THE COLLECTORS' POCKET SERIES 
 
 EDITED BY SIR JAMES YOXALL, M.P. 
 
 COLLECTING OLD 
 M I N IATURES
 
 COLLECTING OLD 
 MI N I ATUR ES 
 
 BY J. H. YOXALL 
 
 Author of "The Wander Years," "The ABC 
 about Collecting," " More about Collecting" 
 
 Une fragile miniature encaJree : 
 Gide, " Isabelle" iv. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 MCMXVI
 
 Printed in Gnat Britain
 
 PREFACE 
 
 1 WROTE this book with delight, for the sheer 
 pleasure of writing about miniatures ; which is, 
 I suppose, a good way in which to write a book 
 about a hobby. And I wrote it for people who are 
 not too high-and-dry to enjoy a good miniature because 
 it is not the best or most costly of the kind. 
 
 If anybody should tax me with assumption, for 
 picturing miniatures from my own collection only, I 
 will stoutly reply that surely it is a good way to show 
 that collecting good old miniatures can still be done ? 
 For all these, and a good few others, have been found 
 by hunting during the last nine years, and they are not 
 unrepresentative of minatures as a whole. If men- 
 tioning the prices given for them offends any wealthy 
 or ultra-fastidious reader, I answer that surely such in- 
 formation as that is just what a would-be collector 
 would like to have ? 
 
 The usual plan in works on this subject is to illustrate 
 them from unique or exclusive miniatures, inaccessible 
 to the ordinary view and purse ; I suppose that is why 
 in other books on miniatures such a matter as prices is 
 tabooed. The usual books on miniatures supply the 
 reader with descriptions of heirlooms, or the quarry 
 of millionaires, and with biographies of artists, or other 
 encyclopaedic information. Here, however, wishing
 
 PREFACE 
 
 to be helpful, direct, and lucid, I have tried to keep to 
 the point, which is to suggest how, where, for what, 
 and at what cost a beginner may hopefully seek. 
 
 I am of course aware that " the good is the enemy 
 of the best," but on the other hand the best may be 
 made the enemy of the good, as indeed it is by high- 
 and-dry collectors and writers about miniatures ; to 
 refuse any but the rarest and most costly examples is a 
 game of patience at which only the wealthy can play. 
 But I have seen in the kitchen-sitting-room of a very 
 small house a hundred old miniatures which enthusiasm 
 had collected for small sums, yet with great delight ; 
 many of the hundred were quite fine, not one was not 
 worth collecting, and they gave as much joy to the 
 owner as a Park Lane collection can do. 
 
 There are fortunate folk who inherit family miniatures, 
 but the happiest possessors are they who collect for 
 themselves. And as I know that this pleasure may 
 still be had by people of moderate means, I have written 
 this book to say so ; not merely for publication and pelf, 
 but because my fingers tingled (so to speak) to write 
 about miniatures, those dainty morsels of beauty and 
 joy. 
 
 Kew, 1915. J. H. YOXALL 
 
 [N.B. The illustrations in this book do not repre- 
 sent relative sizes to the same scale. 
 
 I shall much value the kindness of any reader who 
 recognises and names a sitter sending me the in- 
 formation on a postcard. J. H. Y.] 
 
 VI
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. CAN IT STILL BE DONE? 1 
 
 II. WHERE AND HOW COLLECTING 
 MINIATURES CAN BE DONE 
 
 III. COUNTERFEITS AND THEIR DETECTION 
 
 IV. CLASSES OF MINIATURES 
 
 V. THE TRANSITION TO IVORY 
 VI. MINIATURES DONE ON PAPER 
 
 VII. MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 VIII. FRENCH MINIATURES ON IVORY 
 IX. MINIATURES DONE IN ENAMEL 
 X. MINIATURES DONE ON PORCELAIN 
 XI. MISCELLANEA AND SIGNATURES 
 INDEX 
 
 vu
 
 I. CAN IT STILL BE DONE? 
 
 M 
 
 ANY a would-be collector of fine old miniatures 
 is put off by the belief that they all are already 
 hoarded, in galleries like the Wallace or the 
 Victoria and Albert, or in mansions such as Windsor 
 Castle, Montagu House, Chatsworth, Welbeck Abbey, 
 and Ham House. There they are, there they will 
 remain, and that is an end to it, is what most would-be 
 collectors suppose ; but to gloat upon a splendid 
 seventeenth-century miniature on silver which cost a 
 guinea, and a Holbeinesque miniature on gold which 
 cost fifty-five shillings, is to know by experience that 
 collecting such delightful old treasures may still be 
 done. 
 
 You must have the flair, of course that is, you must 
 hunt on the scent, and know the quarry when you come 
 upon it but these are knacks and qualities which 
 almost anybody can acquire. Experience does it ; that 
 it still can be done, and how, I shall hope to show. I 
 will try to show it systematically yet interestingly, 
 classifying but expounding, giving explicit advice as 
 to the search for the real, and tests and warnings as to 
 the counterfeit ; with illustrations taken from my own 
 collection. What they cost me is mentioned also, to 
 show that desirable old miniatures may still be hunted 
 for hopefully, and one at a time, no doubt, and with 
 A 1
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 intervals between the findings may still be found at 
 reasonable prices. 
 
 Now, this is a piece of work which has not hitherto 
 been done. Most books on old miniatures are big, 
 tantalizing, and even forbidding, for they tell us all 
 about inaccessible or unique old miniatures very 
 learnedly, but help us little in collecting miniatures 
 which may still be had ; the most pretentious, which 
 was also, perhaps, the worst, was produced in Germany. 
 I hardly wonder at a friend of mine who, irritated by 
 one of these books, cast it into his study fire. But that 
 was hasty ; such a book as that is valuable for reference, 
 as a kind of dictionary of miniaturists' names and styles, 
 though very incomplete even for that purpose. And 
 there is encouragement in such books, too, even for a 
 collector who wishes to be practical and successful, not 
 mooning over descriptions of the locked-up possessions 
 of others ; for instance, one learns that George Engle- 
 heart must have painted some 5000 miniatures, and 
 that only some half dozen of them are shut up in national 
 museums. So where are the rest ? 
 
 I am writing for persons of taste and cultivation who 
 can seldom afford to buy an old miniature for more 
 than quite a few pounds ; and I am not writing 
 out of mere book-knowledge or hearsay, but out of 
 experience, bought and gained by myself. By actual 
 practice I have found that with aptness and assiduity 
 in the search quite a number of good old miniatures, 
 some really excellent, can be come upon in quite a 
 few years, at quite a moderate cost. More anxious 
 to be helpful than oracular on the subject, I need not 
 2
 
 CAN IT STILL BE DONE 
 
 suppose the possession of much preliminary knowledge 
 of the subject by readers of this book, and indeed I 
 have discovered that people expert in the matter are 
 quite few. No standard in miniature collecting exists, 
 or can be set up, perhaps, and I am sure I shall be 
 pardoned by many 
 for trying to be 
 lucid and direct in 
 what I here write. 
 My best e x- 
 amples will illus- 
 trate later chapters, 
 and I merely begin 
 with these ; but 
 No. 1 is a well- 
 painted miniature 
 which, in a papier- 
 mache and ormolu 
 frame, cost me only 
 7s. 6d. in 1908. 
 Romance and 
 imagination stir at the thought of who was he, this 
 rather serious, distinguished he with the thoughtful 
 eyes, the strong-willed chin, the powerful nose, and 
 the high brow? The initials and date A.G., 1798 
 written near the border are the only trace of any identity 
 left ; turning up the records, I find that " A.G." must 
 have stood for a certain Andrea Grazlia who exhibited 
 portrait miniatures at the Royal Academy between 
 1 776 and 1 792 ; Andrea Grazlia was obviously an 
 efficient miniaturist, yet you will find no mention of 
 
 3
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 him in the kind of big book my friend cast into the fire. 
 But who was the sitter ? There is something of the 
 Scots gentleman about him, I think. He wears the 
 dress of the Directoire period, and upon the collar of 
 his fine blue coat the powder is lying still ; he dressed 
 his hair m a queue, he wore a Beau Brummell neck- 
 cloth ; perhaps the painting of the folds and shadows 
 
 of the waistcoat is 
 defective, but as 
 he looks out of the 
 frame he almost 
 speaks. Who was 
 he? Can anybody 
 name him now ? 
 No answer ; and 
 in that silence lies 
 the pathos of 
 loving and losing, 
 and the inalien- 
 able romance of 
 the unknown. 
 Here, No. 2, is the first ivory miniature I acquired 
 seen in a shop window in a paved alley off St. Martin's 
 Lane and bought for seven shillings ; again " Pasquier," 
 the artist's name, is the only ostensible trace. This 
 Pasquier, the younger, was not a great miniaturist, and 
 some of the work is defective, but he painted the face 
 quite exquisitely and one test of a good miniature is the 
 treatment of the lips and eyes. These eyes are large 
 and blue, the nose is hooked and long, the lips are set ; 
 who was she? She was a personage of great import- 
 4
 
 CAN IT STILL BE DONE 
 
 ance in her day ; I have discovered who she was. 
 The dress hinted at the period, and the head-dress put 
 me on the track. I took the miniature to the National 
 Portrait Gallery and studied Lawrence's great portrait 
 of Caroline of 
 Brunswick there ; 
 Pasquier showed 
 her as she must 
 have been about 
 1 797, when newly 
 married ; before 
 she bloomed into 
 what she was when 
 Lawrence painted 
 her, or blowsed 
 into what she 
 looks like in this, 
 No. 3, a miniature 
 in oils which is 
 powerful in por- 
 traiture and rich No. 3 
 in colour ; it cost 
 
 me 4s. 6d. at Turnham Green, by the by. This shows 
 her older, and froward in her woe, but the hard eyes are 
 the same ; and here in her head-dress are the Prince of 
 Wales' feathers again ; so that both must have been 
 painted before 1821, when George IV was crowned. 
 
 ROMANCE AND PATHOS AND ART 
 
 A collector bends over the trays in his cabinet and 
 marvels how one brief human being could so perpetuate 
 
 5
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 he looks of another ; here upon thin planes of ivory, 
 metal, and card, the miracle of life persists, to the life. 
 Romance and pathos, biography and art. life, love, and 
 loss are gathered here in little, upon these small ovals, 
 these flattened eggs. But the collector cannot question 
 them to much avail. The sitters five on, but dumbly ; 
 even die women are mute. Red lips, who kissed ye 
 best? No answer. Hand on the rapier, how often 
 did you embrue? Not even a frown. Periwigged 
 peer with a face Eke Jacob's (the inventor of wigs), 
 what is the shameful truth about that expedition to the 
 Lowlands ? Not even a curse. There come no replies 
 from these*" noting likenesses " ; upon the ambitions, 
 hopes, intrigues, perils, and joys of their lives they are 
 dumb. 
 
 These portraits for galleries in Lalliput are rich in 
 tradition, however; miniatures make their disappear- 
 ances, as the six or seven of Cromwell that were painted 
 by ^tfffi""J Cooper, the Rembrandt of miniaturists, had 
 to do when the Restoration took place. Less famous 
 miniatures than those make their disappearances, also, 
 from period to period ; emerging again in the most 
 unlikely places, and giving the searching collector his 
 chance. And many of them are eloquent with psycho- 
 logy, with the character of the sitter the only prophecy 
 that comes true. In the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam 
 you may study a miniature by Hoskins which is probably 
 the most life-like portrait of Charles I ; for in the 
 mouth, the lips, the forehead, the colour of the skin, 
 and the pouches under the eyes the observant may read 
 secrets and understand why the tragedy of Charles I 
 6
 
 CAN IT STILL BE DONE 
 
 befell. It was Hosidns, again, who depicted Queen 
 Henrietta Maria as what she must have been as what 
 the daughter of Henri Quatre and a Medicis mother 
 could hardly help but be. 
 
 Faces vary, of course, even the bony framework of 
 faces varies infinitely ; in the shape of the brows, the 
 depth of the eye-sockets, the arch of the nose, and the 
 angle of die lower jaw. no two skulls were ever quite 
 alike. More than forty muscles cover this framework, 
 and each movement of each muscle is expressed exter- 
 nally, revealing emotions, habits, prepossessions and 
 customary modes of feeling or thought. These affect 
 the skin, and therefore the wrinkles themselves are 
 records of past passions, fixed ideas, and character 
 formation ; good miniaturists know and show (as the 
 illustrations in this book display) how seldom it is that 
 even the two eyes in the same head are quite alike. A 
 miniature may thus be made biographical, and a number 
 of miniatures, taken together, such as Holbein's or 
 Cooper's, may be said to depict the human tendencies 
 of the time.
 
 II. WHERE AND HOW COLLECTING 
 MINIATURES CAN BE DONE 
 
 THERE are several hows and many wheres. From 
 time to time collections of old miniatures are 
 dispersed under the hammer, and some of 
 these find their way into quite small dealers' shops. 
 Then comes the collector's opportunity if, indeed, 
 he has not already taken that by going to the auction 
 room beforehand on " view day," and arranging with 
 some frequenter of that particular room to bid for him 
 vicariously, telling him exactly which to bid for and 
 up to what limit of price. Often, too, small collections 
 of miniatures are sold to dealers by what is called private 
 treaty, and for a few days the purchasing dealer's shop 
 window affords you your chance. 
 
 THE SEVERAL HUNDRED MINIATURES 
 
 Not long ago a baronet's collection of several hundred 
 miniatures came under the hammer. They were not 
 heirlooms ; they had been collected during his lifetime, 
 and therefore they could be sold. Here is a miniature, 
 No. 4, which used to belong to the baronet ; I bought 
 it out of a shop in Bloomsbury for 3. 
 
 The baronet had been an indefatigable collector. 
 Often he bought at high prices, for he was wealthy, 
 but also he searched and foraged for himself, not merely 
 
 8
 
 HOW COLLECTING CAN BE DONE 
 
 waiting for dealers to approach him with offers ; and 
 in hunting he often came upon good old miniatures 
 which had been separated from their original frames. 
 Every foraging collector does that, and not seldom a 
 frameless miniature affords him one of his best bargains. 
 Miniature - frames in 
 precious metal set with 
 gems are coveted by 
 wealthy people and 
 bought away from the 
 miniatures sometimes, 
 which then lie frame- 
 less, or are fitted with 
 a trumpery new setting, 
 and as the dealer has 
 made his profit on the 
 old frame, he will let the 
 little picture go cheap. 
 
 THE PORTRAIT 
 BOOKS 
 
 What the baronet 
 did in these cases was 
 to enclose the miniature and its more or less trumpery 
 frame within a specially made and inscribed ormolu 
 setting of pseudo-Louis Qumze design, as here shown, 
 No. 4 ; upon this he had the names of the sitter and the 
 artist engraved. In the present example, the inscrip- 
 tion is " David Hume, author of The History of England, 
 1711-1776. By Bernard Lens." I am not so sure about 
 who the artist was as the baronet seems to have been, and 
 
 9 
 
 No. 4
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 the ascription is confused by the fact that there were in 
 successive generations three miniaturists of the name 
 of Bernard Lens. But names are often a difficulty in the 
 matter. As every collector will do, the baronet came 
 upon desirable miniature portraits of persons unnamed, 
 but he dealt with that difficulty systematically, by 
 collecting copper-plate, etched, mezzotint, lithograph, 
 or other paper portraits of some thousands of persons 
 of consequence in their day, who lived during the 
 seventeenth or eighteenth century, and these he had 
 bound up together. I have seen three of these " por- 
 trait books " of his. When he bought an anonymous 
 miniature, the material upon which it was painted gave 
 a clue to its date, and so did the costume and the 
 coiffure ; he could turn to his portrait books, compare 
 features and dress, and often arrive at the name. 
 
