February, 1920 
27 
Edward G. Marl- 
bone executed the 
miniature of a young 
girl shown above 
Lady Sophia Boyle, 
a miniature portrait 
painted by Richard 
Cosway 
Miniature portrait of a 
child, by Lucia Fairchild 
Fuller 
ladies with a lit¬ 
tle brush and a 
cestrum of ivory.” 
How modern that 
sounds, and yet 
this was centuries 
and centuries ago, 
ages before the 
time of Lavina 
Teerlinck (paint¬ 
er to Henry VIII), Angelica Kauffman, 
IMaria Hadtield Cosway, IMrs. Anne IMee 
(nee Foldsone), Lady Diana Beauclerk, 
Frances Reynolds, Miss Palmer (Sir 
Joshua’s niece), IMary Benwell, Charlotte 
Jones and dozens of the other “lady mini¬ 
aturists” wdio became famous. 
In the 1st and in the 2nd Century there 
existed with the Romans a sort of minia¬ 
ture painting in which the portrait heads 
(sometimes whole figures) were produced 
by scratching the design through the sur¬ 
face of gilded glass, placing behind it and 
fusing to it as a background a thinner 
plate of glass, an art revived in the 16th 
Century by Glomis, a French artist, ex¬ 
amples of whose work are numbered 
among the gems of the J. Pierpont Mor¬ 
gan collection. 
John Woods Poinier, a , " U ' 1 1 ' i 
miniature bv Benjamin rlllliarcl 
Trott (1537-1619) re¬ 
flect the influence 
of the medieval 
miniaturists l)Oth as to the flat treatment 
with little or no shadow and the strong 
decorative arrangement. 
The Tudor Period 
The first period of English portrait 
miniatures, that of the 16th Century, may 
be called the Tudor period. This was 
distinctly dominated by Hans Holbein the 
Younger. Of this artist Carel Van Man- 
der, a Dutch critic writing in 1764, said 
“Before entering the service of the King, 
Holbein had done no work in miniature, 
but among the royal pensioners he found 
a painter, called Lucas, who was skilled 
in this small art, and he quickly made 
friends with him. Lucas showed Holbein 
how he worked, with the result that the 
new-comer (juickly surpassed his master, 
being a better designer, composer and 
colorist.” 
One cannot overestimate the influence 
of Holbein thereafter. Holbein painted 
miniatures of Henry VIII, Catherine 
How’ard, Catherine of Aragon, Anne of 
Cleves, Jane Se 3 'mour, the young Prince 
Edward and others. In 1904 a Holbein 
miniature brought £2750 at the Hawkins 
sale. Other noted miniaturists of this 
d'udor Periorl were I.avina Teerlinck, Sir 
Antonio IMore (1512-1577?), Nicholas 
Hilliard, who was also a goldsmith and 
(Continued on page 96) 
Commodore Truxton, a 
miniature by Archibald 
Robertson, 1802 
Medieval Miniatures 
Coming to medieval times, the art of 
the miniaturist, as exemplified in the 
illuminated manuscripts of the Middle 
Ages, reached an unsurpassed perfection. 
“The Leightons and Millais of the time,” 
says Davenport, “painted little water- 
color pictures on vellum, which have lasted 
and will last, instead of big oil pictures 
on canvas. . . . I’he only objection to 
vellum as a material for painting uj)on is 
that the body-color or gouache, which is 
the most suitable medium, is liable to chip 
Derich Born, by 
Hans Holbein 
the younger, in 
the Priakothek 
at Munich 
Augusta Temple 
Prince, a minia¬ 
ture by Jeane 
Baptiste Isaby, 
painted in 1828 
Hemtt 
A collection of miniatures may be kept in a frame, 
as Miss Elsie de Wolfe keeps hers, giving quite a 
decorative effect to the wall 
