002): 96. His brother, Thomas, is also recorded as residing there, according to Morgan, Sketch of the Life of John Ramage, 33: “Send the Letter to Mr. Liddel inclos’d in My Brother, and he can forward it from Dublin.”

3. Julie Aronson and Marjorie E. Wieseman, Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 258. Ramage won prizes three of his four years there and probably moved to London afterward, around 1767.

4. Ramage’s will is reproduced and transcribed in Morgan, Sketch of the Life of John Ramage, 47–49. Liddel was apparently the daughter of London merchant Henry Liddel. They had two children together: John and Elizabeth. Morgan, Sketch of The Life of John Ramage, 2–3. Lawsuits place Ramage in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on July 27, 1772, and June 22, 1774.

5. Morgan, Sketch of The Life of John Ramage, 4. John Ramage marriage license to Victoria Ball, Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620–1988, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com.

6. Morgan, Sketch of The Life of John Ramage, 5. Ramage married Taylor in St. Paul’s Church, Halifax, and the ceremony was performed by Dr. John Breynton. While no records have been found, it occurred sometime between March 17, 1776, the day of Boston’s evacuation, and June 19, 1777, the date of the letter mentioned in n. 7.

7. Mather Byles Jr., Halifax, to the Rev. William Walter, Rector of Trinity Church, June 19, 1777, quoted in Morgan, Sketch of The Life of John Ramage, 6.

8. New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (New York: Genealogical and Biographical Society of New York, 1882), 14:98. She was the daughter of John Collins, a New York merchant, and they had three children together: Matilda, George Collins, and Thomas A. (b. February 2, 1793). Historian William Dunlap recounted Ramage’s physical appeal at the time, “Mr. Ramage was a handsome man of the middle size, with an intelligent countenance and lively eye. He dressed fashionable.” Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (New York: George P. Scott, 1834), 1:227. As evidence of Ramage’s stylishness, see his silver knee buckles: Knee Buckles in Box, 1750–1800, paste and silver, New York Historical Society Museum and Library, 1947.468a–c, https://emuseum.nyhistory.org/objects/35027/knee-buckles-in-pouch.

9. The commission probably came as a request from the First Lady; the entry in Washington’s diary for October 3, 1789, reads: “Sat for Mr. Rammage nearly two hours today, who was drawing a miniature Picture of me for Mrs. Washington.” Quoted in Morgan, Sketch of The Life of John Ramage, 11. See the lot essay for John Ramage, Portrait of George Washington, 1789, watercolor on ivory, 2 1/8 in. (5.4 cm), sold at Christie’s “George Washington: The First Presidential Portrait,” January 19, 2001, lot 84, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-1993991.

10. A 1784 advertisement describes his “curious Devices in Hair.” Independent Journal: Or, the General Advertiser, January 24, 1784, quoted in Aronson and Wieseman, Perfect Likeness, 65.

11. “John Ramage, of Montreal, Limner,” Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621–1968: 1802, Institut Généalogique Drouin, Montreal, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com.

Caroline Schetky Richardson, one of very few female miniaturists in the Nelson-Atkins collection, was born around 1792 in Edinburgh, Scotland, to an immensely artistic family.¹ Her father was the famous composer and cellist Johann Georg Christoph Schetky (German, 1737–1824), and her mother, Maria Anna Theresa Reinagle (1754–1795), was a skilled musician and miniature painter.² Reinagle taught a drawing class to women in the 1790s but unfortunately passed away before she could train her daughter.³

Richardson’s eldest brother, George Schetky,⁴ pursued a career in music, while their other siblings practiced art in various forms.⁵ She may have studied in London, but by 1817, she sought a career in the United States. George lived in Philadelphia and returned home to accompany her to the United States, where they arrived after a rough sixty-day journey.⁶ George described his sister a few months later: “She has been very unwell, owing to the change of climate & intense application at her painting Desk (Fig. 1), having begun 9 Pictures & finished 4 of them.”⁷

Richardson also taught landscape drawing and miniature painting classes for young women while living in Philadelphia.⁸ She exhibited an astonishing twenty-seven works in 1818 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and continued exhibiting until 1826, when she moved to Boston and exhibited at the newly opened Boston Athenaeum from 1827 until 1841.⁹ She was well connected in her new city: portraitist James Longacre’s (1794–1869) diary reveals her friendship with Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) and fellow miniaturist Sara Goodridge (1788–1853).¹⁰

She also met Samuel Richardson (1785–1847) in Boston, and despite her family’s hesitations, they married on December 18, 1825, and had four children together.¹¹ Caroline Schetky Richardson died of a skin disease in Boston on March 15, 1852.¹² Her legacy as a female artist in the nineteenth century lives on through the few miniatures that remain today.¹³

Notes

1. Richardson’s 1852 death record lists her age as sixty, suggesting she was born around 1792. Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911: 1852, New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. Other records list her birthdate as March 3, 1790, but this has not been confirmed through a primary source.

2. According to one of Reinagle’s daughters—probably Mary Schetky (ca. 1786–1877)—she was “a highly accomplished artist in both painting and music—miniature-painting was her forte”; Susan Frances Ludomilla Schetky, Ninety Years of Work and Play: Sketches from the Public and Private Career of John Christian Schetky (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1877), 10. Reinagle’s brother, Philip (1749–1833), painted as well. Their father is depicted in a portrait by miniaturist John Smart, Joseph Reinagle, 1767, watercolor on ivory, 1 3/8 in. (3.6 cm) high, sold at Bonhams, London, “Fine Portrait Miniatures,” November 23, 2005, lot 46, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/12071/lot/46. Another family member, Alexander Reinagle (1756–1809), was painted by Robert Field (ca. 1769–1819) in 1804: Alexander Reinagle (1756–1809), watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 x 2 5/16 in. (7.3 x 5.9 cm), Yale University Art Gallery, 2006.225.4, https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/76902.

3. Mary Schetky described her brother, John Christian, at the age of fifteen: “He assisted her in her class for painting, where he won the hearts of all the ladies”; Schetky, Ninety Years of Work and Play, 19, 21. John probably continued Richardson’s training in the arts: “As we grew up, he became our mentor in all the proprieties of a refined female in conduct and manner.”

4. George (1776–1831) was also a cellist and co-founder of the Musical Fund Society in Philadelphia. Richardson collected and preserved her father’s and brother’s manuscripts of music. They were later donated to the Library of Congress; see Edward Waters, “Music,” Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 16, no. 1 (November 1958): 12–13, 20, 24. George moved to the United States in 1787 to live with his uncle, Alexander Reinagle, another musician; John Adams Vinton, The Richardson Memorial: Comprising a Full History and Genealogy of the Posterity of the Three Brothers, Ezekiel, Samuel, and Thomas Richardson (Portland, ME: Brown Thurston, 1876), 126. Richardson played the organ and was very accomplished at the pianoforte.

5. Jane Schetky (1788–1827) wrote on November 22, 1818, that J. M. W. Turner (English, 1775–1851) visited and “saw Alick’s pictures and mine, and condescended to praise my copies of Havel”; Laurence Oliphant Schetky, The Schetky Family: A Compilation of Letters, Memoirs and Historical Data (Portland, OR: privately printed by Portland Printing House, 1942), 109. John Christian (1778–1874) was a famous maritime painter and teacher, and Alexander was an army surgeon and skilled artist.