 WHEN A DEALER IS GIVING UP BUSINESS 
 
 I am writing now of the genuine chances which a 
 collector finds. In the next chapter I will deal with 
 fraudulent copies of old miniatures, but for the present 
 let us consider the real. Another kind of opportunity 
 for a collector occurs when a curio-dealer is about to 
 give up business and retire upon a competency. Seldom 
 he sends his stock en bloc to the auction rooms, for that 
 is a method of sale which does not pay him very well ; 
 he prefers to dispose of his possessions gradually, during 
 a year or so previous to actually closing, and he " marks 
 them down," as he calls it, in a very tempting way. If 
 one of the miniatures in stock be frameless, he will let 
 it go for very little, for he considers himself to be 
 10
 
 HOW COLLECTING CAN BE DONE 
 
 realizing " by selling off. The ordinary, general 
 curio-dealer does not understand miniatures so well as 
 he does other classes of the articles he deals in, and 
 this is one reason why picking up good old miniatures 
 cheaply can still be done. 
 
 THE BARROW AND " THE STONES " 
 
 But one also hunts elsewhere. I own a good miniature 
 of the Plimer school and period, bought for 12s. 6d. 
 off a barrow in a street market near Soho ; I own 
 a contemporary miniature of the young Bonaparte, 
 done upon soft Sevres porcelain, which I bought for 
 7s. 6d. in the Caledonian Market ; I also purchased a 
 fine small neck miniature, framed in gold, for 24s. 
 there. One never should pass a broker's barrow in a 
 street market without scanning it, for a prize will be 
 found on it soon or late. As for " the Market," whither 
 some 500 little dealers and brokers bring their more 
 portable possessions, laying them out upon " the stones," 
 as they call the paved flooring of the Caledonian Meat 
 Market, every Friday, and on Fridays only, though this 
 has ceased to be a Tom Tiddler's ground of bargains, 
 a picker-up of old miniatures should not fail to go 
 searching there. He should arrive soon after ten 
 o'clock in the morning, not too early for the vans and 
 trolleys to have been emptied of the goods, and not so 
 late as to find that dealers and other collectors who 
 knowingly hunt " the stones " have already purchased 
 the best. 
 
 11
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 THE PAWNSHOPS 
 
 A pawnbroker's may still be a place in which you 
 may hunt with much profit, though most pawnbrokers 
 now deal in what is called " the modern antique," mere 
 tawdry stuff pacotille. But in the City, the West End, 
 Bloomsbury, Chelsea, Hampstead, and near every 
 residential quarter of London, as in every small town 
 near, and in every suburb except those which the 
 Great Eastern Railway traverses, pawnbrokers may be 
 found who still carry on the tradition, begun early in 
 the eighteenth century perhaps, of lending cash on 
 objects of art. They advance the money with caution, 
 and can therefore sell the unredeemed pledges at 
 reasonable prices, and often do. It was in a West End 
 pawnshop window that I saw a Holbemesque miniature 
 which was sold me for 55s. It was in a Marylebone 
 pawnbroker's glass counter-case that I found a miniature 
 of Mme. de Chatelux, by Dupuis, fellow but not 
 duplicate of one in the Jodrell collection on view at the 
 South Kensington Museum at the time ; it cost me 
 17s. 6d. frameless. 
 
 THE SMALLER AUCTION ROOMS 
 
 With miniatures, as with every " line " in collecting, 
 chances are found in the smaller auction rooms when a 
 miscellaneous sale is going on ; or, the day before it 
 begins, indeed, stepping in and looking round, you may 
 see something desirable and buy it right out, which can 
 be done if the catalogue of the sale has not yet been 
 printed off. But most of the miniatures sold in the 
 
 12
 
 HOW COLLECTING CAN BE DONE 
 
 smaller auction sales are counterfeits, or " the modern 
 antique," or " Mid Victorian " that is, of dates and 
 kinds which collectors disdain. 
 
 THE SMALL JEWELLER'S SHOP 
 
 The small jeweller's shop is a good place to hunt in. 
 I do not mean the little shop that is hung with brand 
 new cheap jewellery and watches, but the " watchmaker 
 and jeweller's " little place, where good craftsmanship 
 goes on, and repairing is the stand-by of the business, 
 buying and selling of old jewellery, as well as of new, 
 being an occasional and subsidiary thing. In one such 
 place, I bought for 15s. a charming French miniature 
 of the Directoire period ; in another, I found an eye- 
 mmiature, though eye-miniatures are excessively rare. 
 
 MINIATURE FRAMES 
 
 A working jeweller's shop is also a place in which to 
 come upon old miniature-frames empty. In a small 
 Surrey town I found a large one, fine old paste and old 
 silver, perfect, price 1 5s. It is always wise to acquire 
 a good old frame, ready for some frameless old miniature 
 that may turn up, though one cannot hope always to 
 match frame with picture in exact period or style, of 
 course. 
 
 One characteristic eighteenth-century frame is shown 
 m No. 23 : at the back, hair fills the whole ova) ; in 
 front, between the two oval gold rims, is Bristol blue 
 glass, with copper or gold foil under it ; sometimes the 
 miniature occupies the other side, and hair the smaller 
 oval ; in that case Bristol opal glass is the backing for 
 
 13
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 the hair. Other frames, typical of the period, are seen 
 in Nos. 22 and 24. 
 
 There is no need for a collector to re-frame his minia- 
 tures elaborately, as the baronet did, but often an empty 
 old frame can be neatly adapted to a loose old miniature. 
 One test for a miniature which I have discovered in 
 collecting is this, however, does the miniature look 
 even better when out of its frame than when in it ? If 
 so, the miniature is almost sure to be a particularly 
 fine bit of work. But if the miniature is of the third or 
 fourth order of quality, a good frame, even a brand new 
 one, will wonderfully add to the effect of it. Of course 
 a new gold frame is the most effective usually, but there 
 are dainty new frames in white enamel to be had 
 cheaply, which go well with miniatures of eighteenth- 
 century women though they would be out of keeping 
 with seventeenth-century miniatures, by the by. 
 
 HANGING ON SCREENS 
 
 So that, in one place and way or another, if you are 
 a man, and like to get old miniatures together into a 
 cabinet, it can still be done ; or if you are a woman, 
 and like to wear miniatures as brooches or pendants, 
 or to hang them upon a boudoir screen, it can be done. 
 But I do not advise the hanging of miniatures on screens ; 
 they should be kept from the air, enclosed in cabinets, 
 and if the cabinets have glass tops they should not 
 be exposed to direct sunshine, or be placed near the 
 fire-place. In a rectory drawing-room I once saw two 
 frames, of six miniatures each, hanging over the mantel- 
 piece ; the value of the miniatures would be 1000, 
 
 14
 
 HOW COLLECTING CAN BE DONE 
 
 and every time the fire was lit the value diminished ; 
 heat and damp are enemies of miniatures, the first 
 producing cracks and peeling, the second inducing 
 mould. 
 
 But in all these places and ways of collecting there 
 are dangers that lie in wait. Counterfeits which deceive 
 and copies which delude lie ready for the collector, 
 either artfully prepared for him or honestly pressed 
 upon him by vendors who confess themselves to be " no 
 judges." Of these perils I will write next. 
 
 15
 
 III. COUNTERFEITS AND THEIR 
 DETECTION 
 
 BEFORE coming to the several classes of old 
 miniatures, and the methods of recognizing 
 and classifying them, it is well to consider 
 how one may detect the fraudulent or other modern 
 copies of the old. No doubt a fine miniature, whatever 
 its date, is recognizable by the skill of its art ; but fine 
 painting may be put into modern miniatures offered 
 you as old ones, and, therefore, the presence of good 
 art cannot be the only test applied to a skilful fraud. 
 
 A collector who searches in some of the quarters I 
 have mentioned will come upon many modern daubs, 
 done straightforwardly, but clumsily, and offered to 
 shopkeepers as articles of commerce. These the 
 poverty of the workmanship and the excessive use of 
 Chinese white will betray. The drawing will be poor, 
 and the stippling of the colour will lack any decent 
 degree of finish. There is little excuse for the collector 
 being taken in by one of these, if " Is this good work- 
 manship, fine art, clever painting ? " he asks himself, 
 as he scans the thing with a magnifying lens. But he 
 will also come upon more or less cleverly done counter- 
 feits, out and out frauds intended to delude, and in 
 these the workmanship may be fairly good. I think it 
 is impossible for a beginner not to be taken in by these 
 
 16
 
 COUNTERFEITS AND DETECTION 
 
 once or twice. His very zest and enthusiasm in collect- 
 ing will lead him into such mistakes. Yet he will learn 
 from them, of course, and, therefore, a beginner should 
 not be too chary of buying, even though he thus acquires 
 a number of unimportant miniatures and a few that are 
 frauds. The more 
 
 he makes a strong W 
 
 pocket lens his 
 companion and uses 
 it, the less his risk 
 of being taken in. 
 But the point is 
 what signs and 
 symptoms of fraud 
 to expect in a false 
 miniature, and to 
 look for, as well as 
 what evidences of 
 clumsy workman- 
 ship and bad art ? 
 
 PICTURE OF A 
 CLEVER FRAUD 
 
 No. 5 purports 
 
 to be a Romney miniature of Lady Hamilton. The 
 painting of it is broad and thin in Romney 's style, 
 the tinting of the cheeks, lips, and eyes is clever, 
 the shadows and lights seem skilfully put in, and 
 one would think this a very desirable old miniature 
 indeed. Yet it is a fraud right through. It is done 
 on celluloid, that counterfeits ivory. Upon this false 
 B 17 
 
 No. 5
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 surface the outlines and shadows of the face and bust 
 were printed, probably by photo-lithography, in the 
 fewest possible strokes and lines of bluish black, so that, 
 with the minimum of labour, a skilful brush could 
 fetch out broad lights and darks in the hair, the 
 shoulders, and the billowy scarf. Then the background 
 was stippled a little, after being washed with bluish 
 white. The artist nowhere fell into the duffer's error 
 of caking Chinese white on crudely ; he or she must 
 have been a skilful miniaturist, capable of working 
 rapidly and cheaply, so as to produce a tempting 
 counterfeit for sale at a low price. 
 
 The lens detects the photographic basis, however, 
 by the grain of the printing ink, which shows even 
 through the flesh tints. Moreover, Romney is not 
 known to have painted Lady Hamilton in miniature, 
 and if he did not, reflection ought to suggest that this 
 could hardly be a contemporary production, and is 
 probably a copy in small of one of Romney 's canvas 
 and life-size heads. And though copying, in miniature, 
 heads or figures out of famous pictures is a legitimate 
 branch of art, it does not produce a genuine, con- 
 temporary portrait taken of a sitter, which is what 
 almost every old miniature purports to be. 
 
 COPIED FROM OLD PRINTS 
 
 Here, No. 6, is quite a taking large miniature, in a 
 copy of an old frame set with turquoises. 
 
 The calash which this pretty woman wears seems to 
 date the work to some extent, but the ivory is new, and 
 in fact the whole miniature is a copy, taken from an 
 18
 
 COUNTERFEITS AND DETECTION 
 
 eighteenth-century print of a Duchess of Manchester, 
 
 a black and white print, not a colour-print. Yet the 
 
 copier put colour into his work, which is not bad work 
 
 so far as the face, 
 
 neck and the 
 
 pearls go ; but the 
 
 lack of sincerity, 
 
 and of consequent 
 
 artistic finish and 
 
 devotion to the 
 
 job, are seen in 
 
 the crudity of the 
 
 painting of the 
 
 calash, and in the 
 
 hair. 
 
 THE " ENGLE- 
 HEART " FRAUD 
 
 Most modern 
 copies of old 
 miniatures imitate 
 the style of No 6 
 
 Plimer, but Engle- 
 
 heart's conception of woman's loveliness is also a 
 favourite model for the frauds. No. 7 is an example 
 of the kind of fraud that ought hardly to take even 
 a beginner in. It is painted, not printed at all, 
 and on " real ivory." Crude Chinese white has 
 hardly been used on it, except for the pearls. The 
 critical points eyes and lips have been rather nicely 
 painted in, though the eyes lack the characteristic 
 
 19
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 " Engleheart " brilliancy. But the stippling is coarse 
 and hasty and the bust is out of drawing. The counter- 
 feiter had never learned to " draw " (in the sense in 
 which artists use that phrase when they mean " to draw 
 the figure and the attitude correctly "), though George 
 
 Engleheart was of 
 all eighteenth-cen- 
 tury miniaturists 
 the one who could 
 best " draw." 
 
 Further, the lens 
 reveals that the 
 flesh tints and the 
 shadows have been 
 coarsely painted in. 
 George Engle- 
 heart, though he 
 did not finick and 
 stipple so neatly as 
 some of his con- 
 temporaries did, 
 left nothing coarse, 
 rough, and unfinished in his work. He adopted 
 a certain characteristic way of representing powdered 
 hair, which the forger attempted to imitate ; but the 
 lens reveals that a cloud of greyish tint having been 
 washed on around the face, the forger put in a few 
 score curving lines and left it at that. Then the 
 counterfeit, bearing the name of " Mrs. Dalrymple 
 Ellis " at the back, was offered for sale as old. 
 
 No. 7 
 
 20
 
 COUNTERFEITS AND DETECTION 
 
 THE CHINESE WHITE TEST 
 
 Chinese white is a thick, metallic pigment, rather 
 resembling the white lead which house painters use. 
 Chinese white was no doubt an element in the palettes 
 of eighteenth-century miniaturists, used for mixing in 
 with transparent tint to make what is called " body 
 colour," colour which is opaque. But they seldom laid 
 on Chinese white in the crude, except when painting 
 lace or pearls upon dark or flesh colours, and they seldom 
 left it standing up thickly, as if encrusted. Now one 
 seldom sees a fraudulent miniature in which Chinese 
 white is not crudely present. Rapid or unskilful 
 copyists find the pigment convenient for rendering the 
 effect of lace, white frills, or pearls, and they lay it on 
 in a solid, caked-up way ; which, whenever existent in 
 old miniatures, has in them been softened by time ; note 
 the bodice in No. 26. 
 
 THE GOLD BEATERS'-SKIN FRAUD 
 
 To keep out damp and dust, which injure miniatures, 
 gold-beaters'-skin, a thin but tough integument, was 
 wrapped about the old ones when they were new, the 
 back edges of the piece of skin being stuck down over 
 and upon the front edges of the piece of ivory. In time 
 this stuff, if exposed to the air meanwhile, may turn 
 a dark brown colour, and, therefore, the presence of 
 dark brown gold-beaters'-skin around a frameless 
 miniature is usually an evidence of age. But this colour 
 may be counterfeited. In No. 8 is shown the look of 
 the back of a miniature covered with gold-beaters'-skin 
 
 21
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 as dark and wrinkled as it well can be ; but under it the 
 ivory is still whitish see the part exposed by the tear 
 and when one examines the little portrait itself, the 
 
 bad drawing, the 
 clumsy limning, 
 and the caked 
 Chinese white, 
 show it to be a 
 weak and valueless 
 affair not forty 
 '-A years old. 
 
 THE USE OF A 
 LENS 
 
 A strong little 
 pocket lens can pro- 
 tect a collector from 
 delusions which 
 safely confront the 
 naked eye. It is 
 not enough that one 
 should like the look 
 of a miniature when 
 seen by the naked eye only, or through ordinary 
 glasses. The lens should be brought to bear upon 
 every part of the workmanship of the painting, and 
 particularly upon the eyes, eyebrows, lips, nose, and 
 chin. The lens should search not merely for the absence 
 of crude Chinese white, but for the presence of fluent, 
 easy, masterly art. The art is, I repeat, the chief test 
 of genuineness and value in a miniature. There has 
 
 22 
 
 No. 8
 
 COUNTERFEITS AND DETECTION 
 
 been no good painter in anything, oil or water-colour, 
 life size or in the small, whose brush moved in a con- 
 strained, uncertain, niggling, laborious way. 
 
