The Smithsonian Art Museum has a video lecture on its site giving a superb illustrated overview of American Portrait Miniatures. The short piece is narrated by Carol Aiken, a specialist conservator of miniatures, historian and writer. The link is: http://americanart.si.edu/luce/media.cfm?key=372&artistmedia=0&object=2610&subkey=350 .

I came across an interesting illustrated article today from JSTOR online, about the 18th century minaturist David Boudon. The article is: “A Most Perfect Resemblance at Moderate Prices: The Miniatures of David Boudon,”  by Nancy E. Richards, The Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 9, pp 77-101, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1974.  An excerpt from the article (which can be downloaded as a PDF for a fee) reads:

“Overshadowed by such well-known miniature portraitists as Elouis, Saint-Memin, Edward Malbone, and the Peales, David Boudon’s contribution to American miniature painting deserves reappraisal. His career serves as a good barometer of artistic practice in the 1790s and 1800s. His periodic migrations from place to place in search of commissions provide insight into the difficulties encountered by many of his contemporaries. Working in a little-used technique, Boudon was able to capture an accurate likeness without using a physiognotrace or pantograph. An excellent draftsman, his portraits are uncompromising; he does not try to glamorize or idealize his sitters. Working in a highly competitive field, Boudon’s patrons were members of the gentry–a segment of society frequently overlooked by artists in search of more prestigious clients. Boudon is not a major figure in the history of American miniature painting, but by providing an accurate record of middle and upper middle-class Americans at a reasonable price, Boudon anticipated the need for true likenesses that photography would satisfy later in the nineteenth century.”

The collector in the previous post who is a direct descendant of the British artist Thomas Heaphy has shared images of a signed portrait miniature by Heaphy’s wife Mary Stevenson. Mary Stevenson’s work is extremely rare, and a signed miniature by her will help with future attributions. It’s interesting to note how similar Stevenson’s style was to her husband’s.

Portrait miniature enthusiasts are used to hearing about Charles Willson Peale as one of the early premier miniaturists in the United States, whose miniatures can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.  Another facet of the man is revealed in this children’s book, called The Mystery of The Mammoth Bones, by James Gilbin, based on true-life events in Peale’s life. A review from “Publisher’s Weekly” summarizes the story:

“With the pacing of an ace detective, Giblin unveils the painstaking steps in artist and naturalist Charles Willson Peale’s 1801 discovery of mammoth bones. Through a third-person narration of Peale’s experience, Giblin establishes these fossils’ revolutionary importance to science, technology and social history, beginning with Peale’s exploratory digs, his assemblage of the first skeleton and its subsequent exhibition and controversy. Structuring the text in this way allows Giblin to deftly paint a turn-of-the-19th-century world and to demonstrate how this finding shook prevailing scientific and religious beliefs and contributed to current theories of evolution and extinction. Readers will devour the details that contrast Peale’s time to today, such as the harrowing journey from Philadelphia to upstate New York (it took a day and a half just to get from Philadelphia to New York City, before sailing up the Hudson River in the days before steam power), a trip that today takes three hours, and President Thomas Jefferson’s personal interest in and professional support of the excavation. Unfortunately, some details lack context, such as the original $200 pricetag of the bones without mention of what that sum could buy. After wrapping up this gripping mystery and its legacy, profusely illustrated with photographs of the mammoths and Peale’s own sketches, Giblin concludes with a brief biography of the Renaissance man Peale and a summary of theories on mammoths and mastodons. Fans of all things dinosaur will find much to explore here, and readers may well be infected with Peale’s pioneering spirit. Ages 8-12.”

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a specialist dealer  in portrait miniatures is placing pieces with descendants of the artists or sitters. Recently I had the pleasure of selling a signed miniature of an actress by the rare British artist Thomas Heaphy to a direct descendant of Heaphy.  Heaphy’s works come onto the market very, very infrequently. One other signed portrait miniature by him, very similar to the one I sold, can be seen on the blog http://portraitminiature.blogspot.com , which showcases an outstanding private collection. The link to the page is: http://bit.ly/5aAMp5  (#1801).