6. They arrived on December 16, 1817, after “a very rough passage of 60 days”; “George Schetky,” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Passenger and Immigration Lists, 1800–1850: 1817, series 425, microfilm 25, list 179, National Archives, Washington, DC. See the same source for “Sister??? Schetky,” which is undoubtedly Richardson. They traveled on the ship William P. Johnson. The engraving plate for her calling card reads “Miss Schetky / Miniature Painter / from London” and lists her address as 70 Locust Street, Philadelphia, where she was living with her brother in 1818, according to Schetky, Schetky Family, 194–95. See Caroline Schetky Richardson, Calling Card Engraving Plate, copper, 2 x 4 3/8 in. (5.1 x 11.1 cm), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1995.156.36, https://collections.mfa.org/objects/510303.

7. “My Dear Caroline has already begun to paint, & by tomorrow or next day will have finished 2 Portraits.” Schetky, Schetky Family, 198. In her words, “How often have I risen out of bed when a sitter came!” Schetky, Schetky Family, 200.

8. "Miss Schetky, having been much solicited since her arrival in Philadelphia, to give instructions in LANDSCAPE DRAWING, has made an arrangement for the Winter months, by which she sets apart two days in the week from Miniature Painting, for the purpose of receiving a very limited number of Young Ladies, to form a private class at her house.” See “Card,” Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, November 17, 1819, 1; November 15, 1822, 4; and January 17, 1823, 3.

9. The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: 1807–1870, ed. Peter Hastings Falk (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1988), 233; The Boston Athenaeum Art Exhibition Index 1827–1874, ed. Robert Perkins and William Gavin (Boston: Library of the Boston Athenaeum, 1980), 188. According to her brother’s letters, reproduced in Schetky, Schetky Family, 210, she had her business up and running in Boston by August 1824.

10. He wrote on July 25, 1825, “Neagle and I visited the painting rooms of Mr. Alexander, Mr. Mason, Miss Goodridge and Miss Schetky,” and on the next day, “Spent the evening at Mr. Stuart’s with his family and Misses Schetky and Goodridge”; Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1905), 29:140–41. Goodridge’s work overlapped with Richardson’s at the Boston Athenaeum. See Julie Aronson’s biography on Goodridge in Julie Aronson and Marjorie E. Wieseman, Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 196. Richardson was probably also acquainted with Anna Claypoole Peale (1791–1878), whose work overlapped with hers at PAFA. Richardson later copied Stuart’s portrait, Rev. Dr. Gardiner, according to the 1827 exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum: “Rev. Dr. Gardiner. Copy From Stuart (miniature);” see Boston Athenaeum Art Exhibition Index 1827–1874, 188, no. 292.

11. Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911: 1825, New England Historic Genealogical Society. Her sister, Mary, wrote to George, “I instantly wrote, advising her [Caroline] to fly from him, as she said that you were very angry, & that all her friends were against it—I hope Caroline will give us no more heart aches, but that she will be happy in her Married State.” The letter continues, “We are much comforted by your account of Mr. Richardson, and wish you joy of a Brother-In-Law—I write to Caroline & I promise you there shall be no more Advisings on my part. I hope she will marry Mr. R. & then we shall all be happy”; Schetky, Schetky Family, 189, 192. For more information on Samuel Richardson (1785–1847), see Nicholas Tawa, From Psalm to Symphony: A History of Music in New England (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 66. He was also a founding member of the choral society Handel and Haydn (https://handelandhaydn.org). His parents were Benjamin Richardson and Ann Brintnall; see Vinton, The Richardson Memorial, 89. Their children were Christopher Alexander Schetky (1826–1903), John Samuel (1828–1832), Mary Elizabeth Phelps (1829–1898), and George Schetky (1831–1875).

12. Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911: 1852, New England Historic Genealogical Society. Her burial record lists “erysipelas” as her cause of death.

13. See the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1995.156.1–119, as well as the artist’s four portraits listed on the Smithsonian’s “Catalog of American Portraits,” https://npg.si.edu/portraits/research/search: Hannah Haskins Kast, ca. 1820–30, velvet, leather, glass, paper, 3 7/8 x 3 in. (9.8 x 7.6 cm), New Haven Museum, 1977.376, http://collections.newhavenmuseum.org/mDetail.aspx?rID=1977.376&db=objects&dir=NEWHAVEN&osearch=1977.376; Dr. George Washington Holden, 1825–30, gouache and gold on ivory, 2 5/8 x 2 1/8 in. (6.7 x 5.4 cm), Henry Ford Museum, 65.73.20; James Carroll, location unknown; and the Nelson-Atkins portrait.

Thomas Richmond was born in Kew on March 28, 1771.¹ His father, also named Thomas (1740–1794), had traveled to London from Yorkshire and become groom to the stables of Henry, the Duke of Gloucester.² From 1780, the elder Richmond replaced Mr. Oram, his son’s future father-in-law, as proprietor of the Coach and Horses Inn at Kew Green.³ Richmond Sr. married Anne Bone, a cousin of George Engleheart (1750–1829), whose familial connections afforded their son proximity to the art of miniature painting.⁴ Although little is known about the young Thomas Richmond’s training, his notebook lists twenty-two portraits painted in 1789 and 1790, six of which include the Engleheart surname, including one in 1789: “D^o, a Picture for M^r G. Eng^t.”⁵ This suggests that Richmond was studying or working under Engleheart around the age of eighteen.⁶

Richmond began his professional career as a miniature painter working on South Street, Grosvenor Square, while steadily exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1795 to 1829.⁷ Richmond married Ann Oram (1773–1860) of Hoxton and had two sons who followed their father in the family trade: Thomas Richmond III (1802–1874) and George Richmond (1809–1896).⁸ Their father spent the last half of his life at 42 Half Moon Street, in fashionable Mayfair, opposite Buckingham Palace, and died on November 15, 1837.⁹

Stylistically, Richmond’s mark making is stronger and more hard-edged than that of his presumed teacher, George Engleheart, and fellow student John Cox Dillman Engleheart (1784–1862). Many of Richmond’s identified portraits are of men posed in three-quarters view and facing right, with a distinct highlight along the edge and tip of the nose.¹⁰ Some of his sitters tend to have a yellowish undertone to their skin and unrealistically large eyes. Overall, Richmond employs sharp and stylized lines that are most apparent in his rendering of hair; every line is exact, and he pays special attention to hairlines and eyebrows. The majority of Richmond’s miniatures are unsigned and undated. As a result, many remain unattributed or erroneously attributed to other hands. When he did sign his work, it was as a verso inscription with his name and address.¹¹

Notes

1. Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STG/PR/2/4, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London. There is no relation to Thomas Richmond Gale Braddyll, whose family was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds (English, 1723–1792).

2. Thomas Richmond, “His Book,” ref. GRI/1/1, Royal Academy Collection Archive, London. Richmond wrote, “G[?] Richmond Left His Royal Highness of Gloucester Nov. the 25th 1789 for Prince William Henry.” The latter refers to Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1751–1805). Also located in Richmond’s book is “Memmorandums [sic] for the year 189,” presumably 1789, which lists a copied portrait of the Duke of Gloucester, completed on June 24. There is also a miniature attributed to Richmond of Sophia Matilda of Gloucester (1773–1844), listed in Basil Long, Victoria and Albert Museum: Exhibition of Miniatures by George Engleheart, J. C. D. Engleheart and Thomas Richmond: May–June, 1929 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1929), 17, no. 236.

3. Ralph L. Clarke and Vernon Clarke, The Clarkes of Graiguenoe Park and their Kindred Families, ch. 9, “The Clarke Descendants and Their Associated Families” (privately published, 1976), online edition accessed December 29, 2021, http://www.marshalclarke.com/ClarkesOfGraiguenoepark/Clarkes9.htm.