 Many old miniaturists produced their flesh effects 
 by stippling that is, by an infinitude of the tiniest 
 possible touches, so fine and so many that it almost 
 makes one suppose that they had some unusual quality 
 of minute sight in their eyes. Well, the lens will show 
 if the stippling be of that kind, or if it was crudely 
 and hastily put in, with touches comparatively large. 
 Other old miniaturists chose to paint in the flesh more 
 boldly, with strokes rather than with stipples, but even 
 then the strokes were small. If the old miniaturist 
 used much " modelling " that is, contrasts of light 
 and shadow, as well as of colour, to show the flesh of 
 the sitter's face as it really looked, and not as such 
 fashionable flatterers as Cosway represented it then the 
 bold modelling will show up under the lens as artistic, 
 fine, and masterly, quite different from the few dauby 
 touches and strokes of the copyist or the counterfeiter, 
 who is too imperfect an artist to earn a living as a 
 miniaturist of people alive to-day. 
 
 THE FINELY PAINTED FRAUDS 
 
 Yet there are really clever artists at work counter- 
 feiting old miniatures. I think most of them are 
 French. In the Rue de Rivoli at Paris hundreds of 
 miniatures which are really well done, but were done a 
 few years ago only, lie in wait for English buyers, as 
 " antiques." So do others of the kind and quality in 
 English curio shops, jewellers' shops, and elsewhere. 
 
 23
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 Often these are handsomely framed in gold, or let into 
 expensively made snuff-boxes or bon-bon or powder 
 boxes of gold or ivory, or ivory and tortoiseshell ; and 
 then a high price is asked for them accordingly. Some- 
 times these counterfeits are done in enamel, even, and 
 then the price is high indeed. It is only the moneyed 
 amateur who can bite at these baits and be caught, 
 but he often is. I know that sometimes a cheaply 
 painted miniature is let into a cheap old wooden or 
 papier-mache powder box or snuff-box, and then the 
 picking-up collector's pocket and judgment may be in 
 danger ; but, as a rule, the really able and deceptive 
 forgeries are offered for the rich. The best safeguard 
 for them is to demand a guarantee, and, if possible, a 
 pedigree, for objets d'art of great value as well as beauty 
 have not very often been left lying around loose and lost 
 to account. 
 
 24
 
 IV. CLASSES OF MINIATURES 
 
 IT has now been shown, I hope, that collecting old 
 miniatures can still be done ; also where it may 
 be done, and with what precautions it should be 
 done. The next consideration is the kinds and classes 
 of miniatures which may be looked for. 
 
 DEFINITION OF A MINIATURE 
 
 First of all, what is a miniature ? If you turn to the 
 dictionaries you get such answers as these : 
 
 1 . A painting, generally a portrait, of small dimensions, 
 executed on ivory, vellum, or paper. 
 
 2. Literally, a painting executed in minium (ver- 
 milion). Any small picture, and especially a small 
 portrait. 
 
 3. A minute picture, whether delineating landscape 
 or figures, or a copy of a larger picture. 
 
 The promoters of a famous exhibition of miniatures 
 held in London in 1865 endeavoured to define the word, 
 and did so by ruling, in effect, that miniatures are works 
 of fine art drawn to a small scale, on any material, in 
 any medium i.e., any liquid in which pigments are 
 ground and in any artistic style ; a miniature may 
 represent a head, a head and bust, a half-length of the 
 sitter, a full length, or a group, but must do so in small ; 
 the promoters of the exhibition therefore decided to 
 
 25
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 accept all such works of fine art as were drawn to a 
 small scale, and were miniature in character. But they 
 ruled out miniatures on porcelain ; which is why, I 
 suppose, miniatures on porcelain are little collected yet, 
 though I advise the neglect of that exclusion, and the 
 collecting of miniatures on (not in) porcelain which are 
 fine as portraits, or in art. A dealer's term now heard 
 for toy tea-sets and other very small ceramic objects 
 is " miniatures," and misleading, of course ; but it shows 
 how difficult a clear and comprehensive definition of 
 the object called a miniature is. Thus the words " in 
 any medium," if strictly interpreted, would rule out 
 small portraits done by lead pencil, or crayon, and 
 miniatures done in wax or needlework, or engraved on 
 glass, or cut in ivory or wood. 
 
 The collector finds no difficulty in practical definition, 
 however. The question he puts to himself is, " Has a 
 good artist been at work on this small or smallish, 
 round, oval, square, or other shaped piece of material ? " 
 The main distinction, and perhaps the only true one, 
 is between portrait miniatures and other works of art 
 in small. Portrait miniatures may represent one person 
 only, or more than one person together ; and portrait 
 miniatures may be contemporary, i.e., done from the 
 live sitter, or from some other portrait of him or her. 
 But there may also be miniatures which picture imagined 
 persons or embodied qualities, such as Peter Oliver's 
 " St. John " or Samuel Shelley's small figure of 
 " Chastity." Most collectors of miniatures limit their 
 pursuit to contemporary portraits, done from live 
 sitters ; others admit any small representation done by 
 
 26
 
 CLASSES OF MINIATURES 
 
 a good miniaturist. Perhaps I may be permitted to 
 recommend a preference for portraits, but also a wide 
 and inclusive collecting, not pedantically confined or 
 defined . 
 
 CLASSIFICATION BY MATERIAL WORKED ON 
 
 But if a classification of miniatures be asked for, it 
 can best be made according to the materials worked 
 on the particular " canvas " of each little picture, so 
 to speak, and this will provide a convenient order for 
 the chapters in this book. So, arranging the chief 
 materials as nearly as may be in order of date of general 
 use, we get the following list : 
 
 1 . Miniatures on vellum 4. Miniatures on paper 
 
 2. Miniatures on metal 5. Miniatures on ivory 
 
 3. Miniatures on cardboard 6. Miniatures on porcelain. 
 
 A cabinet which includes a good example or more 
 than one, of each of these six classes of miniatures may 
 be but a small collection, but it is a respectable collection 
 all the same ; it displays knowledge, as well as search 
 and acquisition ; it shows the collector to understand 
 the science of what he is doing, and to have studied his 
 hobby. The minor divisions are, on vellum, the missal 
 and the portrait; on metal, the enamelled and the painted; 
 on paper, the illuminated in early printed books and the 
 separate bit of paper painted ; on ivory, the painted 
 on and the sculptured in ; the sculptured in wood ; 
 the engraved or painted on glass ; the stitched or 
 painted in needlework ; and a collection which includes 
 examples of these also may be regarded as complete. 
 
 27
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 In number of miniatures, or in representation of the 
 work of every miniaturist, no collection can be complete, 
 of course, which is one reason why the impression 
 obtained that collecting old miniatures was a hobby of 
 the past, that could no longer be done. In point of fact, 
 however, miniature collecting did not become much of a 
 
 hobby in England until 
 Queen Victoria took it 
 up. 
 
 MINIATURES DONE 
 ON VELLUM 
 
 The Latin name for 
 a pigment made from 
 red lead was minium ; 
 red was the colour used 
 by monkish scribes 
 when penning initial or 
 capital letters. When 
 these large letters began 
 to be adorned by little 
 
 pictures, within or around them, the term " miniatura " 
 came into use, to describe that particular development in 
 the art. The scribes in miniatura worked on vellum, 
 and this went on until the practice of printing books, 
 instead of writing them, began to be general ; when, 
 after a brief period during which the capital letters of 
 printed books were also adorned in miniatura by the 
 brush, the art of " illumination," as it is now called, 
 died out. 
 
 Here, No. 9, is a late example of the vellum miniature. 
 28
 
 CLASSES OF MINIATURES 
 
 done about the end of the sixteenth century, probably ; 
 no doubt it was cut from some elaborate missal or 
 " book of hours "long ago. It was intended to portray 
 St. Bruno, I sup- 
 pose. I bought it 
 for I Os. 
 
 Portrait minia- 
 tures on vellum 
 were done during 
 the sixteenth and 
 the seventeenth 
 centuries ; most of 
 Cooper's minia- 
 tures are upon that 
 material ; No. 10 
 is a late seven- 
 t ee n t h-century 
 miniature done on 
 vellum and framed 
 in fine old white 
 paste. In its old 
 
 shagreen case, it cost me 1 3s. in the Vauxhali Bridge 
 Road. 
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON METAL 
 
 During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries much 
 fine miniature painting was done in oils on copper ; 
 sometimes it was done on silver or gold ; the thing 
 was to get a smooth, firm surface in some known cases 
 it was done on mutton blade-bone, on alabaster, and on 
 slate. The Clouets and other French artists painted 
 
 29 
 
 No. 10
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 on copper, as well as on paper ; here, No. 1 1 , is a small 
 oil on copper miniature, meant to portray Cardinal 
 Richelieu, quite powerful in its characterization and 
 pleasant in colouring, though a little the worse for wear. 
 This is the miniature referred to in my ABC About 
 Collecting as having been bought, frameless and forlorn, 
 
 for 3s. 6d. near St. 
 Martin's Lane. This 
 is one of many old 
 miniatures which have 
 been taken out of their 
 frames for the sake of 
 selling, melting down, 
 or dejewelling the 
 precious old setting. 
 Such a dismantled por- 
 trait lies about, be- 
 comes forgotten, lies 
 perdu, in dust, and at 
 last comes to light in 
 a little dealer's mis- 
 cellaneous tray, to be snapped up by the first collector 
 who sees and can value it. Such is the rationale of a 
 good many " finds." 
 
 And here, No. 12, is the Holbeinesque miniature 
 already referred to, in Chapter II, as bought out of 
 a West End pawnbroker's window. It is painted 
 on gold, and, both in that respect and in the art of it, 
 had received scant attention, evidently ; not till I had 
 removed old paper glued to the back of it did I see 
 the precious metal shining. But the important and 
 30 
 
 No.
 
 CLASSES OF MINIATURES 
 
 valuable thing about it, which made me buy it, was the 
 art m it, of course. A little restoration would bring 
 back the beauty of the fur on the shoulder, but the 
 painting of the ruff and of the hat remains perfect yet. 
 These are accessories, however ; the modelling and 
 impasto of the face, its coloration, the drawing of the 
 lips, the character in 
 the eyes and nose, 
 and the touching in 
 of the beard and 
 moustache, display 
 the work of a master 
 hand indeed. I make 
 it out to be a portrait 
 of "SirThos. Wiatt, 
 Kt.," of whom Hol- 
 bein did a portrait 
 sketch on paper, 
 which is at Windsor 
 Castle ; it certainly 
 is a miniature of that period. As in other miniatures 
 by Holbein or his school, the light falls full upon 
 the sitter, there is little shadow ; and the fitting 
 of the subject within the almost round oval is also 
 typical of the Holbein style. From this small treasure 
 the contemporary frame, no doubt of gold, moulded 
 and cut in the semblance of a wreath of leaves with 
 fillets, has been reft away by what design or care- 
 lessness, and when, and by whom, one wonders ? The 
 present frame is wooden, and not more than thirty years 
 old. 
 
 31 
 
 No. 12
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 Only a few of the Holbemesque miniatures can be 
 certainly ascribed to Holbein, however. He was the head 
 and culmination of a school ; he set the standard, and 
 his admirers emulated his work among them the best- 
 known names are those of John Bettes, and Sir Antonio 
 More, who painted Queen Mary's face on a small, round, 
 
 gold plate like this, by 
 the by. " A speaking 
 likeness," painted in 
 broad light, with strong, 
 clear colouring was what 
 they aimed at ; Holbein 
 was the best at this, and 
 that is all that can be said. 
 The known Holbein 
 miniatures are done in 
 water-colour, on card- 
 board, or on vellum 
 facing cardboard ; 
 usually the background 
 is blue, and the painting 
 is laid on extremely thinly ; these known examples are 
 inaccessible, of course. But No. 12, though done in 
 oils laid on with much impasto, is Holbemesque enough 
 to be by Holbein, and it is " designed on grand 
 lines " it could be translated into life-size suitably, 
 and it has the medallion effect. To collectors to-day 
 the point is that here was a fine sixteenth-century 
 miniature, painted on a plate of gold, lying in a window 
 among bargain boxes of cigars and secondhand watches, 
 on sale for 2 15s. in June. 1914 
 32 
 
 No. 13
 
 CLASSES OF MINIATURES 
 
 No 1 3, a miniature in gouache, on copper, was bought 
 in Southampton Row for 1 10s. By the finished 
 painting of the thick lace cravat it may be thought the 
 work of Lawrence Crosse. Evidently, it is a striking 
 portrait, full of life and skill. 
 
 33
 
 V. THE TRANSITION TO IVORY 
 
 MINIATURES by Holbein and his school were 
 painted in oil or water-colour upon vellum, 
 metal, slate, wood, cardboard, paper, and 
 bone, but not upon ivory. Ivory as a " canvas " for 
 miniature painters hardly came into use at all prior 
 to the reign of Queen Anne. And this affords the 
 collector a test as to the age and authenticity of a 
 miniature which purports to represent a person who 
 lived during earlier reigns than Queen Anne's. 
 
 4 OLD " AND " CONTEMPORARY " 
 
 A distinction arises between " old " and " con- 
 temporary," therefore. A miniature portrait of Mary 
 Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth, Milton, or Charles I, 
 will not be contemporary if it was painted on ivory, 
 yet it may be " old." For we may consider as " old " 
 any miniatures painted earlier than the year 1850, when 
 photography was ruining the miniaturist's vocation. 
 Nearly fifty years thereafter were to pass, during which 
 photographs were the fashionable, as well as the cheaper, 
 mode of portraiture ; and until the Society of Minia- 
 turists began to hold exhibitions in 1896, and encourage 
 good modern miniature painting, the art was practically 
 dead. 
 
 An " old " miniature, therefore, is one done before 
 34
 
 THE TRANSITION TO IVORY 
 
 1850, let us say ; an old contemporary " miniature 
 is one done from the life, by the artist from the sitter ; 
 an " old " miniature not " contemporary is a copy 
 from a portrait, or is an imaginary portrait of some 
 person earlier in date than the miniaturist was. The 
 fame of Mary Queen of Scots for beauty rests upon 
 an imaginary portrait 
 done by Lawrence 
 Crosse, a miniaturist 
 who died about 1 724 ; 
 being set to "restore" 
 a miniature of the 
 Queen, he gave her 
 new features, which 
 fulfilled his own ideal 
 of womanly loveli- 
 ness. These have 
 been copied often, 
 and often on ivory. 
 Such miniatures, if 
 
 done before 1850, are therefore not contemporary, yet 
 they may be considered " old." Here, No. 14, is a 
 miniature, which represents a sitter in Elizabethan 
 costume ; somebody took this copy done on ivory, and 
 let it into an old wooden box. I bought the whole out 
 of a Westminster pawnshop window for 12s. 6d., but I 
 mention this as a warning, not as a prize. 
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON CARD 
 
 Few old miniatures have been painted on anything 
 but ivory since Queen Anne was first dead, except 
 
 35 
 
 No. 14
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 those done in enamel on metal. Therefore an old 
 miniature done on card or paper is rarer, and to some 
 extent more desirable to acquire, than an ordinary 
 old one done on ivory. In tracing the transition 
 according to the material of the base, we must note that 
 
 probably miniatures 
 done on baby calf 
 skin or chick skin 
 (pecorella), used alone 
 or backed with card, 
 came next in lineal de- 
 scent to missal mmia- 
 tures done upon 
 vellum in a book. But 
 whether faced with 
 pecorella or not, a 
 playing card or a piece 
 of one was the toughest 
 bit of cardboard avail- 
 able to sixteenth- and 
 seventeenth-century miniaturists, for work that was not 
 to be done on metal, slate, or wood. 
 