The new owner of my Heaphy miniature commented: “Unfortunately I haven’t any pictures of Thomas Heaphy himself , but this picture entitled “The Poultry Seller,” which exhibited at the Old Watercolour Society, 1810, no. 235,  bears an uncanny resemblance to at least three members of my father’s family, and I wonder if it might be Thomas himself, or his father.

I have in my possession a miniature by Thomas Heaphy’s wife Mary Stevenson. It is inscribed as “a portrait of a gentleman by Miss Stevenson /83 Charlotte Street/Rathbone Place” and underlined, Mr Brown. To my untrained eye I would suggest that Mary Stevenson was a more accomplished artist than Thomas himself. It has been suggested to me by a knowledgeable art historian that her work may have been on occasion have been put up for sale as Thomas’s work. This begs the question as to how Mary managed to accumulate the vast sum of £1250 on her death, as very few,  if any, women artists were recognised at this time.”

The Poultry Seller

An Actress, Signed by Thomas Heaphy, Circa 1800

The artist’s biography is as follows:

Thomas Heaphy (1775-1835), born in London, was articled to an engraver, and then became a pupil of John Boyne, who ran a drawing school and was a friend of artist James Holmes. Heaphy exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British Institute, the Society of British Artists, the Old Water Colour Society and the New Water Colour Society. He executed oil portraits, watercolor portraits, miniatures, genre subjects, and colored prints. In 1803 he became the portrait painter to the Prince of Wales. In 1812 he went to the Penisula and followed the army, painting portraits of British officers, including a portrait of the Duke of Wellington with his General Staff, which was much admired. He became the first president of the Society of British Artists in 1824.

A copy of his will dated February 2, 1835, naming him as an artist in water colours, at 8 St. John’s Wood Road, St. Marylebone, included reference to 1250 pounds from his first wife, Mary (nee Stevenson, also an artist), which was to be left to his second wife, Harriet Jane, and included letters of administration to Harriet Jane Heaphy, widow. All four of his children: Charles Heaphy, Mary Ann Heaphy, Thomas Frank Heaphy and Elizabeth Murray (nee Heaphy) went on to become artists. Mary Ann specialized in miniatures. She married a portrait painter named W. Musgrave in 1832, and exhibited after that date as Mrs. Musgrave.

A miniature of a man signed “T. Heaphy, 1815,” and a miniature of a lady signed “T.H. 1803″ on the front and in full on the reverse, are in the Victoria Albert Museum. Examples of his work are also in the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Collection, London. A monography on Heaphy by W.T. Whitley was published in 1933 by the Royal Society of British Artist’s Art Club.

The following poem was written by Reverend Charles Symmons about a portrait miniature of his wife, Elizabeth Foley, painted by Samuel Cotes.

I recently sold a signed miniature of a baby by Elsie Dodge Pattee (Augur) to her grand-daughter, who shared some information on her grandmother. The grand-daughter has Pattee’s autobiography, a large oil that was a Beaux Arts entry, and some late paintings. She says about Pattee:

“I can’t wait to show your miniature to my older sister Alison, who might be the baby in question, but the photo doesn’t look like another miniature we have of her. Alison, b. 1936, is five years older than I am, and is probably one of the last subjects Nana painted. Her retina detached before I was born and she didn’t pick up a brush again for at least twenty years, when another cousin, himself an artist, bought her oils and canvases, saying “Here, paint big!” In the interim, she taught history of art to all the kids in the neighborhood, in Old Lyme where she lived and we summered, and in Ossining NY, where we lived and she wintered. I’ve been through Egyptian, Greek and Roman art several times and have a lifelong love of art in general and those periods in particular. Nana also started to teach me drawing – as she had learned it, starting with charcoal and properly shading an egg – and my greatest regret is that I didn’t do more with her using more vivid colors later in her career. I spent a lot of time with her in the last decade of her life – late ‘60’s, early 70’s – just as I was getting involved in the Women’s Movement. We talked a lot about her life as, essentially, a single, independent, professional woman, which is what I was and am. “Nana, were you involved with the suffragists?” “No, I was too busy working for a living.”

