The Exhibition of Miniatures at South Kensington. 93 



art of enamelling is of great antiquity and uncertain origin. . . . 

 About the beginning of the fifteenth century, by an improved 

 process, painted enamels became applicable to miniature- 

 portraits ; an art which was certainly derived from France, but 

 was not brought to much perfection till towards the middle of 

 the seventeenth century. In 1632, a goldsmith, Jean Toutin, 

 who was skilled in the use of transparent enamels, produced a 

 variety of colours which, when used upon a thin ground of 

 white enamel, vitrified in the furnace without any change of 

 tint. These colours were applied in the same manner as water- 

 colours used on vellum or ivory ; they were the materials of the 

 first miniaturists, and, a few years later, they enabled the great 

 Jean Petitot to carry the art to its highest excellence. They 

 consisted of metallic oxides, with fluxes of vitrifiable sub- 

 stances, chiefly silica and borax, both fusible at a heat capable 

 of being resisted by the metal ground, whether gold or copper, 

 on which they are to be used. It is also essential that these 

 materials should be of a character to adhere firmly to the 

 ground, should possess the transparency or opacity required 

 to give finish to the artist's work, and maintain, after fusion, a 

 smooth, clear, vitreous surface. The colour produced results 

 either simply from the colouring material used, or from the 

 chemical combination of that material with the flux.'" 



Miniature proper (to which we now revert) — the painting 

 in water-colour with the point of the brush upon card, vellum, 

 or ivory — has been a specially British art. The names of some 

 foreign artists, as for instance Holbein, stand indeed in the 

 first rank of the art ; but, perhaps, the most entirely typical 

 specimens of it, executed by artists who were nothing or 

 hardly anything save miniature-painters, are those left to us 

 by our countrymen, Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac and Peter Oliver, 

 and Samuel Cooper, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; 

 by Cosway at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of 

 the nineteenth ; by his finest successor Ross ; and in the latest 

 development of the art by Thorburn and Wells, living artists 

 who have survived the art whereby they acquired their fame, or 

 at least have had to " give it over" in its now moribund condi- 

 tion, and occupy their talents otherwise. Mr. Redgrave speaks 

 of "the inimitable Samuel Cooper," seeming to imply that 

 that master of the Cavalier and Roundhead period was the 

 prince of all miniature-painters. Recognizing his singular 

 excellence, we yet think that the still earlier painters, Hilliard 

 and Isaac Oliver, represent the very finest condition of the art. 

 The miniature method of execution, small dainty touches upon 

 the smoothest of surfaces, indicates the artistic qualities most 

 suitable to such works. These are delicate precision, clearness, 

 and harmonious nicety. The smaller the works are the better, 