 Here, No. 15, is a miniature done upon a bit of 
 seventeenth-century card. It represents Mme de 
 Sevigne as she was about the year 1657, when she had 
 been five or six years a widow, and, after the first grief 
 for her husband had passed could feel relief and be 
 bright again. Yet there are touches of her mourning 
 costume visible in the black ribbons, and she wears 
 a widow's-peak cap on her coiffure the black of it 
 relieved with points of gilt ; gilding was often used on 
 
 36 
 
 No. 15
 
 THE TRANSITION TO IVORY 
 
 old contemporary miniatures painted upon card. It has 
 been generally written that Mme de Sevigne's eyes 
 were blue, though she wrote of them herself that they 
 were " bigarres," which means " mottled," strictly. 
 In this miniature her eyes are seen to be of mingled 
 colour, brown and blue. I bought this miniature for 
 4. The frame is hardly contemporary, I think, 
 though it is made of the silver and silver-gilt often used 
 for the purpose at the period. At any rate, the name 
 of the famous wit and letter writer must have been 
 engraved at the back in England, for the accents are 
 omitted from the two letters " e " in the surname ; 
 though no doubt the portrait itself was contemporaneous 
 with the sitter, and done from one which Petitot did 
 in enamel, or after an engraving by Nanteuil. 
 
 TRANSITION IN SHAPE 
 
 Something can be known about the date of an old 
 miniature from its shape sometimes. Holbemesque 
 miniatures are usually almost round, or round within 
 a square setting ; they are seldom rather oval, and never 
 truly oval, I think, and they are small. Miniatures on 
 card were often largish. When painted upon playing 
 cards they were often kept to the oblong shape of the 
 card, more or less. In the Royal collection of miniatures 
 at Windsor Castle there is the " picture of Queen Mary 
 of Scotland upon a blew-grounded square card," which 
 was item twenty-third in the contemporary catalogue 
 made of King Charles I's artistic treasures. But 
 Milliard, portrait-painter to Queen Elizabeth, often used 
 an oval shape. 
 
 37
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 TRANSITION IN MEDIUM 
 
 A transition in medium also is known to have taken 
 place. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 body colour, i.e., water-colour laid on thickly, or made 
 opaque by adding Chinese white, was used on card, 
 and oils were used on metal or wood, though in a 
 few cases oil colours were used on card or paper. In 
 the seventeenth century body colour was sometimes 
 used on metal. When ivory became the " canvas," 
 transparent water-colours i.e., laid on thinly, and 
 not rendered opaque by Chinese white came into 
 vogue. 
 
 COOPER AND COOPERESQUE MINIATURES 
 
 Body colour on metal is therefore a part of the 
 transition from vellum to ivory, and here, No. 16, is 
 a fine contemporaneous example ; from a roundish 
 ellipse to a true oval is also part of the transition, and 
 this is an example of that. I bought it at night under 
 gas-light a thing which should rarely be done. I 
 said, " Here is a fine seventeenth-century miniature, 
 yet the frame is brass." I thereupon locked it up in a 
 drawer, and did not look at it again for three days. 
 But then under daylight I discovered that the frame 
 and the painting were contemporaneous, that what I 
 thought brass is old parcel-gilt silver, and that the 
 miniature is painted on an oval plate of silver, which 
 forms the back of the frame. I believe it is a portrait 
 of Andrew Marvell, the poet, and I hope it may have 
 been painted by Samuel Cooper, but without the 
 38
 
 THE TRANSITION TO IVORY 
 
 least doubt I can say that it belongs to his style and 
 school. 
 
 Samuel Cooper, born in 1609, was the very crown 
 and flower of English miniaturists and his work was 
 so powerful and vital that he may be justly called the 
 Rembrandt of all " limners 
 in little." Most of the 
 known work that can de- 
 finitely be ascribed to his 
 brush is locked up in 
 famous collections, and is 
 therefore without price. 
 But just as there was a 
 Holbemesque school of 
 miniaturists, so was there a 
 Cooperesque school also ; 
 Flatman, Dixon, and Cleyn 
 are its best-known names. 
 Mary Beale, a miniaturist of 
 the period, wrote in her 
 diary on May 5, 1672, that " Mr. Samuel Cooper, the 
 most famous limner in the world for a face," had 
 died that day ; in 1668 Pepys recorded that he had 
 paid Cooper 30 for a miniature of Mrs. Pepys, 
 " certainly a most rare piece of work as to the 
 painting"; and in 1758 Horace Walpole wrote that 
 he had been asked 400 for " Cooper's head of 0. 
 Cromwell, an unfinished miniature." Cooper's portraits 
 resemble pastels by Quentin de la Tour in this, that the 
 sitters seem not posed but alive. 
 
 When Cooper signed his work he joined S and C 
 
 39 
 
 No. 16
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 together in a monogram ; when F. Cleyn signed it was 
 with F and C conjoined. The initials on this miniature 
 are more like F and C than S and C ; but in any case, 
 to pick up this fine piece of Cooperesque work for a 
 guinea is to show that collecting fine old miniatures 
 cheaply can still be done. 
 
 40
 
 VI. MINIATURES DONE ON PAPER 
 
 ATISTS who worked on vellum or cardboard 
 sometimes painted on paper also, and minia- 
 tures on paper therefore form a part of the 
 transition from vellum 
 to ivory ; but, as might 
 be expected, paper was 
 also used concurrently 
 with ivory, and has re- 
 mained in some use till 
 this day. 
 
 No. 17 is a seven- 
 teenth-century minia- 
 ture done in body- 
 colour upon paper ; in 
 the Gray's Inn Road 
 I bought it for 10s. in 
 its frame. It needed No. 17 
 
 and has now received a 
 
 little restoration, such as any skilful miniaturist prac- 
 tising the art to-day can give. 
 
 REPAIRS 
 
 It is a mistake to have an unfinished miniature com- 
 pleted, but when damp has brought mould upon the sur- 
 face of the ivory, or sunlight has caused essential tints to 
 
 41
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 fade, or when the miniature has lam frameless and dust 
 or rubbing has injured the outlines or the pigments, 
 then the services of a discreet and adept restorer may 
 well be called in, unless the miniature is very specially 
 old and important. The cost of that in this case was 
 3s. 6d., as the injury had been done by rubbing ; the 
 original frame removed, the miniature must have lam 
 without protection, even glassless, until about the year 
 1800, when it got its present frame. It resembles the 
 portraits of Venetia, Lady Digby ; in the hair near the 
 temples the signs of the retouching may be seen. 
 
 NAMING THE SITTERS 
 
 By the style of dressing the hair and the use of jewels 
 as shoulder-knots, the period of this miniature is 
 suggested, but the work was not signed by the artist, 
 and nothing (except a likeness to the famous portrait 
 by Oliver) indicates the sitter's name. I should think 
 that one half the old miniatures extant are nameless ; on 
 the other hand, most of the modern copies and the 
 counterfeits are quite elaborately named. In an old 
 miniature the name was sometimes written on the back, 
 sometimes on a slip of paper kept between the back 
 of the picture and the back of the frame, and sometimes 
 it is engraved or penned upon the back of the frame 
 itself ; in one seventeenth-century miniature which I 
 own the trace is given by the insertion of a coat-of-arms 
 between the miniature and the back of the frame. 
 But a collector must be prepared to leave many minia- 
 tures unnamed. The pigment used, the material 
 worked upon, the style, and the quality of the art often 
 
 42
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON PAPER 
 
 enable the period to be determined, and in the case of 
 
 contemporary portraits the costume helps in this ; but 
 
 they give little clue to the sitter, unless the costume be 
 
 distinctive of a monarch or a fighting man, who is 
 
 therefore the more easily 
 
 traced. The style, art, and 
 
 period often indicate the 
 
 artist also ; the pity is that 
 
 so many old miniatures were 
 
 not signed, even by initials 
 
 or monograms, but one is 
 
 safer in ascribing a miniature 
 
 to an artist than in naming 
 
 the sitter, as a rule. I should 
 
 much value the kindness of 
 
 any readers of these chapters 
 
 who may recognize and name 
 
 to me, on a postcard, any 
 
 face here reproduced ; but 
 
 a collector should not be over-anxious to put a name 
 
 to every sitter represented in his collection. 
 
 OLD COPIES OF COOPER 
 
 I wish I could be sure that No. 18 was a contem- 
 porary miniature, but I cannot. It is old, no doubt; it is 
 painted on paper; it is exceedingly well painted, too; the 
 " character " of the original portrait (for this is certainly 
 a copy) is finely rendered ; the blue background touched 
 with gold is usual in miniatures painted between the 
 Holbemesque and the Cooperesque, both inclusive ; 
 and the accessories are powerfully yet carefully painted, 
 
 43 
 
 No. 18
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 notably so in the colour of the armour showing through 
 the outer part of the lawn collar. If this miniature 
 had been got at a King Street auction sale for a hundred 
 guineas I might feel more certain about it, but it did 
 not cost me anything at all like that. The paper is old, 
 and it shows no water-mark, but the test of the paper 
 is always difficult to apply to miniatures, because a 
 counterfeiter can obtain paper from the fly-leaves of an 
 old book. However, here this fine miniature is, and is 
 old if not contemporary. It is probably an old copy of a 
 Cooper portrait of John, Earl of Loudoun (1598-1662), 
 though how it came to be copied at all is a mystery, 
 for the original has seldom been seen ; in 1910 Dr. 
 Williamson wrote that for a couple of generations it 
 was lost sight of behind some oak panelling and had 
 only recently come to light ; and no picture of it was 
 ever published until 1910, so that no modern copy of 
 it could have been made until then. The frame is quite 
 recent, of course, but then I bought the whole, as it 
 stands, for Is. 6d. out of the window of a marine stores 
 in the Old Kent Road in the year 1907. 
 
 Eighteenpence for this miniature, and yet what force 
 and character in the face and in the limning of it ! As 
 might be expected, body-colour has been used, though 
 much of the flesh-tinting is transparent water-colour, 
 in the style which Cooper himself used to lay it on. 
 The hair is wonderfully well done, too as the hair 
 is in Cooper's work in particular. I cannot feel sure 
 that this miniature is contemporary with the sitter 
 or as old as Queen Anne, yet what modern miniaturist 
 or which of the finickers who worked on ivory under 
 44
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON PAPER 
 
 the Georges could have worked on paper with so much 
 power, spontaneity, freedom, and lifelike effect as this ? 
 There was a Mrs. Rosse or Ross who copied several 
 Cooper miniatures contemporaneously ; was this her 
 work? This is one of the mysteries which a picker-up 
 of old miniatures comes 
 upon in his street travels, 
 for by what carelessness, 
 neglect, or accident did 
 this fine piece of work 
 come into the hands of a 
 marine-stores keeper, and 
 how long had it waited a 
 purchaser at the exorbi- 
 tant price of one-and- 
 
 " PLUMBAGO" MINIA- 
 TURES No |9 
 
 Miniatures done in lead 
 
 pencil on paper are called " plumbagoes," and some 
 of them date as far back as the reign of Charles II. 
 David Loggan was the master in this style about that 
 date, and Thomas Forster did fine plumbagoes at 
 about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Some 
 plumbagoes are lightly tinted with colour on the flesh 
 and hair. Here, No. 19, is a plumbago, signed 
 " Littlejohns, fecit," done about the year 1795 to 
 judge by the costume ; I bought it for 3s., loose from 
 its former frame, but the power of it as a portrait 
 and the delicate work in the features and the dress 
 
 45
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 has not been rubbed away ; the chief defect is a lack 
 of modelling at the ear. 
 
 Until recently plumbago miniatures could be bought 
 for next to nothing ; here is No. 20, for instance, which 
 
 No. 20 
 
 cost me 2s. out of a little dealer's portfolio. The art 
 of it and the details of the costume suggest that it is a 
 portrait sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence. The charm- 
 ing little walnut-wood frame is contemporary, though 
 I bought it separately for 3s. 6d. 
 
 46
 
 VII. MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 
 A I approach the subject of miniatures painted in 
 water-colour on ivory, which so many people 
 seem to suppose are the only kind of miniatures 
 worth collecting, I should like to repeat and emphasize 
 the principle that what really counts in a miniature is, 
 or ought to be, the art of it the artist's taste and skill. 
 A collector gradually learns how to distinguish the true 
 from the counterfeit and the old from the modern, but 
 he ought early to study how to distinguish between 
 the well-painted and the poorly done, because this will 
 help him in distinguishing between the varieties just 
 mentioned. There can be no better way of studying 
 what a really fine, well-painted, old miniature is like 
 than by noticing those which hang on the screens under 
 glass at Hertford House (the Wallace collection) at the 
 National Portrait Gallery, and at the Victoria and 
 Albert Museum (the Jones and the Dyce collections) ; 
 and while this trains the eye in respect of r.-j matures 
 particularly, the study of fine pictures on canvas, lovely 
 drawings in water-colour, or noble black-and-white 
 work will also have prepared one to recognize fine art 
 even when done " in small." 
 
 Becoming able to judge a miniature by the art in it, 
 a collector is the less willing to value it according to 
 the mere name of the sitter or even the name of the 
 
 47
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 artist ; also he disdains the " real ivory " commendation 
 as much as he does the " real gold frame " which a 
 dealer mentions whenever he can, and sometimes when 
 he ought not. The authors of big books on the subject 
 lay proper stress upon the work done by the most 
 famous miniaturists, but there were not a few good 
 artists " in little " whose names those books do not 
 mention, or hardly mention ; some hundreds of minia- 
 turists on ivory exhibited at the Royal Academy in 
 their day ; and therefore a collector may quite cheaply 
 acquire examples of good work if he buys according 
 to the art he perceives, and not by the artist's mere 
 name. 
 
 DISTINCTIVE STYLES 
 
 After a while the collector becomes able to dis- 
 tinguish miniatures according to their periods and 
 " schools," and then according to the styles of certain 
 well-known artists. For instance, Smart's work almost 
 always shows a morbidity and individuality of look in 
 the eyes. Dr. Williamson (much my most helpful 
 authority on miniatures, whose books are exempt from 
 the dissatisfaction rightly felt with others on the 
 subject) refers, " as characteristic features, to the 
 rich, subdued colouring of Edndge, in its tones often 
 recalling an oil portrait, to the broad, full, fleshy 
 faces of George Engleheart, so noticeable even in his 
 slighter and unfinished works ; to the somewhat weak 
 and niggling work of Cotes with its own special, quiet 
 refinement ; and to the free drawing and pale greyish 
 colour of Shelley," and he mentions " the large fulness 
 
 48
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 
 of the eyes, the wiry character of the hair (see 
 No. 7), the roundness of the flesh, almost exaggerated 
 in some examples," which are distinctive marks of 
 Engleheart's work. As to Cosway's, " nothing is more 
 characteristic than his light, free, easy delineation of 
 hair, suggested in masses rather than drawn in detail 
 (in opposition to the method adopted by Phmer, whose 
 hard, wiry hair is especially distinctive of his work) (see 
 No. 25). The clear brightness of the eyes, and their 
 gleam of pure, white light, the roundness and gram of the 
 limbs, and the airy transparency of the draperies are other 
 distinctive features of Cosway's art." Elsewhere I 
 learn that Cosway liked to see " the letter S everywhere " 
 in the curves of the hair and the outlines of the pose, 
 and that he cast upon all he did " a peculiar elegance 
 and distinction," as indeed one notices in his work. 
 
