92 The Exhibition of Miniatures at South Kensington. 



years — in England, at least — unless the tide of taste should 

 somewhat turn. That this should turn is most highly desirable ; 

 and there can be little doubt that the art, if culpably allowed 

 to die out now, will have to be revived at some future time, 

 under the disadvantages native to all such revivals. No 

 beautiful art, no sphere of development for human skill, ought 

 ever to be permitted to come to an end. Miniature-painting 

 is a beautiful art, and people will begin to rediscover that when 

 they get tired of being represented, on the small scale fit for 

 gifts and souvenirs, only by mechanically produced and indif- 

 ferently coloured photographs. We wish all possible honour 

 and development to photography, but not a monopoly fatal to 

 the miniature or any other fine art. 



We have said that miniature -painting is a water-colour 

 process ; and so it almost universally is, upon the materials 

 most peculiarly appropriate to it, which are vellum, card, and, 

 in more recent times, prepared ivory. This last, which now 

 counts as the miniature material par excellence, was not intro- 

 duced into use until about 1685. Even on this material, 

 however, oil-colour has been occasionally used, not with good 

 effect (as in the heavy, lightless series by Andrew Robertson, 

 a once highly admired practitioner, in the South Kensington 

 Exhibition) ; and, in a wide acceptation of the term, various 

 other sorts of pictures or designs are accepted as miniatures. 

 Mr. Samuel Redgrave, the compiler of the catalogue for this 

 exhibition, says, " Miniatures may be painted or drawn on any 

 material, and with any material used by the artist, and in every 

 style of art. It was deemed best, in the interests of the 

 exhibition, to accept all such works as were drawn to a small 

 scale, and were, in respect to manner, of a miniature character, 

 except paintings on porcelain." Thus the exhibition includes 

 the singularly-perfect enamels of Petitot, and those of his 

 successors, which is obviously reasonable. We cannot quite 

 agree, however, in the admission of ordinary oil-portraits of 

 moderate size — say from a foot to a foot and a half — painted 

 upon canvas or panel, and of similar-sized water-colours or 

 pencil-drawings upon paper. To us it appears plain that these 

 are not, in any fair sense of the term, miniatures ; and the 

 admission of a few of them seems to suggest that, if any at 

 all, there ought to be many more in proportion. They are 

 here also necessarily hung at a height which, slight as it is, 

 prevents them from being examined with entire satisfaction, 

 considering their limited size. 



We pause a moment to describe, in the words of Mr. 

 Redgrave, the process of the enamel art above referred to, 

 which is, of course, a wholly different thing from miniature- 

 painting, and more analogous to porcelain painting. " The 



