209 
Bath Miniature Painters. By Percy H. Bate. 
(Read March 13th, 1895). 
It would be quite out of place here to give any disquisition 
on the origin and history of the art of portrait painting in 
miniature—it will be sufficient if I remind my hearers that it is 
undoubtedly a survival of the beantiful medieval art of 
illuminating. In many of the choicest manuscripts of the 
middle ages, we find introduced into borders and panels the 
portraits of the patrons of the artist, the owner of the book and 
his family; and such portraits, often full length, often again 
simply medallions of a head and shoulders, sometimes approach 
very closely the finest works of a later day both in delicacy 
and finish, and we know from contemporary authority that the 
artists who devoted themselves to the decoration of the Bible 
and the Psalter, also painted (apart from their illuminated 
books) portraits of king and queen, lord and lady. 
The status of this delicate and beautiful art is expressed in 
this last sentence. Producing his work for the delectation and 
admiration of wealthy and cultured patrons, the miniaturist. 
appealed to but a limited clientdle, and the art could not be 
expected to flourish in the provinces, away from the court. 
_ beauties, whose charms the artist immortalised, and the rich 
_ connoisseurs, who could afford to encourage his work ; and the 
fact that miniature painting has flourished for so long in Bath is. 
due to the circumstance that the city was, during so many years, 
the centre of the gay and fashionable life of the country. In 
fact, the earliest trace that I have discovered of a miniaturist 
working here is curiously synchronous with what Professor 
Earle so well calls the ‘‘ Rise of Fashion,” and synchronous also 
with the commencement of the vogue of Bath as a resort for the 
beau monde: the same first quarter of the eighteenth century that 
Saw the erection of the Parades saw also the first miniaturist 
(0) Vou. VIII, No. 3. 