 THE COSWAY STYLE 
 
 But Richard Cosway, as the most famous painter of 
 miniatures on ivory, founded a school and had many 
 contemporary imitators of his style. No. 21 is a 
 miniature which if it is not by Cosway is very Cosway- 
 esque. If it had cost 165 at Christie's few would 
 doubt that it was " a Cosway," but it cost me 6 5s. 
 only, near Cambridge Circus in 1912. The skill of 
 the art and the beauty of the work are evident, and 
 the lightness, radiance, flippant grace, and fragility 
 are visible even in this colourless representation of it. 
 It has, in point of fact, the peculiar Cosway colour in 
 the hair ; here, as in the finest and most authenticated 
 Cosways, one sees the hair, shadows, and drapery 
 D 49
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 painted in with almost neutral tints, so that " a pearly 
 colour " is predominant, though in and about it all 
 one sees the Cosway faint touches of blue and green ; 
 but here also are the " strong darks " of the eyes, the 
 swimming eyes, eyes not exactly alike, and the faint 
 
 pink of the cheeks, the rich 
 carnation of the lips ; while 
 over it all are the refine- 
 ment, the idealized grace 
 and luscious sweetness of 
 Cosway 's work. 
 
 I daresay it was not a 
 good portrait ; I make it 
 out to represent Lady 
 Skipwith, whom Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds painted in oils 
 and did not show to be 
 anything like so chubby of 
 cheek or unwrmkled. But 
 then Cosway seems seldom 
 to have aimed at exact portraiture ; he would know 
 that he must not, indeed, for he was the fashionable 
 artist the Sir Thomas Lawrence in small of his 
 day. His sitters went to him to be flattered, and he 
 must gloze and cajole ; his portrait of Caroline of 
 Brunswick was quite false to the life. Indeed, all the 
 Cosway school of miniaturists had to do the same ; 
 they must flatter to please, or they could not make 
 a living, and therefore even Engleheart's little pictures 
 of young women were blandishments, and as for 
 Plimer's, the adulation and sycophancy in them is 
 
 50 
 
 No. 21
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 
 almost revolting even to-day. This artful misrepresenta- 
 tion of women's looks is characteristic of work done by 
 other miniaturists of the period ; Mrs. Cosway tried to 
 emulate her husband ; Smart, Richard and Samuel 
 Collins, Wood and Edridge essayed to paint in the 
 flattering Cosway style, more or less. 
 
 The miniature here represented has R. C., 1781, in 
 black just above the frill on the right shoulder. At 
 one time this bit of ivory must have lain frameless, 
 for the signature has been rubbed, and so have the 
 sleeve and the bodice. Cosway is not known to have 
 signed his initials on the front of miniatures often ; 
 only two or three authenticated instances are known to 
 exist. Richard Collins did sign his work R. C. on the 
 front of the miniature, but then, Richard Collins 
 coloured faces ruddily, and is not represented anywhere 
 else by work so dainty and delicate as this. About this 
 there is indeed the " certain hot-house lusciousness " 
 which has been said to be a constant feature of Cosway 's 
 work ; here, too, is indeed " hair that is a happy com- 
 bination of the sculptor's and the painter's art," as 
 Mr. Dudley Heath has noticed it possesses " the soft, 
 radiating appreciation of line, with a classic uniformity 
 of mass, crowning the head like a bishop's tiara, or 
 lightly caressing the rounded contours of neck and 
 shoulder." The " skyey " background, too, is in 
 Cosway 's own special choice of tints, the cold, clear 
 blue lightening into white, which he used during the 
 better part of his career. In some respects the face 
 might be by Engleheart, but the neck and bust show 
 Cosway 's rapid bad drawing, and the head is not 
 
 51
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 posed in quite the middle of the oval, a thing which 
 Cosway seldom did, though his school did it almost 
 always ; so that yes, I think I must claim that this is a 
 Cosway, perhaps done, signed, and dated to show that 
 Engleheart's best could be bettered. 
 
 Even the most dampening of critics would let it 
 pass as a typical example of the eighteenth-century 
 style, however, and a collector can hardly mistake this 
 style when he has once studied it. But he must beware 
 of forgeries ; not merely those done lately, which are 
 innocuous except to rash inexperience, but those fraudu- 
 lent copies done fifty or sixty years ago, which time 
 also has been at work on. I saw such an one the other 
 day ; in faded ink at the back it bore the legend which 
 is supposed to authenticate a Cosway " Ricardus 
 Cosway, R.A., Primanus Pictor Serenissimus Walliae, 
 Principis Pinxit," and a date but the painting belied 
 the signature, though the price asked was 150. 
 
 On the other hand, there must be many genuine 
 Cosway miniatures still existent but unrecognized as 
 such. For the artist painted during fifty years, and 
 sometimes " when he sat down to dinner would boast 
 that he had dispatched during the day twelve or fourteen 
 sitters," at three sittings per miniature. Though 
 neglect, fire, and damp have ruined many, there must 
 still be some thousands of Cosways extant. 
 
 A " COSWAY " MAN 
 
 No. 22 was bought for 5, from a small watchmaker 
 who at last (after much coaxing and a small preliminary 
 purchase) dived into his safe and produced this ad- 
 
 52
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 
 mirable miniature. It is certainly a Cosway, done with 
 the lightness, ease, and finished unfinish of Cosway 's 
 facile work at its best. The hair and the flesh are 
 significant evidence. The hair has " subtle shades of 
 blue or green in it," as Dr. Williamson has noticed in 
 Cosway 's work with a pedi- 
 gree ; it is broad, and life- 
 like, " resembling soft- 
 pencil work " indeed, it 
 is pencil work lightly tinted 
 in the Cosway manner. 
 Half the forehead and most 
 of the right cheek consist of 
 the ivory untinted, and a 
 lens shows that the pencil- 
 marks still remain near the 
 lips and eyes. " A touch 
 of colour and a few hasty 
 strokes, a little dark stip- 
 pling m the shadows, and 
 a living face " describes this miniature exactly ; with 
 faint blues and greens in the coat, and pink amidst 
 the blue of the background, the " Cosway " colouring 
 is delightful to see. Also the grace, and the aristocracy 
 of the work, so to speak, are evident here ; as they are 
 in No. 21. 
 
 I am not so bold as to claim the discovery of three 
 Cosways and the purchase of them cheaply, but in 
 No. 23 may be seen another variety of the style. 5 
 was the price of this, at a small jeweller's in Oxford 
 Street. The frame-maker who opened it for me, so 
 
 53 
 
 No. 22
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 that a little dust which had gathered inside might be 
 removed, declared that the frame had never been 
 disturbed since it was fitted. The hair in the back 
 of the frame is still so beautiful and was so lavishly 
 
 supplied that only 
 a young woman's 
 head could have 
 parted with so 
 much, and from 
 the striking nose, 
 fine eye, and above 
 all the singular 
 lower lip, I judge 
 this to be a portrait 
 of Sarah Kemble, 
 painted soon after 
 she had become 
 Mrs. Siddons, and 
 had appeared at 
 Drury Lane 
 No. 23 theatre, when 
 
 nineteen years old. 
 
 The untouched contents, the backfpapers, and the 
 tattered gilt foil under the Bristol blue glass between 
 the two gold rims, bear out the date. 
 
 THE GEORGE ENGLEHEART STYLE 
 
 Engleheart's ladies, resembling Cosway's in many 
 things, have something keener and stronger than his 
 in their look, and the drawing is better ; but Engle- 
 heart's best miniatures are those of men, and broadly 
 54
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 
 and nobly show the English strength of character. 
 No. 24 is one, an obvious masterpiece, though signed 
 inconspicuously with a script " E," as was the artist's 
 wont ; I bought it for 4. The coat, in the buttons and 
 the hatching of the shadows, is characteristically 
 " Engleheart," but consider 
 the character in the face, 
 the modelling at the mouth 
 and chin, and for a par- 
 ticularly happy detail the 
 way the wig sits upon the 
 temples and against the 
 cheek. I cannot trace 
 the sitter, but he and the 
 artist together produced a 
 noble piece of work indeed. 
 Engleheart's work was 
 deeper, more serious, and 
 more honest than Cos- 
 way's. It was also richer 
 
 in tint, and the eyes more brilliant. The eyes are 
 often too large. An Engleheart woman's face is 
 weaker than an Engleheart man's, but not so weak as 
 a Cosway woman's, nor yet so daintily fine. Illustra- 
 tion No. 7 crudely imitates the Engleheart woman's 
 style. 
 
 THE ANDREW PLIMER STYLE 
 
 The third most famous English miniaturist on ivory 
 was Andrew Phmer, though I cannot understand why 
 his work, so much inferior to Cosway 's or Engleheart's 
 
 55 
 
 No. 24
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 as it was, should have got such a vogue ; Smart was a 
 finer artist than he. No. 25 is an old copy of one of 
 Plimer's portraits of Lady Northwick ; it cost me 
 12s. 6d. off a barrow in Soho ; I give it here to indicate 
 the Plimer style ; note the " wiry " hair. Copies of 
 
 Plimer's showy work, in- 
 tended to deceive, are as 
 numerous as copies of 
 Cosway's, but this is an old 
 copy, and not slavish nor 
 deceptive, for it does not 
 fully reproduce the charac- 
 teristic Plimer defect of en- 
 larging and darkening the 
 eyes to a totally unnatural 
 extent ; to judge by the 
 eyes, all Plimer's women 
 sitters must have used kohl 
 or henna, or some other 
 cosmetic which gives a 
 
 houn-like bigness, darkness, and softness to the eyes. 
 Except in a weakness and a lowness of tints, No. 25 
 represents fairly well the style which a collector should 
 have in mind when going hunting for Plimers. But they 
 are risky and deceptive to collect. 
 
 THE MINOR ARTISTS 
 
 The following names and dates more than cover 
 the great period of English miniature-painting upon 
 ivory; Cosway (1740-1821), J. Smart (1741-1811), 
 George Engleheart (1752-1829), Andrew Plimer (1763- 
 56 
 
 No. 25
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 
 1837), Ross (1794-1860). Cosway began to paint 
 miniatures in 1761, and Sir William Ross ceased to 
 paint them in 1856, so that the " great period " lasted 
 for ninety-five years. 
 
 Of other leading miniaturists, contemporary with 
 some of the eminent five just named I mention J. Nixon 
 (1741-1812). OziasHum P hrey(1742-1810). J.Russell 
 (1745-1809), S. Shelley (1750-1808), W. Grimaldi 
 (1751-1830), W. Wood (1768-1808), H. Edridge 
 (1769-1821), A. Robertson (1777-1845), Mrs. Mee 
 (1775-1851). But there were also other good minia- 
 turists of the period, whose names are less known, yet 
 whose work is well worth hunting for ; I cannot 
 catalogue and date all these, but have mentioned and 
 shall mention some of them incidentally. And there 
 were yet other miniaturists, whose names even are 
 unknown, but whose work, bearing initials, exists in 
 great collections, and has been thought worthy of 
 inclusion in exhibitions of miniatures from time to time. 
 It is old miniatures unsigned, or anonymously initialled, 
 which afford a beginner at collecting to-day his best 
 chances of success, for signatures or recognizable 
 initials increase a dealer's prices ; though, as I think 
 I have shown, assiduity and study can still acquire 
 miniatures " by the best hands " for quite small sums 
 indeed. 
 
 No. 26 is a miniature initialled P. J. in script. Paul 
 Jean exhibited miniatures at the Royal Academy from 
 1 787 to 1 802 the Royal Academy lists of exhibitors 
 are, by the by, a source of much information on the 
 subject of these chapters but he probably did not 
 
 57
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 greatly succeed in a worldly sense, for his miniatures 
 seem to be few. Yet he painted well, as this specimen 
 testifies, and so well did he paint, indeed, that one of 
 the miniatures he produced was bought for the Pierpont 
 Morgan collection as " a Cosway," and was only later 
 
 discovered to be by Paul 
 Jean by the presence of 
 " P. J." upon the edge of 
 the ivory. 
 
 Obviously the minia- 
 ture here represented is 
 rather Coswayesque ; the 
 treatment of the bodice 
 frills is very effective, and 
 the tinting is delightful to 
 the eye ; I make out that 
 the sitter was perhaps the 
 Miss Crockett whose por- 
 trait Hoppner painted in 
 large. The way in which 
 this miniature came into my possession is worth men- 
 tioning, for it shows what experiences a collector 
 may have. Somewhere about the year 1790 this 
 miniature was glued down to the page of a lady s 
 album of copied verse and " sentiments " ; it would 
 be little valued at that date, when miniatures were 
 plentiful. Eighteenth-century albums have lasted on, 
 however, and in the Caledonian Market five or six 
 years ago I found a broker removing this miniature 
 from the album page. He removed it with his clasp- 
 knife, and I put out my hand to stop him half a minute 
 
 58 
 
 No. 26
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 
 too late. The miniature cracked its whole length, into 
 two clean-edged pieces, and he looked at it with surprise. 
 Then he said, " It's broke, sir, but what d'y u sa y 
 to eighteenpence for it ? " I said yes, and by experiment 
 found that a cleanly broken miniature can be neatly 
 repaired; glue was 
 brought into connexion 
 with this again, to fix 
 the two pieces closely 
 side by side upon a 
 rigid backing, and be- 
 hold the result ! 
 
 For the charming ^j 
 miniature of sweet six- 
 teen, No. 27, framed in 
 old ormolu and coloured 
 paste, I gave something 
 less than 3 in 1914. 
 It is initialled R. D. 
 R. Dudman was another 
 of the almost unknown miniaturists ; what is known of 
 him is that he exhibited at the Royal Academy once, 
 in the year 1 797, and that he painted the father and 
 mother of Richard Cobden about the year 1 799. Those 
 Cobden miniatures are poor compared with the one 
 here represented, and I am perhaps justified in sup- 
 posing that R. Dudman lived to paint better as he 
 grew older, for the dress of the girl here shown is early 
 nineteenth-century, I should think. At any rate, this 
 is a very agreeable and skilful old miniature, excellent 
 in colour and technique. 
 
 59 
 
 No. 27
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 NECK MINIATURES ON IVORY 
 
 Many of the minor artists, and some of the more 
 prominent ones, painted very small miniatures of men, 
 to be worn below fair necks, often surreptitiously and 
 under the bodice. Here are two of the kind. No. 28 
 is quite a masterpiece of fine, 
 strong work, well worth the 
 sovereign I paid for it ; the 
 sitter must have been some 
 soldier lover gone to the 
 Peninsular War. I think he 
 died in battle, for there is 
 the destined look in His face. 
 Romance haloes miniature- 
 collecting when one thinks of 
 all that life and love meant 
 to the women and the men 
 portrayed ; caught in their 
 youth or their prime, and in their vividness, perpetuated 
 upon a square inch or two of surface, they seem to live 
 on still, in a house of crystal and gold ; but their hopes 
 and ambitions, joys and glad memories, sorrows, errors, 
 and pains are dead. Who was this splendid young 
 officer with the ruddy skin, the commanding eyebrows, 
 the sensuous mouth, the wistful eyes, and the sturdy 
 hair disdaining all powder but gunpowder ? Impossible 
 now to know ; and I can find no initials or trace of the 
 artist even, though I think the style is that of Gnmaldi. 
 No. 29 is in the style of Edridge, and of that date ; 
 I gave 24s. for it in the Caledonian Market, and the 
 60 
 
 28
 
 MINIATURES DONE ON IVORY 
 
 little broker said truly that the frame and hanger were 
 " real gold." A little restoration was needed, and the 
 miniaturist I employed used too much Chinese white 
 on the neckcloth, but this is nevertheless a desirable 
 little miniature to own. It has no glass at the back 
 for hair of the beloved's head to be treasured in ; the other 
 neck miniature has. Larger 
 miniatures with hair fantastic- 
 ally woven in with pearls 
 between the back papers of the 
 ivory and the glass back of the 
 whole seem to have been late 
 Regency and Early Victorian ; 
 often when a sailor was the sitter 
 the background of the picture 
 is sea, and on it a diminutive 
 representation of his ship. 
 
