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.”

Don Shelton, a miniatures collector who maintains the blog “Artists and Ancestors” (www.portrait-miniature.blogspot.com), is featured in an article in today’s Sunday Observer in London.  The article, entitled “Founders of British Obstetrics Were ‘Callous Murderers,’” recounts some of the subversive information Shelton uncovered when researching the sitter Anthony Carlisle in a miniature he owns, painted by Henry Bone.  The link to the article is below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/07/british-obstetrics-founders-murders-claim

As an addendum, the article has provoked a flurry of interest:  New Zealand national radio interviewed him this morning, BBC UK and BBC Scotland are interviewing him live tonight, and a UK producer wants to talk to him about a TV documentary.

The January/February 2010 issue of Antiques and Fine Art magazine contains an article called: “Informed Collecting: Portrait Miniatures of Children,” by Elle Shushan.  The link is as follows: http://bit.ly/6acjxS .

The following anecdote about portrait miniatures recently appeared on the blog “Artists and Ancestors”  (http://portmin.blogspot.com/):

“I will leave you with a story that I was told just a few days ago. A man, very old today, remembers visiting in his grandfather’s jewellery store in Manhattan during the depression. The man remembers people bringing in scraps of metal to be sold for pennies.  And he remembers being just tall enough that he was eye to eye with a large jar his grandfather kept on a table. And the jar was full of little faces.  The faces of miniatures which were discarded for the small amount of the precious metal would bring.  All those tiny bits of art, lost to the world.”

The November 2009 issue of New England Antiques Journal has an article by Judith Dunn entitled “English Portrait Miniatures, 1525-1810.”  A miniature of a boy signed by Philadelphian expatriate artist Robert Hunt from Christine Archibald Portrait Miniatures is included in the article on page 26. The flipbook version of the magazine and the article may be viewed at www.antiquesjournal.com.

The philosophy of collecting and collections is something that always interests me, and I thought that a quote from Orlando Rock, Christie’s head of Private Collections, illustrated a facet of this.

“What makes the perfect collection?  The key is not to be too old-fashioned and to have a few masterpieces which stand out, around which groups can be coherently formed. But above all, a collection needs to have charm and be full of character; it very rarely works if it is bland or unimaginative. and in an ideal world, added into this mix would be a touch of glamour:  The allure of the cult of the personality….for me, every work of art tells a story–and it is the romance of the object, where it comes from, who commissioned it and who owned it subsequently–that is at the heart of what we do. “

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

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.

For those of you who may not have had a chance to view the April 2009 The Magazine Antiques article on American portrait miniatures, written by Elle Shushan, there is now an online link: http://www.themagazineantiques.com/articles/portrait-miniatures-in-the-new-republic/ .

 Additionally, there is now a The Magazine Antiques link to view a slideshow of 17 American miniatures by artists mentioned in the article.  http://www.themagazineantiques.com/media/slides/2221

An excellent article by John Fiske in this month’s New England Antique’s Journal on small, quality antique shows vs. large, commercial shows, and what it means for today’s collectors and dealers. http://www.antiquesjournal.com/pages09/opinion.html