This is a pastel portrait of Elsie done by husband Elmer (E. E. Pattee). He, too was an artist. In fact, I think they met in art school. However, because he ‘wanted to paint the way he wanted to paint,’ and because he had a family to support, he started the Paris American Art Store. It still exists, within walking distance of the Louvre. Attached is the companion self-portrait by Elmer. i’m not sure of the date, but the both look very young, so they were probably done around 1902ish. [see images below]. “

Upon querying if Elsie Pattee was related to John Wood and Edward Dodge, the grand-daughter replied:

“If the families were related there is no genetic connection because my grandmother was adopted; family lore has it from a Chelsea MA housepainter. His wife died, Nana was an infant and he couldn’t care for her, so she was adopted by Emma Harper Dodge and her husband, Mr. Dodge (whose given name I can’t remember. I do remember that he was an alcoholic and he never worked.) Emma was an offshoot of the Harper publishing company, and the family moved to Paris when Elsie was very young because a modest income went much farther in France than in America.”

A biography of Elsie Dodge Pattee is as follows:

Elsie S. Dodge Pattee (1876- c. 1975 ) was one of the leading miniature artists of her era. Born Elsie Stuart Dodge in Chelsea, Massachusetts, she studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, where she most likely met her husband Elmer Ellsworth Pattee, a painter and sculptor, She gave birth to their son, John Robert Pattee, and then apparently the family moved to New York, where she established her career painting landscapes and marine paintings, and specializing in portrait miniatures. Pattee exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Brooklyn Society of Artists, the Lyme Art Association, the Mystic Art Association, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Panama Pacific Exhibition of 1915, and the Paris Salon. Along with Lucia Fairchild Fuller and Mabel R. Welch, she was one of the three regular instructors at the American School of Miniature Painters for the years 1913 to 1916, and was a member of the American Society of Miniature Painters. She died in Old Lyme, Connecticut in 1975. Her works may be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the  Smithsonian Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among others.

The Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia has  acquired a new portrait miniature, c. 1790, attributed to Ebenezer Mack (1765-1833).  One miniature by Ebenezer Mack is held in the Smithsonian collection, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one in the New York Historical Society, and one in the Cheekwood Museum of Art.  Portrait miniatures by Mack are extremely rare, and little is known about him. 

Curator Kristen Zohn says: “A portrait at the New York Historical Society (NYHS) is used to make attributions to Mack. The NYHS piece came into that collection with an attribution to Mack, and it corresponds to a group of miniatures painted by a very distinctive hand. None of the miniatures that have been attributed to him have been signed, and so experts rely on easily recognizable “stylistic fingerprints.” Portrait miniature expert Edward Sheppard has stated that these include: the use of an unusually heavy stipple, both in the features and the background; the “woolly” look to the hair; the lack of strong modeling in the facial features; and a rather distinctive palette including the use of a brown and slightly grey stipple in the facial highlights.”  The initial attribution to Ebenezer Mack was made by long-time collector Don Shelton, when shown an image of the piece by the curator, and that attribution was then confirmed by several other experts.

Mack’s newspaper advertisements placed him in Philadelphia in 1785 and 1788, and in New York 1791 through 1808. 1  Brief mention of him is made in John Smibert: Colonial America’s First Portrait Painter:  “Trumbull rented [Smibert's Boston] studio in 1779 and made use of whatever remained of Smibert’s library…[and]…over the course of the next sixteen years at least six more artists–Mather Brown (1780), Ebenezer Mack (1780), Joseph Dunkerly [sic] (1780), Samuel King (c 1780-1785), John Mason Furnass (1785) and John Johnston (1795) held sway in the studio.” 2  This would also place Mack in Boston in 1780.

It is interesting to note that Joseph Dunkerley and Ebenezer Mack were recorded as using Smibert’s studio in the same year, as the slight similarities in their style could lead one to conjecture that Mack may have studied informally with Dunkerley.

Additionally, another prominent miniaturist of the time, William Verstille, was active in Philadelphia and New York in the 1780s, and his work at times bears a resemblance to Mack’s work .  Mack could have well crossed paths with Verstille during this time, and studied with him. The Ebenezer Mack miniature of  Jasper Ely Cropsey, c. 1794, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art [below], looks very like miniatures by Verstille [see example below.]  It is also interesting to note that the gold frame for the Cropsey miniature by Mack looks very similar to several frames on Verstille’s miniatures. Verstille was a goldsmith as well as a miniaturist, and may well have made some frames for Mack’s miniatures, much as Paul Revere did for Dunkerley’s miniatures.