 No. 29 
 
 IVORY-BOX MINIATURES 
 
 Round ivory boxes, some- 
 times inlaid with narrow rings 
 of tortoiseshell, and holding a miniature set in a thin 
 gold rim on the lid, are often seen, but most of them 
 are quite modern, and hardly any of them are quite old. 
 By exception a really fine old miniature may have been 
 reset into a box, but, generally speaking, these are 
 objects that may pass muster on boudoir tables but are 
 unworthy of a place in a cabinet of miniatures ; unless, 
 indeed, they are so old and costly as to be out of the 
 ordinary collector's reach. 
 
 61
 
 VIII. FRENCH MINIATURES ON 
 IVORY 
 
 A GOOD many French miniatures on ivory exist 
 in this country, a few done here, by French 
 artists resident here awhile ; the others belong 
 to the Wallace collection, or to private collections, and 
 were bought in France, where they were painted. 
 Occasionally a collector comes upon a French miniature 
 for sale in England, however, and no collection can be 
 considered representative which does not include a 
 good sample or two of the art as it used to be practised 
 in France. 
 
 ENGLISH OR FRENCH ORIGINS? 
 
 A collector should not neglect French miniatures, 
 though miniature-painting, like transparent water- 
 colour painting on paper, may be claimed as distinctively 
 an English art. Diderot tried to establish a French 
 origin for the art by construing its name ; he wrote 
 that " The French use of the word mignature seems to 
 come from the word mignard which means delicate 
 and flattering," but etymology is a deceptive pursuit. 
 M. Henri Roujon, who is the French authority on 
 miniatures nowadays, has allowed that " historians 
 willingly agree that the fashion of producing small, 
 portable portraits began in England," and that " the 
 62
 
 FRENCH MINIATURES ON IVORY 
 
 English school of miniature-painting, so fruitful m the 
 seventeenth century, led and lit the way for French 
 artists." But he rightly claims that " French artistic 
 genius in the eighteenth century found in miniature- 
 painting one of its most finished expressions " ; and 
 this went on in spite of the Revolution, and even of the 
 Terror ; it flourished under Napoleon and the restored 
 Bourbons ; and it died as the English art did, of the 
 photographer's mechanical practice and commercial 
 attack. 
 
 As a rule, French miniatures on ivory were painted 
 wholly or partly in gouache, which is body-colour, but 
 some French miniatures on ivory were painted (as 
 English miniatures on ivory were and still are) in 
 transparent colours wholly ; Isabey, the best known 
 French miniaturist, used and inspired in others the use 
 of transparent tinting. The four miniatures here 
 shown represent proportionally the three French 
 methods in this respect, for two were done wholly in 
 gouache, one was done partly in gouache, and the fourth 
 was done wholly in transparent water-colour. 
 
 WHOLLY IN GOUACHE 
 
 The actress with the cat, No. 30, looks out from a 
 miniature of much charm and grace, which cost me 
 3s. 6d. only, though I found it in quite a large dealer's 
 shop off the Edgware Road. It belongs to the traditional 
 gouache French school, but it cannot date back further 
 than the year 1 830. The print of it here scarcely shows 
 the solid, body-colour effect visible in the actual 
 miniature, though even the flesh is painted " solid " 
 
 63
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 that is, not in the thin, merely tinted, showing-through 
 English way, or the Isabey way which the fourth example 
 typifies. The use of gouache enabled an almost oil- 
 colour degree of treating details by the brush ; lines 
 could be painted, instead of stipples, and light-coloured 
 
 lines upon and amidst dark- 
 coloured surfaces ; there- 
 fore the painting of the 
 cat's head and body seems 
 to show up almost " each 
 particular hair," and the 
 effect which Chinese white 
 produces when skilfully 
 used upon a gouache back- 
 ground is seen in the lace 
 around the arms. But the 
 " solid " background is 
 inferior, in itself as well as 
 No. 30 in tint, to the aerial, trans- 
 
 parent background which 
 
 Cosway and other English miniaturists used, and the 
 general difference between this and No. 33 is almost 
 the same difference as between an oil-painting and an 
 aquarelle. 
 
 Under the brush of a really fine artist, however, the 
 wholly gouache method produced very beautiful work 
 indeed. No. 31 was probably painted by C. G. A. 
 Bourgeois, for it shows the silhouette pose, the curled 
 eyelashes, and the large eyes which characterized his 
 style, and the costume suits his date. Painted in 
 gouache, upon ivory that had been first powdered over 
 64
 
 FRENCH MINIATURES ON IVORY 
 
 until the surface had an almost chicken-skin effect, 
 this miniature and its winning sitter present a peculiar 
 charm. To relate how I found it may help a collector to 
 persist. I saw a brooch-miniature in a small clock and 
 watch shop win- 
 dow, near West- 
 bourne Grove. 
 Going in, I asked, 
 Have you any 
 other miniatures? " 
 The woman be- 
 hind the counter 
 said " No." But 
 I had at once seen 
 three hanging on a 
 wall, and fishing 
 into a show 
 case (courteously 
 enough, I hope), I 
 
 found four others. 
 
 rr I.L i No. 31 
 
 Ur the seven, this, 
 
 No. 31, was the only one not modern, but it was sold 
 me for 15s., on condition that I also took the brooch 
 miniature at half that price. 
 
 PARTLY IN GOUACHE 
 
 I have chosen this small portrait of Wellington, No. 32, 
 for reproduction because it is partly transparent and 
 partly " solid." To judge by the face, hair, and back- 
 ground only, this is English work, but the uniform is 
 painted in body-colour and is a French artist's ineffectual 
 
 E 65
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 representation of a costume which he did not under- 
 stand ; the uniform is badly painted it conveys no 
 military meaning, indicates no specific rank ; the collar, 
 the one epaulette, the sash and the star supply no 
 information, and although painted " solid," seem 
 particularly unreal. I make out that this is a portrait 
 __^ ^ ^^- f Wellington 
 
 painted by a French 
 miniaturist at some 
 date prior to the 
 Peninsular War ; 
 consider the brown 
 colour of the hair 
 and the still youthful 
 look of the face. By 
 the size and shape 
 of the work I judge 
 that it was once the 
 ornament of a snuff- 
 box ; as it now is, 
 
 separate, in its thin gold rim, it cost me 1 Is. in 
 Hanway Street. A good few miniatures of Wellington, 
 painted when he had become world-famous after the 
 year 1810, that is are extant, but so far as I know 
 there is only one other miniature which shows him as 
 he was while still under forty years old. 
 
 GOUACHE ENTIRELY ABSENT 
 
 Fine French miniatures wholly painted in transparent 
 water-colours on ivory are seldom met with here by a 
 collector, but No. 33 is one. I think it is an early copy 
 
 No. 32
 
 FRENCH MINIATURES ON IVORY 
 
 of a miniature by Isabey, probably done by one of his 
 pupils, Rodolphe Bel, for I make out " R. Bel," as the 
 signature. On the other hand, I am aware that the 
 original of this miniature has recently been copied several 
 times at least ; perhaps this is not old ; a collector of 
 miniatures will always 
 have two or three about 
 which he is unsure. 
 At any rate, here is a 
 distinguished piece of 
 work, done by a good 
 artist, and the price of 
 it, 2 in a small dealer's 
 shop between Soho 
 and Bloomsbury, can- 
 not be called excessive. 
 Jean Baptiste Isabey 
 (1767-1853), in some 
 respects the best, as he 
 is the best known, of 
 
 French miniaturists, had the Plimer habit of over-accen- 
 tuating his sitters' eyes. Moreover, he invented what is 
 called the portrait sous voile with gauzy wrappings about 
 the face and shoulders, that is. Here are the very large 
 eyes, and here is the voile. The sitter was Catherine 
 Denn, Countess Beauchamp ; one knows that because 
 there is an original portrait sous voile of her by Isabey, 
 on a slightly larger oval than this ; I think, but am not 
 sure, that the original was done on paper, as many of 
 Isabey 's larger miniatures were, but even this copy shows 
 what a dainty effect the voile lends to the face and hair. 
 
 67 
 
 No 33
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 WHERE TO STUDY FRENCH MINIATURES 
 
 The costliest French miniatures are those done in 
 enamel by Petitot ; these are best studied at the Victoria 
 and Albert Museum (Jones collection). Other kinds 
 of French miniatures are better studied at Hertford 
 House than elsewhere ; even the small rooms of the 
 Premier Etage, at the Louvre, do not contain the equal 
 of the Wallace collection, though the Louvre offers a 
 more representative exhibit of French miniatures than 
 any public collection here does of English miniatures, 
 more's the pity and also the shame. As might be 
 expected, the French artists shone most in the orna- 
 mental, graceful, or merely pretty, while English 
 miniaturists did best in portraiture. English snuff- 
 boxes and bonbon boxes ornamented by miniatures 
 are comparatively few (I mean old ones, for the 
 modern imitations are many), but French art produced 
 thousands of such sumptuous objects. Some of these 
 may still be purchased, but only for much money, and 
 according to my experience it is hardly worth while 
 to go hunting in France for French miniatures, or for 
 English miniatures either. 
 
 It helps one to distinguish between old French and 
 old English miniatures of women to remember that 
 the influence of Gainsborough and of Reynolds is 
 visible in English miniatures of English women, painted 
 by Cosway, Engleheart and the school, while no such 
 influence is visible in French miniaturists' work; whether 
 in large or small, English portrait-painters of women 
 have been supreme. 
 68
 
 IX. MINIATURES DONE IN ENAMEL 
 
 ENAMEL miniatures are a variety of the minia- 
 tures done upon metal, but are a special and very 
 important class. No collection is representative 
 unless it includes some examples, but to come upon them 
 cheaply is a happy chance. A fine Petitot miniature in 
 enamel may sell for hundreds of pounds, and for a 
 very small, defective enamel miniature done by Bone 
 as much as 6 is asked. Many enamel miniatures are 
 defective, alas, because the surface chips and flies in 
 places, as you may note in most Battersea enamels, 
 and there are other dangers also, for in a Zincke enamel 
 miniature, offered me at 100 in its diamond-set frame 
 and at 25 frameless, my pocket lens revealed furrows 
 caused by chemical decomposition, which will increase 
 with lapse of time, and cannot be checked. On the 
 other hand, a fine enamel miniature, beautifully painted 
 and treated chemically with complete skill, presents a 
 richness of colour and a brilliant smoothness of surface 
 which in those respects surpass anything ever done in 
 water-colours on ivory or in oils upon metal, and unless 
 it is handled carelessly, it may last in its perfection for 
 ever and a day. 
 
 The miniature-painter in enamel took some easily 
 fusible glass to which the desired colour had been 
 imparted by a mixture of metallic oxides. This being 
 
 69
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 fused, washed, and then ground to powder, became his 
 
 pigment ; and his palette, so to speak, consisted of 
 
 several such glassy pigments, each a minute powder. 
 
 Jean Petitot (1607-1691) was the real originator of the 
 
 portrait-miniature school in enamels, and his method, 
 
 ^^^^^ followed by his suc- 
 
 4?i^^ s ^sSi. cessors, was to take 
 
 into the powdered 
 
 No. 34A that is to say, the 
 
 painted work and 
 
 the plate which was its basis were placed in a small kiln 
 and exposed to heat, which fused the various colours 
 and made them one with the white enamel background 
 and the basis. But as firing enamels is a difficult 
 process, and the colours after firing are not at all what 
 they were before it, failure often resulted. Yet when 
 success was obtained it rewarded the artist for many 
 failures, as you may see in the Jones collection at South 
 Kensington, where Petitot 's best work is kept. 
 
 70
 
 MINIATURES DONE IN ENAMEL 
 
 ENAMEL MINIATURES DONE IN ENGLAND 
 
 Petitot's best work was done in England ; so was that 
 of Zincke (1 684-1 767). Our best native miniaturists in 
 enamel were N. Hone (1718-1784) and Bone (1753- 
 1834); Engleheart did a 
 few enamels, by the by. 
 
 To the period and style 
 of Zincke and Hone belongs 
 No. 34A, which I bought at 
 Exeter for 5 in its original 
 shagreen case ; it is prob- 
 ably a portrait of Hogarth 
 by Zincke. Bone usually 
 worked on metal large in 
 size, and often rectangular 
 in shape. 
 
 Battersea enamels, our 
 most indigenous product of 
 the kind, were not portraits 
 as a rule, and those which were intended to be portraits 
 were not painted from a sitter, but produced by transfer 
 printing from an engraving, and then slightly tinted 
 sometimes. The cases at the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum show oval plaques of Frederick the Great, 
 George II, his son Prince Frederick, George III, the 
 Duke of Cumberland, Walpole, Gibbon, and " the 
 beautiful Gunnings." But enamel making was con- 
 tinued in London after the Battersea works were closed ; 
 black and white enamel portraits were also executed at 
 Liverpool ; and at Bilston during the latter half of the 
 
 71 
 
 No. 34e
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 eighteenth century some painted (not printed) enamels 
 were done. No. 34e is probably one of them, a snuff 
 box lid which represents Washington, in blue and flesh- 
 colour and grey. I expect the enterprising firm at 
 Bilston intended it for the American market in the 
 United States which had so 
 recently come into being ; but 
 I got it for 23s. 6d. at a pawn- 
 shop in theHampstead Road. 
 Smaller Bilston enamels than 
 this are extensively counter- 
 feited to-day, and I am not 
 sure that this is contemporary. 
 
 GERMAN ENAMEL 
 MINIATURES 
 
 The country in which an 
 enamel was produced can 
 
 almost be told from the 
 No. 35 ....... 
 
 prevailing tint or it ; thus 
 
 native English enamels tend to be black and white, 
 pale pink, and a deep, rather crude blue, while French 
 enamels show brilliant light blues and rose colour, and 
 German enamels are characteristically brown and dull 
 yellow in tinting. This portrait of Frederick the Great 
 when rather young, No. 35, might be known as German 
 by its colouring, therefore, but also it is signed by a 
 German miniaturist in enamel, Frederick Weitz, who 
 flourished in Prussia at the period. I dare say it was 
 one of King Frederick's gifts to some lady, some 
 diplomat, or some officer, and the fact that the frame is 
 72
 
 MINIATURES DONE IN ENAMEL 
 
 copper does not weaken that supposition, though it 
 is the original frame, for Frederick the Great was 
 parsimonious. Good miniatures in enamel were done 
 by German artists, and this is one of them. I was 
 surprised to be able to buy it at Coventry for 12s. 6d., 
 but the dealer judged its 
 value by the frame. The 
 brown tints of the German 
 enamelling school are evi- 
 dent ; the colour of the 
 back is also a dingy brown. 
 
 FRENCH ENAMEL 
 MINIATURES 
 
 It is a relief to the 
 colour sense to look at 
 No. 36, which cost me 18s. 
 I do not possess a Petitot, 
 glorious in tinting and N o 35 
 
 exquisite in finish, but the 
 
 blues and pinks in this domestic interior after the 
 manner of Greuze and Watteau are delightful to the 
 eye. It is signed " Boze " ; Joseph Boze (1746-1831) 
 was a skilful miniaturist much employed by the French 
 aristocracy. Though the frame is more modern than 
 the enamel, it is not altogether out of keeping, for it is 
 in the late Empire style, which Boze lived to see come 
 into vogue. I give this example here because it 
 represents a class of miniature the picture which, 
 as I have already pointed out, legitimately belongs to 
 miniature collecting ; no doubt contemporary portraits 
 
 73
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 are the most desirable, and next to them come old 
 copies of portraits, but a landscape or an interior in 
 
 little is worth acquiring 
 if finely done. 
 