4. Albert Nicholson, “Thomas Richmond,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 46:880.

5. Thomas Richmond, “His Book.” The “Memmorandums” page also tells us that he averaged about three portraits a month in the year 1789.

6. Daphne Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures: A History (London: Methuen and Company, 1963), 120. Scholars have indicated that Richmond studied at St. Martin’s Lane Academy. Long, Victoria and Albert Museum: Exhibition of Miniatures, lists multiple portraits by Richmond listed as “after Engleheart” and “after Sir Joshua Reynolds” and one “after Cosway.” At least two of these copies were also copied by John Cox Dillman Engleheart (JCD), a fellow pupil of George Engleheart. This suggests that Engleheart’s curriculum for his students largely consisted of copying his and Reynolds’s paintings, a practice he was familiar with, having done the same copying under Reynolds.

7. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy 27 (London: Joseph Cooper, 1795): 13, 26. Richmond supposedly spent time in Portsmouth, judging by the number of naval and army officers’ portraits he completed, according to Leo Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck, 1964), 2:674; Daphne Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 311; and Nicholson, “Thomas Richmond,” 880, although the claim has not yet been substantiated.

8. According to a label on a miniature sold at Christie’s, Richmond may have had a daughter, Emma Richmond (1797–1880). See Thomas Richmond, Emma Richmond, ca. 1802, watercolor on ivory, 2 5/8 in. (6.6 cm), in Christie’s, “A Life’s Devotion: The Collection of the Late Mrs. T. S. Eliot,” November 19, 2013, lot 147, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5733191. A marriage license between an Ann Oram and Thomas Richmond dates to 1825, much later than the birth of their children, despite “Ann” being listed on all three births certificates. Vital records, London Metropolitan Archive, ref. P82/GEO1/023.

9. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P87/MRY/064, London Metropolitan Archives.

10. Most frequent among Richmond’s identified oeuvre are portraits of men. Only a handful of portraits of women are known today.

11. Long, Victoria and Albert Museum: Exhibition of Miniatures, 7.

Charles Robertson listed his age as nine at the 1769 Dublin Society of Artists exhibition, suggesting the artist was born around 1760.¹ Robertson’s older brother, the miniaturist Walter Robertson (ca. 1750–1801), undoubtedly trained him at an early age. The younger Robertson began by working with hair art, but by the time he was fifteen he had his own studio and was exhibiting portrait miniatures (Fig. 1).²

Robertson had a rough start to his career, beginning in 1777 when he was accused of poisoning someone’s dog. The account was recorded in a local newspaper, condemning the painter for feeding a spaniel liver laced with arsenic.³ His livelihood was further threatened when rumors spread that he had died. In 1779, the very-much-alive Robertson appealed to the paper:

Whereas some evil minded Persons have re-ported, with an Intention, I suppose, to injure me in my Profession, that I was dead. I therefore take the Liberty of informing my Friends and the Public, that such a Report is groundless, and that I am living and in good Health, and at the Service of both. Charles Robertson, Miniature Painter.⁴

Robertson moved to London in 1785, perhaps to flee additional harassment. He stayed there for seven years and exhibited at the Royal Academy before resettling in Dublin.⁵ He married Christiana Jaffray in 1785, and they had five children together.⁶

Robertson was closely involved with Ireland’s Hibernian Society of Artists, acting as their secretary and then vice president in 1814, but he died before seeing the formation of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1823.⁷ His legacy continued through his daughter, Clementina (1795–ca. 1853), who also had a career as a portrait miniaturist.⁸

Notes

1. Ruth Devine, “Robertson, Charles,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009, https://www.dib.ie/biography/robertson-charles-a7708.

2. Daphne Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 629.

3. “Deponent hath since found out and discovered that Charles Robertson of George’s lane, painter, was one of the said two men who [illeg.] poisoned said spaniel, and [illeg.] that lately Walter Robertson the brother of said Charles Robertson, and in his presence, professed and promised to Deponent that his said brother Charles Robertson or [illeg.] the said Walter Robertson would pay to said Eaton the full value of said spaniel [illeg.] poisoned.” It continues, “Charles Robertson, with other associates and confederates in conjunction with him, hath lately in like manner maliciously poisoned and secretly, many other spaniels and [illeg.] dogs of the most capital kind in the County and County of the City of Dublin.” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, August 7, 1777, 4.

4. “Lost,” Saunders’s News-Letter, no. 6750 (October 9, 1779): 2.

5. Robertson exhibited miniatures there in 1790 and then again later, after moving back to London, in 1806 and 1808–10; Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904 (London: Henry Graves and George Bell and Sons, 1906), 6:328.

6. Their other children included Thomas Jaffray (1805–1866), Maria (b. 1795), Charles, and Christiana. A miniature by Robertson of Charles, Thomas, and Christiana was exhibited in Edinburgh in 1965; Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide, 630.

7. Devine, “Robertson, Charles.” For more information on the Royal Hibernian Academy, see “RHA School,” Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, accessed November 20, 2023, https://rhagallery.ie/rha-school/; “Charles Robertson, secretary, Committee of Artists, Dublin: for letter by J Comerford on Fine Arts charter,” March 21–25, 1820, ref. CSO/RP/1820/14, National Archives, Dublin, Ireland.

8. Robertson died on November 10, 1821. For an example of Clementina’s work, see Mrs. Clementina Robertson, John Siree (1800–1835), the Artist’s Husband and Medical Student, watercolor on ivory, 1 1/2 in. (4 cm) high, National Gallery of Ireland, NGI.2529, http://onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/6526.

Walter Robertson was born around 1750 in Dublin, Ireland. Robertson, sometimes also known as “Irish Robertson” to differentiate him from an unrelated trio of Scottish painters with the same last name, was born in Dublin around 1750.¹ The elder brother of miniaturist Charles Robertson (ca. 1760–1821), Walter studied at the Dublin Society of Artist’s School of Figure Drawing beginning on October 17, 1765. There his skills earned him a prize for his drawings of human heads and figures in 1766.² He married twice, first to Margaret Bentley in 1771, who presumably predeceased him, and then to Eleanor Robertson in 1781, who survived him.³ He established a miniature portrait painting practice in Dublin from 1768 until 1784, exhibiting with the Dublin Society of Artists during much of that tenure. He moved to London in 1784, where he continued painting miniatures until he ran out of funds in 1792. After he returned to Dublin bankrupt, his property was sold at auction.⁴ His friend, the American artist Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) (who was then living in Dublin), was also in dire financial straits, and the two artists sailed to the United States in early 1793 for a fresh start.⁵

It remains uncertain what became of Robertson’s family during this sojourn. He settled in Philadelphia and secured a commission to paint a portrait of George Washington in 1794, producing five versions, which were engraved numerous times.⁶ He also painted a portrait of Martha Washington and other notable figures. In search of a new clientele, Robertson left the United States in 1795 for India, where he died at Fatehpur, West Bengal, December 18, 1801.

Notes

1. The Scottish Robertsons were brothers Archibald (1765–1835), Alexander (1772–1841), and Andrew (1777–1845).

2. Ruth Devine, “Charles Robertson,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, last revised October 2009, https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.007708.v1. The entry includes a section on Walter Robertson.

3. Walter G. Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists (Dublin and London: Maunsel & Co: 1913), 2:288.

4. “In May of that year [1792] his property, consisting of three houses in Great Britain Street, two at the corner of Cavendish Row and Great Britain Street, three others in Cavendish Row, opposite the Gardens, and others in the North Strand, most of which he had himself built, [were] sold by auction at the Exchange Coffee House in Crampton Court.” Strickland, Dictionary of Irish Artists, 2:288.

