Do you own a locket that contains portraits of your closest loved ones? Do you have the same affections for your lover as did Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, who offered Willoughby a lock of her hair to place in such a locket, much to the chagrin of her elder and more sensible sister, who felt such an act was too intimate and thus rash and ill-advised in someone who was as yet not engaged? Such a level of intimacy governs the many compelling portraits in this informative and well-illustrated exhibition catalog that was written to accompany the first-ever major exhibition in England to examine portraits on paper and in miniature from the Georgian and Regency periods. Consisting of 198 portraits, all illustrated in color, the catalog and exhibition represent a collaboration between the National Galleries of Scotland and the British Museum to showcase works from their collections as well as long-term loans from private individuals.
It is the hope of the coauthors that the coming together of these portraits will offer scholars pause, allowing them to consider these more intimate portraits—in scale and in terms of intent and placement in the domestic spaces of the home—in relation to the larger portrait tradition in oils that has made up the reputation of British art to this day. They offer up raw material, in this sense, for the scholar to ponder new questions, such as, what were the mourning traditions that allowed for such elaborate productions as Richard Cosway's portrait of Robert, 4th Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, ca. 1778 (private collection), whose life was tragically cut short at age 23? The portrait is embedded in a lady's makeup case, which is covered with a piece of his plaited hair, the portrait itself surrounded by diamonds. What love rituals surrounded the giving and receiving of a garnet bracelet that includes the portrait of an Unknown Man (catalog no. 8)? This bracelet reminds the viewer of François Boucher's portrait of Madame de Pompadour at her Toilette, 1758 (Fogg Art Museum, Boston), which portrays her powdering up, presumably for her king, whose portrait appears in a similar bracelet around her seductively feminine wrist. Like many miniatures in this catalog, its meaning and intention is to testify to steadfast love and memory. Similar in its message is Francis Wheatley's The Miniature (catalog no. 1), which suggests a possible symbolic purpose for the portrait miniature, since it shows a young woman, seductively décolleté, lying in her bed with a wistful expression, admiring a miniature portrait of her absent lover. The catalog reveals fascinating artists and sitters that leave the reader asking for more. It will be exciting to see if eighteenth-century scholars who specialize in British portraits will take up further investigation of some of the women here, such as Sarah Biffin, born without hands or feet who, nonetheless, became a successful miniaturist, or the amateur Harriet Carr, whose sitter was the sculptor Anne Seymour Damer (catalog no. 91).
The volume opens with two introductory essays, the first by Stephen Lloyd, which illuminates the history of the miniature painted portrait, tracing it back to the work of Nicholas Hilliard at Henry VIII's court or, in the case of pastel works on paper, to French Rococo examples. But, just as nineteenth-century lovers were likely to attempt silhouette portraits of each other, he chronicles the portrait drawing's origins in the classical tale of Pliny's Corinthian maiden who also traced the outline of her lover's profile. Beyond that, Lloyd focuses on some of the innovators: he discusses the miniaturist Richard Cosway, a dandy who was lampooned as the “The Miniature Macaroni,” a sort of Toulouse-Lautrec of the miniature who, similarly, engaged in erotic works. We are left wanting to know more about how such artists worked in concert with jewelers and goldsmiths in order to create works like Cosway's aforementioned portrait of the young duke. Lloyd also focuses on the career of the Scottish artist Archibald Skirving, whose Self-Portrait in watercolor on ivory has only recently emerged from the private collection of the artist's descendants and which shows him to be a master of the medium.
Both Lloyd and Kim Sloan's essays provide us with in situ information about where and how collectors hung such works. The opening pages of the catalog, for example, show us a watercolor of Horace Walpole's cabinet of miniatures and enamels from his home at Strawberry Hill. The watercolor evokes the observer's close viewing distance, as well as such works’ location in a private residence. Sloan addresses the conundrum of the occasions at which we find such private portraits on public display. Whether at the Royal Academy or commercial galleries, both authors reveal that these works were in popular demand, on view to a museum-going public eager to see images of its celebrities, intellectuals, and private persons, all of whom appeared in miniatures and works on paper that artists created at leisure, as gifts or in a commemorative moment.
The catalog entries, which are extensive and informative, are divided into sections devoted to the miniature portrait, pastel portraits, self-portraits, the artists’ families and friends, and celebrities. Many women artists emerge in this study, as do lesser-known artists alongside the more familiar names of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir David Wilkie.
While this catalog encompasses many discoveries, I would like to see more information about the different ways these portrait traditions still flourish: just as this review opened with the locket of today, we could also discuss the ways British royalty have kept this miniaturist tradition alive in small portraits set in ribbon, which they wear on state occasions. While some of these portraits on paper were studies for larger works, the authors emphasize that they also belong to their own intimate tradition, one that is prime for further probing.