 SWISS ENAMEL 
 MINIATURES 
 
 And here, No. 37, 
 is a picture miniature 
 of another kind yet 
 the idealized or 
 imagined single figure. 
 Swiss enamels are akin 
 to the French enamels 
 in richness of colour, 
 and very fine work of 
 the kind used to be 
 done at Geneva, as, indeed, it still is. Nothing more 
 dainty, more evidencing a colour sense, or more proving 
 skill in the painting and firing than this picture of La 
 Fileuse, can be imagined, but it cannot be sixty years 
 old. It cost me 6s. at the Caledonian Market, mounted 
 with a silver rim ; the back is slate-coloured. 
 
 No. 37 
 
 74
 
 M 
 
 X. MINIATURES DONE ON 
 PORCELAIN 
 
 'INIATURES done on porcelain are seldom 
 collected. Why? The author of the first 
 English big book on miniatures did not collect 
 miniatures done on porcelain, and his influence ex- 
 cluded them from the Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures 
 organized by the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1 889 ; 
 I suppose that is why. They were also excluded from 
 the Exhibition of Miniatures held in the year 1865. 
 
 Yet the surface of a miniature painted in enamel 
 much resembles the surface of one done on porcelain, and 
 porcelain is painted on with " enamel colours," though 
 these are not always oxides of glass. Henry Bone, R.A., 
 perhaps our best English miniaturist in enamel, began 
 by painting china at Bristol, and the hypercntics have 
 always remembered that against him. Thus one author 
 of a book on miniatures finds in Henry Bone's enamels 
 " a suggestion of painting on porcelain, and of the 
 smoothness and want of vitality which characterize 
 that kind of work," and another finds in Bone's enamels 
 " something of the curiously feeble effect of painted 
 china." 
 
 These criticisms may pass muster with people who 
 have never collected old china, and know nothing of 
 the beauty of " Chelsea " or " Sevres " or the power 
 
 75
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 and vitality of the decoration upon " Oriental," but 
 they beg the question ; mere material is nothing in itself, 
 what counts is the art in the work. Painting in enamels 
 and enamel-painting on porcelain both have to be 
 " fired," and the colours which appear on the surface 
 before the work goes into the kiln are not the same as 
 those which appear when the work comes out of the 
 kiln ; the only true differences are the bases and the 
 art. A plaque of porcelain is no worse a base than a 
 piece of copper, and if miniatures in enamel on metal are 
 admissible to a collection, so should miniatures on 
 porcelain be, if the art in them is good. It all depends 
 on the artist ; William Billingsley, for instance, painted 
 roses on porcelain better than roses were ever painted 
 on ivory, paper, cardboard, or metal by anybody else. 
 
 This prejudice against miniatures on porcelain 
 enables you to buy them cheaply when found, but on 
 the other hand, because the porcelain base has been 
 taboo, there are few fine miniatures on porcelain to 
 collect. We may rule out, of course, the thousands of 
 " fancy " heads and little full-lengths manufactured 
 somewhat less than a century ago, to be set in gold or 
 pinchbeck for middle-class women to wear as brooches ; 
 a collector sees many hundreds of these in a year. But 
 what he seeks for, and finds once in a year at most, is 
 a fine portrait miniature on porcelain, well painted, 
 which is consequently a work of art. 
 
 THE YOUNG NAPOLEON 
 
 Here is one, No. 38, after the portrait by Gros ; 
 it represents Napoleon Buonaparte as he was about 
 76
 
 MINIATURES ON PORCELAIN 
 
 the year 1798, when he looked, as a contemporary 
 writer recorded, " like a young eagle moulting." Here, 
 surely, is strong portraiture, with none of the finicking 
 stipple-work dear to collectors of miniatures on ivory 
 only ; the complexion of " pallid olive," is well-rendered 
 and so are the striking features and the expression. 
 The colour is refined, 
 too, the oak-leaves 
 and acorns of the 
 gold braid showing 
 up not too yellow 
 against the tunic, 
 which is not too blue. 
 Isabey and Aubrey 
 painted several fine 
 miniatures of Na- 
 poleon, but none 
 give such an im- 
 pression of force and j^ o 33 
 keenness as this. A 
 
 collector of miniatures who would disdain to acquire 
 this, in its old " Empire " frame, at the price of 7s. 6d., 
 would be a collector whose respect for rules and custom 
 was more considerable than his taste m art ; but if he 
 were a china-collector too, he would find proof that this 
 miniature was contemporary, in the fact that the por- 
 celain is " soft " Sevres, and as " soft Sevres " ceased 
 to be made soon after the year 1798 the work is of 
 contemporary date. 
 
 77
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 THE YOUNG VICTORIA 
 
 " Soft," too, is the porcelain upon which this 
 miniature of Queen Victoria, No. 39, was painted, 
 probably about the year 1837, and only a miniature 
 
 collector who is a china- 
 collector too could say 
 where in England 
 " soft " porcelain was 
 being made at the time 
 of the young Queen's 
 accession. There is no 
 mark upon this bit of 
 china, so that I think it 
 must have been potted 
 at Madeley. Coalport 
 was producing " soft " 
 china in 1837, but as 
 an imitation of Sevres 
 soft porcelain and 
 bearing a Frenchy mark. At Madeley a potter named 
 Randall produced soft porcelain so late as 1840, 
 admirable both in material and decoration, but he, 
 honest Quaker that he was, refused to copy the French 
 mark when dealers asked him to do so. As to .ne 
 portrait, I think it must have been painted in Lc.idon, 
 by a skilled hand at miniature-work, for it certainly 
 shows no " smoothness and want of vitality." Some 
 former seller's price for it is pencilled on the back 
 42s. but I bought it in Richmond for less than a fifth 
 of that sum ; had the base been metal, 42s. would 
 78 
 
 No. 39
 
 MINIATURES ON PORCELAIN 
 
 have been a fifth of the sum demanded. There is no 
 signature upon the painting, any more than there is 
 upon the portrait of the young Napoleon ; signatures 
 need not be looked for upon porcelain miniatures, and 
 therefore a collector is free to estimate them entirely 
 according to their art. In 
 the present case the tinting 
 and modelling of the neck 
 and shoulder are wonderful, 
 and the eyes, like the lips and 
 the hair, are capitally done. 
 
 THE YOUNG EMPRESS 
 
 Here is the Empress 
 Eugenie, No. 40, as she 
 looked in the flush of her 
 beauty and royalty. The 
 portrait and the " drawing " 
 speak for themselves, even in No 40 
 
 black- and - white repro- 
 duction ; you can see the beauty of the eyes, lips, ex- 
 pression, and pose, but nothing except the original can 
 show the rich yet refined colour of the robe and 
 the cushion, rose and mauve showing through the 
 lace and chiffon, or the bright auburn of the hair. 
 A fine artist probably Goudon did this portrait, yet 
 left no trace of his name upon it, and therefore, as also 
 because it is porcelain and not on metal, I was able 
 to buy it for 12s. 6d., in its charming old frame from 
 which most of the gilding is gone. I daresay an artful 
 dealer would fit another frame to it, hide the porcelain 
 
 79
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 at the back, and sell this as a " fine enamel miniature 
 of the Empress Eugenie " for a considerable price, the 
 " feebleness and smoothness " alleged to appear in 
 porcelain miniatures notwithstanding. So I think I have 
 shown that a collection of miniatures, far from ex- 
 cluding fine work done on china, should specifically 
 include it, if the collection is to be considered re- 
 presentative. 
 
 The true collector is one who goes by study, taste, 
 and individuality, not by convention and rule. Too 
 much individuality and discarding of orthodoxy is 
 unwise in collecting, as it is in most things ; but too 
 much conventionality is worse. The conventionality 
 of authorities on miniatures has prevented a clean, 
 cleansable, lasting, and inexpensive base and process 
 from being used for portrait miniatures, to any large 
 extent. 
 
 80
 
 XI. MISCELLANEA AND 
 SIGNATURES 
 
 i 
 
 T remains to say something concerning minor forms 
 of miniatures, and to give a list of initial signa- 
 tures. 
 
 EYE MINIATURES 
 
 When Cosway painted a miniature of one of the eyes 
 of Mrs. Fitzherbert, to be worn in a bracelet by the 
 Prince Regent, and one of the Prince Regent's eye, to 
 be worn in a ring by Mrs. Fitz- 
 herbert, he set a fashion, which 
 spread to France. A miniature 
 of a woman's eye set in a 
 brooch, such as No. 41, need 
 not mean that it was painted 
 for a woman's wear, for in those 
 days men used to fasten their 
 cravats with brooches. It is 
 remarkable how much of the character of the sitter can 
 be read from a picture of the eye. Eye miniatures are 
 exceedingly rare. No 41 , set in a beautifully worked 
 serpent of gold (symbolizing eternity), is probably 
 French work; it cost me 17s. at a jewellers near 
 Netting Hill. 
 
 No. 41 
 
 81
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 RING MINIATURES 
 
 Very small portraits, of women's heads, to wear in 
 
 rings were painted. The illustration No. 42 shows a 
 ring containing an eye-miniature. 
 Inscribed at the back of the collet 
 are the words, " General Arabin s 
 right eye, 1798." In this, as in 
 some other eye miniatures, clouds 
 appear under the eye. 
 
 No. 42 
 
 BROOCH AND PIN MINIATURES 
 Brooch miniatures are 
 
 numerous, but seldom fine. 
 Here is an example, No. 43, set in silver-gilt, which 
 cost me 10s. in a jeweller's shop. Charing Cross Road ; 
 at the back I find 
 engraved " Motee 
 Mebal, Queen of 
 Lucknow." Small 
 old brooch minia- 
 tures of nineteenth 
 century date and 
 style are not worth 
 acquiring. But 
 No. 44 is an old 
 copy of a French 
 miniature, of the 
 Directoire period, 
 
 as is shown by the frame of silver-gilt studded with 
 steel, as well as by the costume ; at a jeweller's it cost 
 
 82 
 
 No. 43
 
 MISCELLANEA AND SIGNATURES 
 
 18s. Small heads of ladies, dogs, horses, and foxes are 
 found in enamel or on ivory in tie-pins. 
 
 PICTURE MINIATURES 
 
 Overleaf, No. 45, is an example of the " picture 
 miniature on ivory ; cost 5s. Of course this cannot 
 compare ' with [the 
 larger elaborate 
 French miniatures in 
 gouache, representing 
 dozens of people in a 
 room, or whole land- 
 scapes ; or done in 
 enamels for golden 
 snuff-box tops. 
 
 SILHOUETTES 
 
 In size and purpose No ^ 
 
 silhouettes are por- 
 trait miniatures, but they are such a separate and so 
 large a branch of the whole subject that collectors of 
 miniatures may well rule them out. Silhouettes, as a 
 variety of the miniatures done on paper, were the work 
 of the scissors, though sometimes touched with gilt or 
 colour by the brush ; silhouettes painted in black upon 
 glass belong to the " glass " miniatures variety, and are 
 more properly a part of the subject than the others can be. 
 
 MINIATURES DONE IN WAX 
 
 In one sense, these are rare ; because most objects 
 of this kind are too large to be considered miniatures, 
 
 83
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 and should be called reliefs or medallions. The finest 
 are to be seen at Hertford House. Mrs. Patience 
 Wright did many wax miniatures in New England, 
 came to London in 1773, and did many here. A head 
 and bust of Washington, fastened upon a plate of 
 
 blackened glass, was 
 perhaps her master- 
 piece. The best 
 English miniaturist 
 in wax was called 
 Perry. He worked 
 from the latter part 
 of the eighteenth 
 to the first quarter 
 of the nineteenth 
 centuries. The little 
 head of Gains- 
 borough, No. 46, 
 cost me 7s. 6d., and 
 is merely given as 
 an illustration of this part of the subject. Collectors 
 should beware ; many modern imitations lie in wait. 
 
 MINIATURES CUT IN IVORY OR WOOD 
 
 Most of the small oval .ivories with heads in relief 
 which a collector sees in curio-shops are quite modern 
 and should be avoided, but occasionally a rather old 
 representation of a king or other famous person in ivory 
 may be found ; and this also applies to miniatures carved 
 in wood. The example represented, No. 47, a portrait 
 84
 
 MISCELLANEA AND SIGNATURES 
 
 of Addison, is Italian work, to judge by the spelling of 
 the name ; it cost 6s. 
 
 MINIATURES DONE IN NEEDLEWORK 
 
 These are excessively rare ; one, of Charles 1, may 
 be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum ; another, 
 of the same subject, at Hertford House ; and a third 
 is known to be in 
 existence : one done in 
 pearls and gems is to 
 be seen at the London 
 Museum. Sometimes 
 a piece of stump-work 
 (embossed needlework) 
 includes a face that was 
 meant to be a por- 
 trait, either stitched or 
 painted on the silk. 
 
 No. 46 
 
 MINIATURES DONE 
 IN GLASS 
 
 Heads, busts, or full 
 
 lengths of the Young Pretender, his father, or 
 William of Orange are found on wine-glasses, but 
 these hardly come within a miniature collector's scope. 
 There are box-tops containing opaque glass heads of 
 well-known contemporary people. The portraits done 
 by Tassie, too, in a compost of glass and opal colour, are 
 numerous, and may perhaps be considered as minia- 
 tures done in glass. 
 
 85
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 
 CONCERNING SIGNATURES 
 
 When examining a miniature a collector looks for a 
 signature, but as I have already explained, need not 
 be disconcerted by not finding one ; the art is the thing 
 
 that really matters, 
 and fine miniatures, 
 like pictures by 
 great artists who 
 worked on a larger 
 scale, are " signed all 
 over." Nevertheless, 
 these chapters would 
 not completely deal 
 with their subject if 
 they did not include 
 information as to 
 where to look for 
 signatures, and as to what certain initials and mono- 
 grams represent, when found. 
 
 In most cases a lengthy signature such as " R. 
 Cosway " or " G. Engleheart," if it exists at all, will be 
 found at the back of the miniature, between the ivory 
 and the frame, or the wrappings and the frame. Some- 
 times a partial signature, such as " Isabey," is found 
 on the front of the ivory, but as a rule one only looks 
 to find initials or monograms there. Most minor 
 miniatures are not even initialled ; but the masters, 
 and the lesser artists too, liked to sign their best work, 
 in one way or another. Oftenest the initials or the 
 monogram may be found intermixed, so to speak, 
 86 
 
 No. 47
 
 MISCELLANEA AND SIGNATURES 
 
 with the relative obscurity of the background ; often 
 they are all but concealed in a fold of the dress, or in a 
 flow of the hair or wig ; usually they are done very small; 
 sometimes they are placed so near to the edge of the 
 oval as to be hidden by the frame or setting ; in a few 
 cases (where the ivory is thick) they are placed on the 
 edge of it, at right angles to the flat surface. It needs 
 a strong lens, a strong light, and a prolonged and steady 
 searching of every part of the miniature, to detect a 
 signature, as a rule ; if gilt or lead pencil has been used 
 for the signature it will be invisible except in a certain 
 fall of the light. In the Engleheart miniature illustrated 
 in a former chapter, No. 24, the " E " is placed just within 
 the angle made by the left cheek and the coat collar ; in 
 No. 27 the initials hide under the bodice frill. 
 