5. Strickland, Dictionary of Irish Artists, 2:287.

6. William Dunlap, a contemporary of Robertson and biographer of fellow miniature painter Benjamin Trott, reported that Robertson’s portraits of Washington were a failure and looked nothing like him, although he indicated that his portrait of Martha Washington was more successful. See William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (New York: George P. Scott, 1834), 430.

Sampson Towgood Roch was born around 1757 to William Roch and Mary Marcha Lane in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland.¹ He came from a family of landed gentry that was likely able to aid and encourage his early interest in the arts.² As he began his career, Roch rose steadily through the ranks, ultimately achieving royal patronage, but the societal barriers related to his being born deaf have rendered his name less recognizable than those of his contemporaries.

Roch’s success as a portrait miniaturist received little attention until the 1980s, when the preeminent scholar of Irish miniaturists, Paul Caffrey, described his work in three periods. The first, 1777–91, dates to the time Roch spent in Waterford, Cork, and Dublin.³ While Roch’s early training remains unclear, he worked on Capel Street in Dublin in the 1780s, where his neighbor was the miniaturist Horace Hone (English, ca. 1754–1825); Hone painted a portrait of Roch in 1785.⁴ It has been suggested that Charles Byrne (Irish, 1757–1810) acted as an intermediary for Roch during this period, to mitigate barriers of language or communication. Byrne also pursued a career in the arts, so in addition to voicing for Roch, he may have also been Roch’s pupil or studio assistant.⁵

An example of the stigma Roch faced for his disability occurred on May 29, 1787, the day he married his first cousin, Melian. On the church’s marriage license, the officiating clergyman wrote, “A very disagreeable and in my mind distressing part of a clergyman’s duty to perform the office of matrimony where one of the parties is dumb, as was the case in this union.”⁶ The two did not have children but remained together until Melian’s death in 1837.

The second period of Roch’s career, 1792–1821, covers his move to Bath, England, during which he exhibited two miniatures at the Royal Academy of the Arts and secured the commission of the royal family.⁷ Following this patronage, Roch was reportedly offered a knighthood but refused.⁸ The last period of Roch’s life, 1822–47, coincides with his return to Ireland, moving back to his family home in County Waterford, and his subsequent retirement.

Roch’s style is recognizable through his signature almond-shaped eyes and the curved bridges of his sitters’ noses. He utilized a warm palette with a prominent undertone of pinky-peach pigments, appearing in the light areas of his portraits, particularly in the Nelson-Atkins examples (F58-60/120, F58-60/119, and F58-60/121). The corners of his sitters’ lips are often slightly upturned, with some individuals sporting full grins.⁹ Roch paid close attention to clothing, particularly women’s attire and their fashionable accessories. Roch typically signed his work “S. Roch” or “Roch,” frequently including a date, but he is also known to have signed other works “ROCH,” “Roche,” or “S. T. Roche.” The development of Roch’s style can be traced through his four personal sketchbooks, which survive today in a private collection in Ireland; his drawing subjects range from architecture, landscape, and seascape drawings to depictions of rural life.¹⁰ He continued to paint and sketch local life until his death in 1847.¹¹

Notes

1. He is said to have been born at his father’s house in 1759, but a 1779 record lists his age as twenty-two, and an 1847 death record lists his age as ninety, both of which suggest a birth year of 1757. See Anonymous, “A List of Irish Stockholders, 1779,” The Irish Genealogist 1, no. 8 (October 1940): 237–53.

2. Paul Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” Irish Arts Review 3, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 17. The family lived in the coastal countryside near the Cork-Waterford border. Another well-known miniaturist that was born deaf is Richard Crosse (English, 1742–1810).

3. Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 17.

4. This is according to Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 17, but he does not cite or illustrate the portrait. It is possible it is in the same private collection that holds Roch’s sketchbooks.

5. Walter G. Strickland, “Charles Byrne, Miniature Painter,” A Dictionary of Irish Artists (Dublin: Maunsel and Company, 1913), vol. 2, accessed July 31, 2022, https://www.libraryireland.com/irishartists/charles-byrne.php.

6. Vital records, Cloyne Diocese, National Archives of Ireland, Dublin. Melian was the daughter of Roch’s uncle James Roch and his first wife, Isabella Odell. The entry is signed “R.V.,” the clergyman’s initials. Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 18n14. “Dumb” is an offensive term originating from medieval England used to describe deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Later, it came to mean silent or without voice, according to National Association of the Deaf, “American Sign Language: Community and Culture – Frequently Asked Questions,” accessed September 16, 2002, https://www.nad.org/resources/american-sign-language/community-and-culture-frequently-asked-questions.

7. A portrait by Roch of Princess Amelia (1783–1810) is cited by Caffrey but is currently in a private collection.

8. Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 16.

9. Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 19.

10. Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 19. Caffrey reproduces some of these sketches of rural life in “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 16, 17. There are also numerous sketches located at the Ulster Museum, part of the National Museums of Northern Ireland; see catalogue number HOYFM.66.2009. Caffrey’s words on these intimately personal sketches describe not only Roch’s talent but also his range: “These scenes of rustic life display a degree of fantasy and wit, of artistic personality, and a readiness and fluency in draftsmanship, which would have enabled him to develop in several different artist directions, had claims on his artistic skills been different.” Caffrey continues, “The versatility and facility of Roch’s technique, and the perceptiveness and humour of his intelligence and eye, explain his ability to take what could, for other artists, have been the conventional and often uninspiring genre of miniature portraiture, and to illumine and revivify it.” Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 19.

11. Caffrey, “Sampson Towgood Roch, Miniaturist,” 18. He was buried in the family plot at Ardmore on February 20, 1847.

At a time when women struggled to find roles outside of marriage, motherhood, and the home, Susannah-Penelope Rosse (née Gibson) was uniquely placed to become a portrait miniaturist. She was born around 1655 to the miniature painter Richard Gibson (ca. 1615–1690) and Anne Sheppard (ca. 1625–1707), who had met while serving in the households of King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. Little is known about Rosse’s early life, and there is no record of her birth.¹

Rosse was immersed in the artistic sphere and studio practice of her father, Richard Gibson, who had close connections to royal and aristocratic patrons and served as drawing teacher to the princesses Mary and Anne, who were the daughters and heirs of James, Duke of York, later King James II. Rosse is believed to have trained with her father from an early age before developing an interest in the style and technique of the miniaturist Samuel Cooper (ca. 1608–1672), who lived three streets away in Covent Garden and likely knew the Gibson family.²

The Gibsons accompanied Princess Mary to The Hague after her marriage to William, Prince of Orange, in 1677, and it was also around this time that their own daughter found a match in Michael Rosse (1650–1735), who was a prominent court jeweler like his father, Christopher Rosse (d. 1701).³ Christopher and his wife, Elizabeth, had moved into the former home of Samuel Cooper in Henrietta Street after Cooper’s death in 1672, suggesting that perhaps Rosse met her husband through their geographic proximity or a mutual connection with Cooper. By 1680, they were living near or with the elder Rosses in Henrietta Street, and their daughter Elizabeth was born around that time.⁴

The family’s comfortable financial position meant, as Emma Rutherford has argued, that as an artist’s daughter Rosse had a career that was “neither straightforwardly professional nor amateur.”⁵ It is believed that she furthered her training through the dedicated study and copying of Cooper’s miniatures, to the extent that some of her works are nearly indistinguishable from his.⁶ She seems to have had few professional commissions, apparently by choice, although as a woman artist, albeit a well-connected one, she may have been challenged to find patrons. Her court portraits, which she copied from oil paintings by other artists, are primarily relegated to small but prestigious renderings of prominent members of the aristocracy and the royal family—such as the Nelson-Atkins Portrait of Mary, Princess of Orange, later Mary II.

