Love and loss: American portrait and mourning miniatures

Abstract

Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures. By Robin Jaffee Frank. (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2000. Pp. xiii, 358. Illustrations. $35.00.) This book served as catalogue for an exhibition drawn from Yale University collection of miniatures, a promised bequest Yale, and several loans. author, Robin Jaffee Frank, is associate curator of American paintings and sculpture at Yale University Art Gallery, and one of book's goals is to offer a history of American miniature painting using Yale's collection as an armature (ix). Love and Loss falls short of this lofty goal because a complete history would necessarily go beyond twenty most distinguished practitioners of a few northeastern cities, plus Charleston. There were numerous portrait miniaturists in 18 10s, 1820s, and 1830s in places such as Richmond, New Orleans, Nashville, and Louisville who do not appear in this account. Nor does Frank offer much information about economics of trade, although some artists' account books survive. volume does achieve author's other goal: provide the first book and exhibition fully explore strong ties between history of miniature and American private life (vii). Those ties have not been explored elsewhere at book length, nor so thoroughly and engagingly as here. Frank cogently connects miniature painting larger forces, such as expanding market economy after 1760, and skillfully relates popularity of miniatures a growth of romantic sensibility, an increase in love matches, and new ideas about education and childhood. Commissioning miniatures was a popular way of commemorating births, engagements, marriages, and deaths. No other art form has such highly personal associations, and Frank has undertaken extensive detective work unlock mysteries concealed within clasped lockets that held miniatures. Mary Roberts may have painted first American ivory miniatures in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1740s, but first documented example is a self-portrait by Benjamin West, which he painted in 1758 or 1759, when he proposed marriage Elizabeth Steele of Philadelphia. She rejected his suit, but kept his miniature. Steele's mother deplored precarious nature of West's chosen profession, but years later, when he had become principal painter George III and president of Royal Academy, Steeles returned portrait West. Another intriguing story concerns Harriett Mackie, whose miniature, called The Dead Bride, graces cover. Mackie died on eve of her wedding, perhaps poisoned by relatives who stood lose inheritance of valuable plantations when she married. garland of roses laid across her brow was an early example of dominant role roses would have in Victorian mourning iconography. Mourning miniatures served meet universal longing keep dead within circle of living (139). In early 1700s, skulls or skeletons often appear entombed inside coffinlike crystals (119). After mid-century, however, such ghastly images were replaced by more sentimental ones of sorrowful mourners. Fashionable neoclassicism was reflected in allegorical figures in classical garb standing over Grecian urns or Egyptian obelisks bearing name of departed. This restraint, in turn, gave way higher expressions of moral compassion such as weeping. …

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