 Where a full signature appears, the collector will 
 have no difficulty in obtaining information as to the 
 artist, from one of the " big books " or by inquiry at 
 the Victoria and Albert Museum ; what is added here 
 is some account of what certain initials and monograms 
 stand for. 
 
 INITIALS AND THEIR SIGNIFICATION 
 
 The following names of artists refer to initials and 
 monograms actually found upon miniatures which exist 
 in public and private collections. I have arranged 
 them alphabetically (in the order of the initials, not of 
 the surnames), as this seems the most convenient 
 method ; the prefixed star indicates an artist of the 
 pre-ivory period : 
 
 A. B. L., Andrew Benjamin Lens ; *A. C., Alexander 
 
 87
 
 COLLECTING OLD MINIATURES 
 Cooper ; A. G M Andrew Grazlia or Graglia ; A. P., 
 plain or in monogram, Andrew Plimer very small ; 
 A. R., in monogram, Andrew Robertson ; *B. G. 
 Balthazar Gerbier ; *B. L., in monogram, Bernard 
 Lens ; C. B., Charles Beale ; C. F., Charles Fox ; 
 C. F. Z., plain or in monogram, C. F. Zincke ; C. R., 
 Christian Richter ; *D. D. G., David de Grange or 
 des Granges ; *D. L., David Logan ; D. P., David 
 Paton ; E., George Engleheart ; *F. Thomas Flatman ; 
 *F. C., in monogram, Francis Cleyn ; G. C., in mono- 
 gram, George Chinnery ; G. E., George Engleheart ; 
 G. S., Gervase Spencer ; *H., John Hoskins (senior 
 and junior) ; H. B., H. Bone ; H. E., in monogram, 
 Henry Edridge ; H. H., Horace Hone; I. B., John 
 Bogle ; *I. H., in monogram, John Hoskins, senior ; 
 I. H. fc., John Hoskins, junior ; I. J., in monogram, 
 J. B. Isabey; *I. 0., Isaac Oliver; I. T. B., John 
 Thomas Barber ; J. B., John Bogle ; J. B. I., in mono- 
 gram, J. B. Isabey ; J. P., Jean Parent ; J. S., John 
 Smart ; J. S., with " junr." added, John Smart, junior ; 
 J. T. B., John Thomas Barber or Beaumont ; L. C., 
 in monogram, Lawrence Crosse ; L. S., Luke Sullivan ; 
 M. B., Mrs. Bradney, Mary Beale ; M. L., Lady 
 Lucan ; N., James Nixom ; *N. D., in monogram, 
 Nathaniel Dixon ; N. H., Nathaniel Hone ; *N. H., 
 Nicholas Hilliard ; N. P., Nathaniel Plimer ; 0. H., 
 in monogram, Ozias Humphrey ; *P. C., in monogram, 
 Penelope Cleyn ; P. J., Paul Jean ; *P. L., Peter Lens ; 
 *P. 0., in monogram, Peter Oliver ; R. B., Rodolphe 
 Bel ; R. C., Richard Collins ; R. C., Richard Crosse ; 
 (R. C., Richard Cosway, rarely) ; R. D., Richard
 
 MISCELLANEA AND SIGNATURES 
 Dudman ; S., very small, James Scouler ; S., Pierre 
 Signac ; S. A., Sarah Addington ; S. C., usually 
 Samuel Collins ; (*S. C., rarely Samuel Cooper) ; 
 *S. C., in monogram, Samuel Cooper, usually in gilt ; 
 S. P., Samuel Polack ; S. S., Samuel Shelley ; *T. B., 
 Thomas Betts ; *T. F., plain or in monogram, Thomas 
 Flatman; W. B., William Blake; W. E., William 
 Essex. 
 
 The following initials are found upon miniatures in 
 public or private collections, but no names can be 
 assigned to the artists whom they presumably represent : 
 A., A. F., C. H., C. S. C. (in monogram), C. T., G. E., 
 G. H. F., G. M. F., H. S., I. C., L., L. H., M, N. K., 
 P. G., W. C. 
 
 Anonymous these are, and anonymous many good 
 old miniatures must always remain ; but I will be 
 grateful to the unknown artists, as well as to the known, 
 whose work gives many an hour of delight for the eye 
 in gazing, and the mind in trying to appreciate. Bio- 
 graphy, history, physiognomy, colour, and drawing 
 occupy and enlarge the mind meanwhile, and also there 
 are romance, imagination, and the cult of the household 
 gods. What art is so daintily homely as the miniaturist's? 
 Or what " so valuable in diffusing friendship, in reviving 
 tenderness, in awakening the affections of the absent 
 and continuing the presence of the dead " ? With 
 gratitude, therefore, as well as zest I have written this 
 book, now brought to a close.
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 ABC about collecting, 30 
 Accessories, 31 
 Addison, 85, 86 
 Alabaster, 29 
 
 Anonymous miniatures, 10 
 Art in, a test, 16, 22 
 Artistic style, 25 
 Aubrey, 77 
 Auction-rooms, 10, 12,43 
 
 BACKGROUNDS, 32, 42, 51, 61, 64 
 
 Back of frame, 42 
 
 Backs of miniatures, 21 
 
 Back- papers, 61 
 
 Barker, J. T., 88 
 
 Barrows, 1 1 
 
 Battersea enamels, 71 
 
 Beale, C., 88 
 
 Beale, Mary, 39 
 
 Beard, 31 
 
 Beauchamp, Countess, 67 
 
 Beaumont, J. F., 88 
 
 Bel, R., 67 
 
 Bettes, J., 32 
 
 Betts, T., 89 
 
 Billingsley, W., 76 
 
 Bilston enamels, 71 
 
 Blake, W., 89 
 
 Bodice, 21 
 
 Body-colour, 38, 63 
 
 Bogle, J., 88 
 
 Bon-bon boxes, 24 
 
 Bone, H. H., 69, 75 
 
 Bourgeois, C. G. A., 64 
 
 Boxes, 24, 35 
 
 Boze, J., 73 
 
 Bradney, Mrs.,88 
 
 Bristol blue glass, 13 
 Bristol opal glass, 13 
 Brooches, 14 
 
 Brooch-miniatures, 65, 82 
 Bust, 20 
 
 CABINET, 14 
 
 Calash, 18 
 
 Caledonian Market, 1 1 
 
 Cardboard, 27 
 
 Caroline of Brunswick, 4, 5 
 
 Celluloid, 17 
 
 Character, 42 
 
 Charles I, 6, 34 
 
 Chatelux, Mme. de, 12 
 
 Chicken-skin, 65 
 
 Chinese white, 16, 18, 19,22,64 
 
 Chinese white test, 19, 21 
 
 Chinnery, G., 88 
 
 Classes of miniatures, 25 
 
 Classification by material, 27 
 
 Clever fraud, 1 7 
 
 Cleyn, 39, 40 
 
 Clouet, 29 
 
 Coat-of-arms, 42 
 
 Collections, 1,27,37,47,57,58, 
 
 62,70 
 
 Collins, R., 51 
 Collins, S., 51 
 Coloration, 31 
 Contemporary, 26, 34 
 Contemporary portraits, 18 
 Cooper, A., 88 
 Cooper, S., 6, 7, 28, 29, 38, 39. 44 
 
 Cooperesque, 38 
 
 Copies of larger pictures, 25 
 
 Copper, 29 
 
 93
 
 INDEX 
 
 Costume as clue, 43 
 Cosway, R., 23 
 " Cosway " hair, 49 
 Cosway's style, 49 
 Cosway, Mrs., 51 
 Cotes, 48 
 
 Counterfeits, 15, 16 
 Crayon, 26 
 Critical points, 19 
 Crockett, Miss, 58 
 Cromwell, 6, 39 
 Crosse, L., 33. 35 
 Crosse,R.,88 
 Cut in ivory, 84 
 
 DALRYMPLE Ellis, Mrs., 20 
 Damp, effect of, 15 
 Daubs, 16 
 
 Definition of a miniature, 25 
 De Grange, D., 88 
 Digby, Venetia, 42 
 Diderot, 62 
 Directoire period, 4, 1 3 
 Distinctive styles, 48 
 
 Dixon, N.. 39, 88 
 Drawing, 20, 22 
 Duchess of Manchester, 19 
 Dudman, R., 59 
 Duffer's error, 18 
 Duke of Cumberland, 71 
 Dupuis, 12 
 
 EDRiDGE,H.,48.51,57 
 
 style, 60 
 
 Empire frame, 77 
 Empire style, 73 
 Empress Eugenie, 79 
 Enamel frames, 14 
 
 miniatures, 24 
 Engleheart. G.. 2. 19.20,48 
 Engleheart's style, 49, 54 
 Essex. W., 89 
 Eyebrows, 22 
 Eye miniatures, 82, 83 
 Eyes, 19 
 
 94 
 
 FALSE miniatures, 17 
 
 Figures, 25 
 
 Finely painted frauds, 23 
 
 Fireplace, near miniatures, 14 
 
 Fitzherbert, Mrs., 82 
 
 Flatman, 39 
 
 Forster, T., 45 
 
 Fox, C., 88 
 
 Frames, 3, 9. 13, 14, 29, 30, 31, 
 
 37. 38. 59. 79 
 
 Frameless miniatures, 10, 30, 42 
 Frauds, 19 
 Fraudulent miniatures, 16 
 
 copies, 10 
 
 Frederick the Great, 7 1,72 
 French artists, 29 
 
 copies, 23 
 
 enamels, 73 
 
 miniatures, 13, 62, 68 
 Frills, 21 
 From prints, 19 
 Fur, 31 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH, 84 
 
 influence, 68 
 Genuineness, 22 
 George 11,71 
 
 111,71 
 
 IV, 5 
 
 Gerbier, B., 88 
 German enamels, 72 
 Gilding, 36 
 Glass. 27 
 
 miniatures, 85 
 Gold. 29, 30,70 
 Gold-beaters'-skin, 21 
 Gold (oil. 13 
 
 frames, 14 
 Grazlia, A., 3 
 Greuze, 73 
 Grimaldi. W., 57 
 
 style, 60 
 Gros, 76 
 Gouache, 33, 63 
 Goudon, 79 
 
 HAIR IN FRAME, 13, 14, 54
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hair, powdered, 20 
 Half-lengths, 25 
 Heat, effect of, 15 
 Henri Quatre, 7 
 Henrietta Maria, 7 
 Milliard. N., 37, 88 
 Hogarth, 71 
 Holbein, 7, 12,30,31,32 
 
 school, 3 1,34, 37 
 
 style, 31 
 Hone. N., 71 
 Hoppner, 58 
 Hoskins, 6, 7 
 Hume, David, 9 
 Humphrey, 0., 57 
 
 ILLUMINATION, 27, 28 
 
 Impasto, 31, 32 
 Initials, 42, 51 ,87 
 Isabey,J.B.,63,67 
 Ivory, 27 
 boxes, 61 
 
 JEAN, P., 57 
 Jeweller's shop, 13 
 
 LACE, 21 
 
 Lady Hamilton, 17, 18 
 
 Northwick, 56 
 
 Skipwith, 50 
 Landscapes, 25 
 Lawrence, Sir T., 5, 46 
 Lead pencil, 26 
 Lens, Bernard, 9, 10 
 
 glass, 16,20,23 
 Letter S, 49 
 Lights, 17, 18 
 Lips, 19 
 Littlejohns, 45 
 Liverpool enamels, 71 
 Loggan, D., 45 
 Loose miniatures, 14 
 Loudoun, Earl of, 43, 44 
 Lucan, Lady, 88 
 
 MARINE stores, 44 
 Marvell, Andrew, 38 
 
 Material, 25 
 Medallion, 32 
 Medium, 25, 26, 38 
 Mee, Mrs., 57 
 Metal, 27, 29 
 Mid- Victorian, 13 
 Mignard, 62 
 Mignature, 62 
 Milton, 34 
 Miniatura, 28 
 Miniature in character, 26 
 Miniatures on metal, 29 
 
 on vellum, 28 
 Minium, 25, 28 
 Minor artists, 56 
 Missal, 27, 28, 36 
 Modelling, 23 
 " Modern antique," the, 13 
 Monograms, 42 
 More, Sir A., 32 
 Moustache, 31 
 Mutton bone, 29 
 
 NAMELESS, 42 
 Names of sitters, 10,42 
 Nanteuil, 37 
 Napoleon, 76 
 Necks, 19 
 
 Neck miniatures, 60 
 Needlework, 26 
 Nixon, J., 57, 88 
 
 OILS, 29 
 " Old," 34 
 
 contemporary, 38 
 
 copies, 42 
 Oliver, P., 26, 42, 88 
 
 PAPER, 27 
 Parent, J., 88 
 Pasquier, 4 
 Paste, frame, 29 
 
 old, 13 
 Paton, D., 88 
 Pawnbrokers, 30 
 Pawnshops, 12 
 Pearls, 19, 24 
 
 95
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pecorella, 36 
 Pendants, 14 
 Pepys, 39 
 Perry, 84 
 
 Petitot.37,68,69,70.71 
 Photo-lithography, 18 
 Photography, 34 
 Picture miniatures, 83 
 Pin miniatures, 82 
 Playing-card, 36 
 Plimer, A.. 11, 19 
 Plimer's style, 49, 55 
 Plumbagoes, 45 
 Pocket lens. 17,22 
 Polaclc, S.. 89 
 Portrait-books, 9 
 Portrait miniatures, 26 
 Portraits sous voile, 67 
 Porcelain, 11.26.27,75 
 Precious metal, 29, 30 
 Prince Frederick, 71 
 Printed, 18 
 
 QUEEN Anne's time, 34 
 of Lucknow, 82 
 Mary. 32 
 of Scots, 34 
 Victoria, 28, 78 
 
 RE-FRAMING, 14 
 Repairs, 4 1, 59 
 Restoration, 31, 41 
 Reynolds. Sir J., 50 
 
 influence, 68 
 Richelieu. 30 
 Richter. C.. 88 
 Ring miniatures, 82 
 Robertson, A., 57 
 Romney, 17. 18 
 Ross, Sir W.. 57 
 Rosse. Mrs., 45 
 Roujon, M., 62 
 Rubbing, 42 
 
 Ruff. 31 
 Russell. J.. 57 
 
 ST. Bruno. 29 
 
 Screens, hanging on, 14 
 Scouler. J., 89 
 Sculptured, 27 
 Sevigne, Mme., 36 
 Shadows, 17, 18 
 Shagreen case, 29 
 Shape of miniatures, 37, 38 
 Shelley, S., 26. 48. 57 
 Signac, P., 89 
 Signatures, 52, 86 
 Silhouettes, 83 
 Silver, 29, 70 
 -gilt. 37 
 Sitter. 26 
 Slate. 29 
 Smart, J., 51. 56 
 Snuff boxes, 24 
 Society of Miniaturists, 34 
 Spencer, G., 88 
 Stippling. 20, 23 
 Stitched, 27 
 Sullivan, L., 88 
 Sunshine on miniatures, 14 
 Swiss enamels, 74 
 
 TASSIE, 85 
 Transition to ivory, 34 
 
 in shape, 37 
 Turquoises in frame, 18 
 
 VALUE, 22 
 Vellum, 25, 27, 28 
 
 WALPOLE, Horace, 39 
 Washington, 72 
 Watteau, 73 
 Wax, 26 
 
 miniatures, 83 
 Weitz, F., 72 
 Wellington, 65 
 Wiatt.SirT.,31 
 Williamson, Dr.. 44. 48 
 Wood. W.. 5 1,57 
 Wooden miniatures, 84 
 Wright, Mrs.. 84 
 Workmanship, 22 
 
 ZlNCKE. 69. 71
 
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