Beyond her copies after Cooper, the bulk of Rosse’s work, in contrast to her court portraits, was more personal and probably painted from life. While larger in scale, these miniatures of her friends and family are still intimate in feel. As a possible consequence of Rosse’s untimely death in 1700, a number of these fully completed portraits remained with her husband until the sale of his collection in 1723.⁷ This, along with the Rosses’ wealth, suggests that Rosse likely did not make her portraits on commission but rather for the sheer joy of painting her loved ones.

Notes

1. Per John Murdoch, who remains the authoritative source on Rosse, “from what we know of Richard Gibson’s movements in the later 1650s it may be supposed that she was born out of London, perhaps in Buckinghamshire.” John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: H.M. Stationery Office in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997), 235. There was a Susanna Gibson, daughter of a Richard Gibson, born March 22, 1657, in Crosthwaite and Lyth, Westmorland. “England Births and Christenings, 1538–1975,” FamilySearch (index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City), accessed June 8, 2021, http://FamilySearch.org/search/collection/1473014.

2. Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures, 235. Many miniatures by Cooper, Richard Gibson, and Peter Cross, another Henrietta Street neighbor, were in the 1723 sale of Michael Rosse’s collection, along with Susannah-Penelope Rosse’s miniatures, including her original works and her copies after Cooper. Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper 1609–1672 (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), 100–6.

3. The year of their marriage is unknown.

4. Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures, 235.

5. Bendor Grosvenor, ed., Warts and All: The Portrait Miniatures of Samuel Cooper (London: Philip Mould, 2013), 135.

6. According to George Vertue, “her first manner she learnt of her father, but being inamoured with Cooper’s limnings, she studied & copied them to perfection.” Vertue quoted in Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1952), 81.

7. Foskett, Samuel Cooper 1609–1672, 100–6.

James Scouler attained financial success during his lifetime through his career as a miniaturist, but his life and works are little known today. A recently discovered baptismal record reveals that Scouler was born in Edinburgh on January 10, 1740, to harpsichord maker James Scouller or Scoular (1714–1782) and Grizel Fyfe (b. 1713).¹ Scouler arrived in London sometime before 1755, the year he won a Royal Society of Arts premium for drawing.² He is thought to have studied at William Hogarth’s (1697–1764) St. Martin’s Lane Academy and drawn copies after classical sculptures at the Duke of Richmond’s gallery beginning in 1758.³

By 1763, Scouler was taking commissions for portrait miniatures.⁴ Scouler exhibited miniatures and some pastels at the Society of Artists of Great Britain from 1761 to 1768 and at the Royal Academy of the Arts from 1769 to 1784.⁵ Scouler was buried in London on November 28, 1812. Scouler left several monetary bequests and legacies in his will, having reaped the benefits of a long and prosperous career.⁶ Grouped by Graham Reynolds in what he termed the “modest school” of mid-eighteenth-century British miniaturists, Scouler’s miniatures are characterized by their sturdy naturalism and vibrant coloring.⁷

Notes

1. “James Scouller baptismal document,” Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, Edinburgh Parish Registers, ref. 220 / 176. Scouler’s will and burial date, November 28, 1812, were discovered by Neil Jeffares. Neil Jeffares, “Scouler, James,” Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, July 11, 2021, http://www.pastellists.com/articles/scouler.pdf.

2. Henry Trueman Wood, “The Fine Art Prize-Winners (1755–1849),” A History of the Royal Society of Arts (London: John Murray, 1913), 201.

3. Daphne Foskett, “James Scouler,” in British Portrait Miniatures: An Exhibition Arranged for the Period of the Edinburgh International Festival (Edinburgh: Arts Council Gallery, 1965), unpaginated. Scouler is thought to have studied miniature painting in Edinburgh alongside his cousin John Brown (1749–1787) with decorative painter, engraver, and pastellist William Delacour (French, ca. 1700–1767). However, Delacour was in Dublin until 1757, making it unlikely that Scouler was his student. Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 114. On Delacour’s tenure in Dublin, see Neil Jeffares, “Delacour, William,” Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, April 28, 2022, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Delacour.pdf.

4. Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures, 114.

5. Per Neil Jeffares, “Scouler exhibited at every Royal Academy from 1769 to 1784.” Jeffares, “Scouler, James.” Many other sources, including Foskett, state that he exhibited at the academy from 1780 to 1787, which would mean Scouler did not exhibit his work between 1769 and 1780.

6. Jeffares, “Scouler, James.”

7. Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures, 114.

Born in Whitechapel, London, in 1756,¹ Samuel Shelley followed a conventional course of study, entering the Royal Academy Schools on March 21, 1774, at the age of seventeen, where he also exhibited consecutively at the Royal Academy from 1774 to 1804, with the exception of 1775. He was an excellent draftsman and worked in watercolor and oil as well as book illustration and engraving. A founding member of the first watercolor society in Britain in 1805, he was an important advocate for the medium, arguing for a separate exhibition space from oil. Although most remembered for his flattering, richly colored portraits, he aspired to use his imagination and knowledge of literary and historical themes to paint more rigorous “subject pictures.”

Shelley was greatly influenced by the president of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), and his interest in subject matter outside traditional portraiture was also encouraged through endeavors by print publishers, including John Boydell’s (1720–1804) Shakespeare Gallery² and Thomas Macklin’s (1752/53–1800) Poet’s Gallery. Boydell and Macklin both commissioned oil paintings of literary subjects that they would engrave and circulate in print. Shelley also developed his own ideas for compositions outside of these organized ventures,³ although the public remained more interested in commissioned portraits of family members than historical or “fancy” subject pictures.

Shelley’s fashionable portraits caught the eye of the royal family, including King George III and Queen Charlotte, who employed him on several occasions to paint members of their extended family, although he was not officially in their retinue. Shelley had two students, miniaturists Edward Nash (1778–1821) and Alexander Robertson (1772–1841). Shelley spent his entire working life in London, dying there on December 22, 1808, with many unsold subject pictures left in his studio.⁴

Notes

1. For many years, Samuel Shelley’s birth year was incorrectly given as 1750, until scholars including Neil Jeffares and Katherine Coombs consulted records relating to the artist’s admission to the Royal Academy Schools. Shelley entered school on March 21, 1774, at which point the records state that he was “17 last August,” meaning August of 1773, indicating a birth year of 1756. See Neil Jeffares, “Shelley, Samuel,” in Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, updated August 14, 2020, online edition, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/SHELLEY.pdf. See also Katherine Coombs, “Samuel Shelley,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, last updated May 24, 2007 (originally published September 23, 2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25314.

2. There are numerous sources for further reading about Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, including Rosie Dias, Exhibiting Englishness: John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery and the Formation of a National Aesthetic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013).

3. Sketchbooks of Shelley’s compositional ideas can be found at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and sketches of some of his symbolic figures are housed in the Scottish National Gallery.

4. See A Catalogue of All the Valuable Beautiful and Highly Finished Miniatures in Fancy Subjects and Portraits the Performances of That Celebrated and Lamented Artist the Late Samuel Shelley Esq. Deceased in Rich Carved and Gilt Frames: Together with His Collection of Paintings in Oil by Ancient and Modern Masters, Spring Gardens Wigley’s Great Room, London, March 22–24, 1809.

