Small and challenging to display, portrait miniatures are more likely to be overlooked by visitors than grand oil paintings or imposing sculptures. Yet, unlike large-scale works of art, nearly all of us can relate to the portrait miniature - the appeal to carry a picture of someone close to us. Take a look at your mobile phone background…you may have a photograph of a spouse, child, parent, friends, a pet. Before the age of photography, the equivalent was the portrait miniature. Compton Verney’s new exhibition, ‘The Reflected Self: Portrait Miniatures 1540-1850’, co-curated by Emma Rutherford (The Limner Company), tells the history of the portrait miniature with this continuity in mind.

The Limner Company recently celebrated its first anniversary, and it’s with great pleasure that we can announce some notable sales from our first year.

Portrait miniatures can be a valuable source to the field of fashion history. Sitters are often (not always) depicted wearing more quotidian dress than that worn for larger oil portraits, and represent a slightly broader cross-section of society. The portrait miniature was in its heyday when revolution erupted in France at the end of the eighteenth century, and French and British miniatures from the period reflect the significant changes in fashion and culture that took place.

Given that it can occupy up to a third of any given portrait, and its fascinating history, hair seemed to be a topic that warranted its own discussion. From ‘lovelocks’, to grey hair, to wigs being stolen straight from the wearer’s head, this blog will cover a brief history of hair, through miniatures previously and currently with The Limner Company.

In the April 2024 issue of The Burlington Magazine, an important miniature by Nicholas Hilliard was published for the first time in an article by Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford, having just emerged from a private collection. The discovery and the intriguing story behind the portrait’s commission, were also featured in The Times newspaper on 27 May 2024 and BBC news online on 5 June 2024.

Emma, Lady Hamilton (1765-1815) was one of the most famous women of the eighteenth century and her scandalous rags-to-riches story, beauty and vast iconography have allowed her celebrity to endure over two centuries. This article gives a potted history of her life and artistic achievements.

Recent research into a portrait miniature by Heinrich Friederich Füger (1751-1818) revealed a network of connections that the artist had, from across Austria, Germany, and Italy. The portrait miniature in question is of Count Joseph Johannn von Fries (fig. 1), a high flying and extremely wealthy Austrian patron.

The most extravagant and exclusive form of courtly entertainment during the first half of the seventeenth century was undoubtedly the masque. Huge sums of money were spent on these performances, which centred around illusionistic set designs, elaborate costumes, music, dance, and light effects. Accounts document how courtiers and royalty performed these festivities late into the night. Usually commissioned by the monarch, masques explored allegorical and fantastical themes, lauding the triumph of virtue over vice, but always with the essential aim of glorifying the monarch. The pair responsible for many of these performances at the Stuart court was architect and designer Inigo Jones (1573-1652) and one of the most important early-modern playwrights, Ben Jonson (c.1572-c.1637).

In August this year, researchers at the University of Dundee unveiled what they believe to be the true face of Bonnie Prince Charlie, Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788) [Fig. 1]. Although by today’s standards, it might be remarked that he wasn’t as handsome as his moniker suggests, his likeness is instantly recognisable from the Prince’s many portraits. However this is not an article about shifting beauty standards, but rather the importance of portraiture in the Jacobite campaign, and the distinct role of the portrait miniature.

The Philip Mould & Co. exhibition, ‘Without Hands: The Art of Sarah Biffin’, co-curated by our director, Emma Rutherford, has won the Critics’ Circle ‘Commercial Exhibition of the Year’ award!

On a visit to the royal nursery in 1769, one would have met four princes and two princesses, including George, Prince of Wales (later King George IV) – who had been born born August 1762. Born just a year before this forst child of the young Queen Charlotte, one would have met another boy, indistinguishable from his apparent siblings. This boy was Frederick William Blomberg, the child portrayed in this drawing (Fig.1) – who had been apparently welcomed into the nursery as a toddler by King George III and Queen Charlotte.

Ann Bermingham prefaces her text Learning to Draw (New Haven & London, 2000) with ‘As early as the sixteenth century, drawing in England came to be seen as something more than an activity exclusive to artists – it became a polite and useful art, a practice of everyday life.’ Although sometimes considered less important than the more salient forms of painting and sculpture, the appeal of drawing to artists persisted beyond studious purpose. In fact, for many craftsmen, importantly Limners, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries drawing provided them with a plethora of possibilities, both formally and informally, beyond the constraints of their medium.

Perhaps no other form of jewellery holds such an intimacy as that of portrait miniatures and hairwork jewellery. These mediums when combined serve as object memory and represent the sincerity of the sitter in life and death. These items of adornment were created with precise detail and skill, as testament to a person loved or admired, whose likeness these tiny artworks aimed to capture.

It is likely that the miniature by Smart was commissioned by Sir Rowland for his wife to wear. Their marriage had met with much opposition, with Sir Rowland’s family concerned with family reputation as Sabine was not only a widow but Swiss (i.e. foreign) to boot. A neighbour, Catherine Cappe, claimed that ‘the peace of the [Winn] family’ was ‘entirely destroyed’ by the return of the newlyweds to Yorkshire. Sabine herself was very unhappy in Yorkshire, which she described as ‘one of the most desolate and gloomy corners of the universe’.

While reading Elizabeth Goldring’s new monograph on Nicholas Hilliard (1647-1619), I was most anxious to discover what she had written about my all-time favourite artist in Paris and what she may have discovered while I was researching the same topic at the same time. One note struck me, about Hilliard’s whereabouts in Saint-Germain des Prés, back in 1578 where he is supposed to hold a studio.

In many ways, the very nature of portrait miniatures meant that they were inextricably associated with jewellery from their advent in the 16th century. Dainty and portable, their practical size and shape encouraged a plethora of wearable possibilities.