Upon first glance, the young woman’s portrait would appear to be a sizable oil canvas, hanging in a historic estate. With fluid strokes, smoothly blended, the woman’s skin is luminescent, and the lace of her shawl is rendered with such exquisite detail that one may not believe this painting is actually a miniature—only 2 inches by 3 inches! It is the collaborative work of American miniaturists Henry Inman and Thomas Seir Cummings.
Simply called “Portrait of a Lady,” the miniature is painted in gouache (opaque watercolor) on ivory and resides at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here, Inman’s smooth technique and Cummings’s exacting detail come together beautifully to create a masterwork, great in execution but diminutive in size—a work meant to be worn as a piece of jewelry. In the early 19th century, before the advent of readily available photography, miniatures were all the rage.
Creating an Ivory Complexion
The art of miniature painting actually goes back to the 16th century, building upon the work of medieval manuscript illuminators. It was likely developed further by Flemish artists. The earliest dated portrait miniatures are attributed to a French artist of Dutch origin, Jean Clouet, who painted at the court of Francis I (1515–1547). Early examples are on vellum or card, but artists discovered that a thin prepared piece of ivory proved to be the ideal surface upon which to render smooth skin. Thin layers of paint were delicately applied and highlights buffed out to create stunning portraiture.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, portrait miniatures were primarily encased in lockets or boxes and offered as diplomatic gifts, symbols of love, or mementos of a birth or death. By the 18th century, miniatures were created for jewelry—a pendant for a necklace or set into a ring or bracelet. During this period, miniaturists from Europe traveled to America to paint the citizens of the new republic. Leaving a lasting impression on the American marketplace, the demand for miniatures boomed in the following century.
Gilbert Stuart, one of America’s foremost portraitists, is thought to have popularized miniatures in the States. When Stuart arrived in New York in 1793, he teamed up with Irish miniature painter Walter Robertson. Together they offered a “twofer”—as Stuart engaged patrons for a full-scale portrait, Robertson created a miniature.
In the early 19th century, the studio of John Wesley Jarvis became the launching point for many of America’s aspiring miniaturists. Jarvis took the 13-year-old Henry Inman as apprentice from 1814 to 1821, teaching him the exacting art of making miniatures. Inman took on a student of his own: Thomas Seir Cummings, who became widely considered the best-trained American miniaturist in the 19th century. Thus began a very successful—yet short-lived—partnership.
When Inman and Cummings partnered in 1825, they advanced the art of miniature portrait painting in America to a new level. Their work sought to rival and, indeed, emulate much larger oil paintings—with miniatures depicting figures (even full-length) in elaborately detailed settings. Cummings professed that miniatures “should possess the same beauty of composition, correctness of drawing, breadth of light and shade, brilliancy, truth of colour, and firmness of touch, as works executed on a larger scale.” The works they collaborated on are notably exquisite and exceptionally rare, ranking among the most stunning miniatures produced in 19th-century America.
In 1827, the two artists went their separate ways. While Inman went on to create large oil paintings, Cummings continued to paint miniatures. In 1826, he helped found the National Academy of Design, where he taught miniature painting for the next 30 years—producing some of his most amazing works.
A Painter’s Patent
Miniatures were quite expensive, being extremely skill and labor intensive. Yet for many years, the demand for them was strong as America’s fortunes grew. To commission a renowned 19th-century artist—averaging $50 per portrait—would cost around $2,000 today! The price would likewise increase according to the number of sitters in a multi-figure painting.
Who wouldn’t want to have a likeness of a loved one to hold close and wear as a keepsake? Still, they remained out of reach for many. Stories and memories were the only link to their loved ones that people of fewer means had. That was soon to change as new advances in visual representation were being developed across the ocean in France by a Romantic painter who was also an inventor.
On January 7, 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre demonstrated a way of making “astonishingly precise” pictures printed on highly polished sheets of silver-plated copper to a joint session of the Académie des Sciences and the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The “daguerreotype” was the first commercially viable photograph, earning Daguerre a patent on the process. Because the first photographs were black and white, some miniaturists became colorists, hand tinting the images. To further mimic the painted miniatures, the daguerreotypes were housed in similar small cases and frames.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain
Miniature painting eventually declined as patrons were able to obtain likenesses of loved ones more quickly and at less cost. With further advances in technology, photography became the mainstay. In our modern era, it is hard to imagine a time before picture taking—let alone the convenience of the camera phone. Nonetheless, the demand for hand-crafted arts has made a resurgence. As the pendulum of technology swings, the appreciation for the classical arts resurfaces.