Until recently, scholarship surrounding John Smart’s birth has been assigned to two years: either 1741 or 1742.¹ Published for the first time here, it is now known definitively that John Smart made his entry into this world on January 20, 1741, as the son to John Smart (1714–1764), peruke maker of Saint George, Hanover Square, and Mary Day.² By 1755, Smart enrolled in the drawing academy of the Royal Society of Arts to study with William Shipley (1715–1803), where he placed second to classmate Richard Cosway (1742–1821) in the youth division of drawing. Smart went on to win this competition the following three years. Following graduation, Smart almost immediately established himself as a professional working artist, with his earliest miniatures dating to 1760. Smart signed and dated nearly all of his works, and the Nelson-Atkins has at least one signed and dated example for every year of his career until his death, making it a remarkable collection to study the progression of the artist’s career.

From 1762 to 1783, Smart exhibited at the Free Society of Artists and also played an administrative role as its director, vice president, and president, lending the society funds on numerous occasions to ensure its financial stability. Finances motived Smart’s move to India in 1785, where he spent the next ten years depicting British officers of the Honourable East India Company (HEIC), as well as Indian officials. He returned to England in 1795, where he exhibited at the Royal Academy of the Arts of Arts from 1797 until his death in 1811, following a brief illness.

As an artist, Smart is known for his meticulous draftsmanship and attention to detail, in contrast to the idealized style practiced by his former classmate, Richard Cosway. Similarly, Smart’s clientele differed greatly from Cosway’s, with the latter’s tending toward the crown and court while Smart’s was drawn primarily from the merchant and military classes. Smart married two times and fathered six children with three different women, one of whom, John Smart Junior (1776–1809), followed in his father’s artistic footsteps, despite predeceasing him by two years.³

Notes

1. Vanessa Remington writes that John Smart the miniature painter “was probably the John Smart born on 20 January 1742 and baptized on 24 January at St Luke, Old Street, Finsbury, the son of John Smart (d. 1764), peruke maker, and his wife Mary, née Day. Like the miniature painter this Smart had a sister, Deborah, (b. 1736). An alternative identification is the John Smart born on 19 June 1741 and baptized on 26 June at St Anne, Westminster, the son of Philip Francis Smart and his wife Ann.” See Vanessa Remington, “John Smart,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25744.

2. John Smart was baptized January 24, 1741, at St. Luke’s, Old Street, Finsbury. See London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P76/LUK/001, London Metropolitan Archives. Through exhaustive and meticulous research, Maggie Keenan, Starr Research Assistant, made this discovery, and I am grateful to her for sharing parish records related to John Smart’s family. It is possible that Remington mis-transcribed the year of Smart’s baptismal record in her entry in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography since all other life details align. In the field of miniatures, the artist is typically referred to as “John Smart” or “John Smart Senior,” while his son almost always signed his work “JSJ” or “John Smart Junior.”

3. John Smart’s marriages, children, and life are discussed more thoroughly in a three-part essay featured in the fourth launch of this catalogue, scheduled for the spring of 2025.

Genealogical research has cast new and definitive light on the life of Gervase Spencer, previously of unknown parentage, with an unknown date of birth. Perhaps one of the main reasons for his anonymity is the irregular spelling of his first name: Gervas, Garvas, and Jarvis, among other variations.¹ Notwithstanding these anomalies, a 1743 marriage license shows not only Spencer’s age at the time of his nuptials but also his wife’s name and age: “Garvas Spencer . . . of Middlesex Bachelor aged twenty one years . . . intends to marry with Margaret Carrig . . . aged twenty four years.”² Birth and baptismal records from 1722 reveal a Garvis Spenser baptized on March 25, 1722, to Thomas and Sarah Spenser.³

Spencer’s earliest miniature dates to 1744,⁴ a year after his marriage, and by 1749 an electoral register lists his profession as limner.⁵ By the 1760s, Spencer was a well-known name in the field of miniatures, in watercolor, and, in particular, for his knowledge of enamel painting. While his work in this medium is comparable to that of fellow enameller Jean André Rouquet (Swiss, active in England and France, 1701–1758), Spencer’s training in this difficult practice remains unknown. According to Samuel Finney, “only one Artist in that Branch, Mr Spencer . . . was excellent, though the knowledge he had gained in that Art was almost purely his own.”⁶ Spencer apparently began his career as a valet, since George Vertue referred to him in 1740 as “a young man who not long or a few years ago was in the capacity of a footman to Dr. W—and now professes to liming [sic] with some success, which demonstrates a genius pratizing [sic] by degrees of himself—and really is in a curious neat manner and masterly.”⁷

Spencer excelled at painting portraits of women, particularly their attire and accessories, and he often signed his work with his initials followed by the date.⁸ His portraits in the Starr Collection display his talent in both watercolor and enamel, and they exemplify the high quality of his works. He taught the next generation his trade, instructing Penelope Carwardine (English, 1729–1805)⁹ and possibly also Henry Spicer (English, 1742/43–1804).¹⁰ Spencer was buried on October 25, 1763, and his remaining collection of miniatures and painting materials were later sold by a family member in 1797.¹¹

Notes

1. Other variants are Gervaise, Garvis, and Jervis, and his last name is sometimes spelled “Spenser,” according to the genealogical records listed below.

2. “Garvas Spencer,” London Marriage Bonds and Allegations, ref. DL/A/D/004/MS10091/084, London Metropolitan Archives. Gervase Spencer and Margaret had at least two children together: Robert Carreg (b. 1747) and Thomas (b. 1748); see Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London, ref. STJ/PR/1/4. Spencer’s portrait of Margaret is located at the British Museum: Portrait of Mrs Gervase Spencer, 1757, etching, 3 1/4 x 2 15/16 in. (8.4 x 7.5 cm), 1879,0111.4, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1879-0111-4.

3. “Garvis Spenser,” Derbyshire Church of England Parish Registers, FHL film number 1042078,0962640, Derbyshire Record Office, Matlock.

4. Gervase Spencer, A Young Girl, 1744, unknown medium, 1 11/16 in. (4.3 cm) high, sold at Bonhams, “Fine Portrait Miniatures,” June 24, 2004, lot 50, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11052/lot/50.

5. “Jarvis Spencer Great Marlborough St. Limner,” UK Poll Books and Electoral Registers: 1749, London Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Library.

6. Samuel Finney, “Autobiographical Account,” in “An Historical Survey of the Parish of Wilmslow by Samuel Finney of Fulshaw 1785,” 287–313, ref. DFF/38, Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies, cited in Katherine Coombs, “Spencer, Gervase (c. 1715–1763),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26127.

7. “Vertue Note Books, Volume III,” Volume of the Walpole Society 22 (1933–1934): 51.

8. “Gervas Spencer,” Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. STJ/PR/8/4, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London. While there are examples of Spencer signing his work “G.S.,” “G.S,” or “g. Spencer,” he most consistently signed his work “GS.”

9. Joseph Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. Angus Macintyre and Kenneth Garlick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 2:651–52.

10. The early art historian Samuel Redgrave (1802–1876) claimed that Spicer was Spencer’s pupil, but Edward Edwards was acquainted with Spicer and “knows not who was his master.” Redgrave, Dictionary of Artists of the English School (London: George Bell and Sons, 1878), 408; Edwards, Anecdotes of Painters (London: Luke Hansard and Sons, 1808), 287–88.

11. See Pictures, Miniatures, Library Books, A Catalogue of a Choice Collection of Miniatures . . . Being the Collection of the late Jervis Spencer, Miniature Painter, Deceased (London: Hutchins, Wells, and Fisher, 1797), located at the Victoria and Albert Museum National Art Library, OCLC: 1031268888.

