94 The Exhibition of Miniatures at South Kensington. 



else there is no reason for such smallness of handling. Simi- 

 larly, they deal best merely with a head and shoulders, for 

 there is not adequate room for more ; they should eschew dark 

 shadow, for a small work much shadowed is in total effect a 

 blot; they should aim at the utmost simplicity of pose and 

 motive consistent with elegance, and stopping short of for- 

 mality, for more of vividness and variety requires space for its 

 proper development ; they should be bright and decorative, for 

 they belong to the bijou order of art ; and, being thus, and 

 comparatively devoid of shadow, they are none the worse, but 

 rather the better, for a certain general look of flatness. Card 

 or vellum, as of old, is probably a preferable substance to ivory 

 for miniature-painting, as the excessive smoothness of the 

 latter favours overloading of colour, or else produces want of 

 solidity. The reader who knows the qualities whereby the old 

 sixteenth- century miniatures are specially distinguished from 

 their successors, will perceive that those miniatures are the 

 most thorough embodiment of all the eesthetic and executive 

 virtues we have here attempted briefly to summarize, and that 

 the productions of after times, up to our own, have more and 

 more deviated from this ideal, increasing in size and decreasing 

 in whatever separates the miniature from other forms of art. 

 In fact, the comparison between Hilliard and Cooper rests on 

 much the same basis as that between Holbein and Vandyck, as 

 portrait painters on a larger scale ; with this difference, that, 

 while it may be questioned which of these admirable oil- 

 painters developed the style better suited for large work, there 

 can be little doubt that the Holbein-like style is the more 

 applicable to the small scale and special execution of minia- 

 tures. Cooper may, howevei*, be regarded as having extended 

 though not improved upon the art, and as dominating all sub- 

 sequent developments of it up to the time when Cosway, a 

 painter of great ability and elegance, struck the keynote which 

 has prevailed from that date to this. He is the Reynolds, and 

 to some extent the Lawrence, of miniature art, doing his por- 

 traiture " with an air :" he produced and represents the transi- 

 tion from the work of the eighteenth to that of the nineteenth 

 century. The latter is known to all of us, and has already 

 been sufficiently referred to. 



The Exhibition of Portrait-Miniatures which opened at the 

 South Kensington Museum on the 1st of June, got up by the 

 Educational Committee of Privy Council, with the assistance 

 of an influential advising body, is probably the richest in 

 number and quality ever organized in this or even in any 

 country. It contains 3081 works, lent by a large number of 

 owners, and representing the art chiefly as practised in the 

 United Kingdom, but not by any means exclusively so. Of 