A further detail of interest is that the yellow vest embroidered with red and blue worn by the sitter in this newly acquired museum piece is virtually a twin to the embroidered yellow vest of a male sitter in a miniature by Ebenezer Mack sold by dealer Elle Shushan several years ago.  Ed Sheppard has conjectured that perhaps Mack kept this vest in his studio for male sitters to wear, and I conjectured that perhaps the two sitters were from the same family (wearing vests embroidered by the same sister or mother). It appears that in general yellow vests with embroidery were in vogue at this time, since another appears on a Verstille sitter (below), and the  Mack of Cropsey (below).

Portrait of a Gentleman, attributed to Ebenezer Mack, c. 1790.

Watercolor on ivory. 2 ¾ x 2 ¼ inches. Active in New York and Philadelphia 1785-1808.
Collection of the Columbus Museum, Georgia. Museum purchase made possible by
the Art Acquisitions and Restoration Fund.

Jasper Ely Cropsey, by Ebenezer Mack, c. 1794, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gentleman, by William Verstille, c. 1790. Note similarity of this frame to the Mack miniature of Cropsey.

1. Dates for newspaper advertisements via a previous website listing for an Ebenezer Mack portrait miniature, catalogued by Elle Shushan.

2.  John Smibert: Colonial America’s First Portrait Painter, by Richard H. Saunders, Yale University Press, p. 125.

There’s a real need for a comprehensive  dictionary and guide for American portrait miniatures (along the lines of Daphne Foskett’s dictionary on English miniatures).  It’s astounding to go through Theodore Bolton’s book and see how many miniaturists are listed whose works are apparently now in the wind. (Bolton’s book has very few images, or it would be a greater help as far as identifying artists). 

There’s scholarship available on American miniaturists–but it’s scattered far and wide in a variety of books and articles. Likewise,  there are many miniatures in many U.S. museums across the country, as well as historical societies and other public collections (such as the Tennesse Portrait Project), and in a number of private collections, but these haven’t been cross-referenced and assessed en suite.   Once that’s done, the scholarship can then be advanced.

Unsigned American miniatures come on the market every day,  and languish unidentified.  A comprehensive dictionary of American miniatures and miniaturists–with examples by each artist, a brief history of each artist, and a description of the artist’s techniques–would go far to help identify  American School miniatures, and expand the knowledge on this  American art form.  In particular the American Revivalists need some coverage, as there’s a dearth of material.  If the information were consolidated  significant progress could be made in the study of American portrait miniatures, and it would add  important knowledge to America’s  history. Miniatures are a vital part of our fine art, social and political past. It’s hard for others to take our miniaturists seriously if we don’t  take them seriously.  As well, such a book introduces them to a wider audience–which, in turn, brings more visitors to the museums, exhibitions, and lectures on miniatures. And there’s wider potential audience than even that–most English and European parties interested in portrait miniatures known very little about American miniatures, and a dictionary would bring interest in them into an international realm.

I think with the publication of the first edition that then a good deal of material presently in private collections would come forth, and enrich and update a second edition.  Just the other day, for instance, an accidental conversation with a blogger led to the discovery of a Benbridge with an identified sitter–it has been in her  family for 200 years (and, alas for collectors, will remain so).

As well, there may be important information already collated by individuals. Edward (Grosvenor) Paine supposedly left behind a comprehensive manuscript on miniatures that he used as a sales tool. Likewise there’s supposed to be material in the Chieffo estate.  The Lewis Rabbage estate papers on Revival artists are apparently now with the Worcester Museum.  

In the meantime, I, as have some others, have been keeping  research files on miniaturists, recording every  identified artist I come across as well as any information on them.   For anyone out there who has images of signed, inscribed or firmly identified American miniatures, especially by the more scarce artists, as well as any accompanying information (provenance, exhibitions, etc) then please send them along and I’ll add them to the files.