Miniature and enamel painter Henry Spicer was born around 1742 or 1743 in Reepham, Norfolk. Little is known about his early life or family; however, county records in Norfolk reference several branches of the Spicer (Spycer) family extending back to 1514.¹ At some point early in Spicer’s life (possibly as early as 1757, when he would have been fifteen and of age as an apprentice) he went to London to study with Gervase Spencer (English, 1722–1763). Spicer was an active member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, where he served as secretary from 1772 to 1773 and exhibited annually from 1765 to 1783.² However, he grew frustrated with the poor quality of submissions and sporadically exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1774 to 1804.³ In 1777 or 1778, he went to Dublin, where he spent many years painting prominent members of Irish society.⁴

From 1784 until his death, Spicer lived at various residences in Great Newport Street, London.⁵ Before 1785, he married a woman named Margaret, and they had two recorded daughters: Mary Charlotte, baptized July 24, 1785, and Margaret Jane, born August 22, 1787.⁶ One or both of these girls also became artists.⁷ Despite being appointed as Painter in Enamel to the Prince of Wales (later George IV) in 1790, Spicer died in poverty at the age of sixty-one on June 8, 1804, at his residence in Great Newport Street.⁸ Spicer’s artistic legacy lived on through his daughters and his pupil, William Birch (English 1755–1834), the artist who may have introduced the art of enamel portraits to America.

Notes

1. Henry Spicer was possibly related to Henry Spycer (d. 1514) of Mykll Massyngham (later Great Massingham), a village in West Norfolk; NCC will register Coppinger 8, county records, Norfolk Record Office online catalogue, https://nrocatalogue.norfolk.gov.uk/index.php/spicer-spycer-henry-of-mykyll-massyngham. Neil Jeffares suggests Spicer may have (also) been related to Charles Spicer (d. 1713), senior clerk in Foulsham, Norfolk; see Neil Jeffares, “Henry Spicer,” Dictionary of Pastels before 1800, online edition (London: Unicorn Press, 2006), http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/SPICER.pdf.

2. Spicer held the office of secretary of the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1773; see Jeffares, “Henry Spicer.”

3. Henry Spicer wrote several letters to Ozias Humphry (1742–1810) while Humphry was in Rome, telling him about the 1773 exhibition of the Society of Artists, indicating that he thought “it was the worst we have ever had,” and that the society itself was in “deplorable condition.” In contrast, he wrote, the Royal Academy made a “very splendid appearance.” Spicer to Humphry, [January 9, 1774], and Spicer to Humphry, [September 1773], quoted in George Charles Williamson, Life And Works of Ozias Humphry, R.A. (London: John Lane, 1918), 51–53.

4. Spicer was patronized by the Earl of Dartrey, whose portrait in enamel, done in London in 1798, is in the possession of the present earl. A portrait of Lady Anne Dawson, done the same year, was exhibited at South Kensington in 1865. See Williamson, Life and Works of Ozias Humphry, 233.

5. Neil Jeffares, “Henry Spicer.”

6. I am grateful to Neil Jeffares, whose meticulous research unearthed Spicer’s wife/widow’s name, Margaret, from the Sun Fire Office insurance records, 10.XII.1807; Jeffares, “Henry Spicer.” Jeffares states that Margaret may not have been Spicer’s first wife, and it is possible he was the Henry Spicer married to Susanna Payne at Yarmouth on November 28, 1762. A clue to this previous, unsuccessful union is in a letter from Spicer to Humphry in which Spicer explains that he cannot repay all the funds he owes to Humphry because he had “trouble in separating from a woman, giving her a £40 allowance.” Spicer to Humphry, English Coffee House, Rome, January 9, 1774, The Original Correspondence of Ozias Humphry, vol. 2 (1774–1784), ref. HU/2/2, Royal Academy Archives, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/archive/h-spicer-london-to-mr-humphry-english-coffee-house-rome.

7. See Leo R. Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1964), 2:777. See also Daphne Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1990), 654.

8. Emma Rutherford, “Henry Spicer (1742/3–1804),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, http://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/26148.

Described by J. T. Smith as a “handsome lively fellow,” Luke Sullivan was born in county Louth, Ireland, in 1705.¹ Sullivan traveled to England at a young age with his family, where his father found work as a groom with Henry Somerset-Scudamore, the 3rd Duke of Beaufort. Recognizing young Luke’s artistic talent for drawing, the duke supported his early artistic education. Sullivan worked initially as an engraver for Thomas Major (1714/20–1799) and subsequently Bernard Baron (1696?–1766), helping them with their work and making copies of works by other artists.² Sullivan served as William Hogarth’s (English, 1697–1764) assistant, engraving several of that artist’s celebrated works, including The March to Finchley, published in 1759. Notwithstanding his skill and success in these endeavors, Sullivan reportedly had irregular habits, and Hogarth had a difficult time keeping track of him.³

In addition to practicing printmaking, including etching and engraving, Sullivan painted landscapes, architectural views, and miniatures in watercolor. He enjoyed great success as a miniaturist, exhibiting at the Society of Artists of Great Britain, of which he was a member and director from 1764 to 1770. He died in 1771, at the White Bear Tavern in Piccadilly, reportedly in a miserable state of poverty and disease.⁴ He was buried at St. James’s, Piccadilly, on March 27, 1771.⁵

Notes

1. J. T. Smith, Nollekens and His Times: Comprehending a Life of that Celebrated Sculptor (London: Henry Colburn, 1828), 212.

2. Sheila O’Connell, “Luke Sullivan (c. 1725–1771),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/26776.

3. According to John Ireland, Hogarth “held out every possible inducement to Sullivan’s remaining at his house in Leicester Square night and day; for if once Luke quitted it, he was not visible for a month.” See John Ireland, Hogarth Illustrated, 2nd ed. (London: W. Bulmer & Co., 1793), 3, cited in O’Connell, “Luke Sullivan (c. 1725–1771).”

4. Basil S. Long, British Miniaturists (London: Holland Press, 1966), 426.

5. O’Connell, “Luke Sullivan (c. 1725–1771).”

Very little is known about the artist identified only as “V.” The artist did often sign works with a cursive “V,” hence the identification of the artist with this letter; however, further research is required. “V” flourished in the late third and fourth quarters of the 1800s at a time when portrait commissions in England proliferated.

Although examples by “V” have appeared in public sales and collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the artist’s identity remains elusive. Daphne Foskett has observed that works by “V” are recognizable for certain characteristics, such as the gray background and shading of the face, as well as, occasionally, larger heads and a grisaille technique in the face and head.¹ However, works attributed to the artist also occasionally employ more saturated colors and exhibit a strong linearity.² Occasionally, the artist used a soft palette. What remains consistent is the unassuming and almost introspective character of the sitters represented, which is the antithesis of the flamboyant style seen in works by this artist’s near-contemporary Richard Cosway (1742–1821).

Notes

1. Daphne Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), 1:58.

2. Cory Korkow makes this point in her catalogue entry for “The Artist V” in Cory Korkow and Jon L. Seydl, British Portrait Miniatures (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, and London: D. Giles, 2013), 125, 125n4. She references The Artist “V,” Portrait of Isaac Spooner and His Wife Barbara, 1791, watercolor on ivory, 2 1/2 in. (5.7 cm) high, sold at Christie’s, “Fine Portrait Miniatures,” London, May 28, 2002, lot 36, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/15263/lot/63/.

Louis Nicolas van Blarenberghe is perhaps the best-known descendant of a Flemish family of artists.¹ Born on July 15, 1716, in Lille, he most likely trained under his father, Jacques-Willem van Blarenberghe (ca. 1769–1742), who specialized in battle scenes.² Louis Nicolas ventured to Paris in about 1753 to make his own name.³ In the following decade his reputation and clientele flourished, from French courtiers to Peter Federovitch, the future Tsar Peter III of Russia. Van Blerenberghe was particularly known for his jewel-like snuffboxes.⁴

Van Blarenberghe’s training in battle painting and the support of his most devoted patron, the duc de Choiseul—at that time the most powerful man in France—brought Van Blarenberghe to the attention of the War Department and Ministry of the Marine.⁵ Beginning in 1760, Van Blarenberghe received several official commissions to paint port scenes and prominent battles and sieges during the reign of Louis XV, leading him to be appointed Battle Painter in 1769.⁶ In 1774, the newly crowned Louis XVI named Van Blarenberghe his own official painter of battles.⁷ Beyond his battle scenes, Van Blarenberghe also produced meticulous landscape miniatures that often depict idealized scenes of everyday life in rural France. They were prized not only for their humor and subtly varied coloring but for their minute accuracy, which is doubly impressive considering that he did not often paint from life. Van Blarenberghe depended largely on secondary sources to reproduce identifiable scenes, events, and figures.⁸

A lifetime of building a prestigious career and garnering hard-won royal patronage capsized with the French Revolution. In 1791, the National Assembly revoked Van Blarenberghe’s role as Battle Painter.⁹ He died at his home in Fontainebleau in 1794. His son, Henri-Joseph van Blarenberghe (1741–1826), adopted his style and technique to a degree of precision that makes it difficult to distinguish between their works.¹⁰

Notes

1. Joshua Drapkin, “Blarenberghe, Louis-Nicolas van,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T009175.

2. “Blarenberghe, Jacques Willem van,” Benezit Dictionary of Artists, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00020733. Father and son painted together until the death of Jacques-Willem in 1742, followed by Louis-Nicolas’s appointment as master painter. Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard, Les Peintres en Miniature 1650–1850 (Paris: Les éditions de l’Amateur, 2008), 505.

3. Lemoine-Bouchard, Peintres en Miniature, 505.

4. Lemoine-Bouchard, Peintres en Miniature, 505.

5. Etienne Francois, duc de Choiseul, was at that time Foreign Minister and at the height of his power. Drapkin, “Blarenberghe, Louis-Nicolas van.”

6. This appointment was technically retroactive to 1768. In this role he was replacing Pierre L’Enfant (1704–1787), who had recently retired. Following the political turmoil of Choiseul’s fall from grace, Van Blarenberghe lost his appointment in 1771 but was appointed Painter to the Ministry of the Marine in 1773, following Claude Joseph Vernet (1714–1789). In 1775, Van Blarenberghe was appointed Painter of the Coasts and Ports of the Kingdom. Lemoine-Bouchard, Peintres en Miniature, 506.

7. Alongside his existing appointment with the navy; Lemoine-Bouchard, Peintres en Miniature, 507.

8. Lemoine-Bouchard, Peintres en Miniature, 505–7.

9. Van Blarenberghe lost not only his appointment and career but also the accompanying salary and housing at Versailles. In 1792, he appealed to Louis XVI, who granted him a pension of 2,400 livres. Lemoine-Bouchard, Peintres en Miniature, 507.

10. Drapkin, “Blarenberghe, Louis-Nicolas van.”

Christian Friedrich Zincke was born in about 1684 to a family of Dresden goldsmiths.¹ Following the lead of his father, Christian (d. 1719), and grandfather Paul (1608–1678), Zincke initially apprenticed as a goldsmith before attending Heinrich Christoph Frehling’s (German, 1654–1725) drawing school in Dresden. In about 1706, Charles Boit (1662–1727), then the preeminent painter of enamel portraits at the English court, invited him to join his workshop as an assistant. Zincke worked for Boit for several years before striking out on his own; his earliest known miniature dates to 1711.² Like much of Zincke’s early work, it was copied after an oil painting, but he soon found he had the skill and inclination to paint most of his mature portraits from life—no small feat for enamelwork, in which each color had to be painstakingly fired individually, risking damage or destruction each time the portrait entered the kiln.

Due to the dearth of enamel portraitists in England, especially after Boit’s precipitous departure to France in 1714, Zincke attained almost immediate success.³ His prodigious talent ensured that this success was lifelong. In contrast to the translucent delicacy of watercolor miniatures, Zincke’s saturated, glossy enamels were highly sought after for their ability to replicate the lush surfaces of oil paintings. His position as Britain’s new leading enamel portraitist was secured when he captured the patronage of King George II, who acceded to the throne in 1727. The king, who notoriously disliked having his likeness painted, apparently preferred sitting for Zincke, a fellow native German speaker, over any other artist, calling his portraits “beautiful and like.”⁴ He commissioned many enamel portraits of himself and the royal family from Zincke, accounting for the large number in the Royal Collection. Zincke was appointed Cabinet Painter to Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1732.

Zincke was also a favorite of the aristocracy and other illustrious figures, with George Vertue claiming in 1726 that he was “so fully employ’d that for some years he has had more persons of distinction daily sitting to him than any Painter living.”⁵ By 1725, the demand for his work was already so great that he was struggling with eyestrain, which he attempted to assuage, with limited success, by forming a large workshop and eventually raising his fees in 1742 from twenty to thirty guineas for an enamel portrait.⁶

In a 1725 letter to the Earl of Oxford, Zincke bemoaned his difficulties in completing a commission, writing, “My Lord, I find my eyes scarce Capable of seeing them fine strokes, wich [sic] I am obliged to use to bring it to any Perfection.”⁷ Eventually these difficulties led him to retire around 1746, but he still worked for pleasure, as we see in a charming, quite informal drawing by William Hoare (English, ca. 1707–1792) in 1752 of a bespectacled Zincke intently completing a portrait of his daughter, a rare depiction of a miniaturist at work (Fig. 1).⁸

Notes

1. Accounts of his birth year vary between 1683, 1684, and 1685. Graham Reynolds suggests that he was born about 1684. Graham Reynolds, “Zincke, Christian Frederick (1684?–1767), miniature painter,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/30295.

2. It may instead have been 1704. Reynolds, “Zincke, Christian Frederick.” The 1711 work was a portrait of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, after Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723): Christian Friedrich Zincke, Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough (1660–1744), 1711, enamel, 2 7/8 x 2 3/10 in. (7.3 x 5.8 cm), Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 421962, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/1/collection/421962/sarah-jennings-duchess-of-marlborough-1660-1744.

3. Boit fled the country, besieged by creditors, after the failure of a large royal commission. See Blythe Sobol, “Charles Boit (Swedish, 1662–1727),” in this catalogue, https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.7.5108.

4. According to George Vertue, “Mr. Zincke has had the honour of the King Sitting to him for his picture, with which he was so well satisfyd [sic] that the King was pleasd [sic] to say, he took more pleasure in setting to him than he did to any painter for that his works were beautiful & like.” Quoted in “Vertue Note Books, Volume III,” Volume of the Walpole Society 22 (1933–1934): 63.

5. “Vertue Note Books, Volume III,” 30.

6. Tabitha Barber, “Zincke, Christian Friederich (b Dresden, 1683­–5; d London, March 24, 1767),” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T093548.

7. Christian Friedrich Zincke to Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, December 23, 1725, quoted in Richard W. Goulding, “The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures,” The Walpole Society 4 (1916): 54.

8. Reynolds, “Zincke, Christian Frederick.” The drawing is inscribed on the back by Hoare, “Frederick Zink Painter in Enamel drawn by William Hoare from his love and friendship as well as many obligations to him, in the year 1752, Mr Zink being at that time retired from business, & amusing himself in painting his own daughter’s picture.”