The long-awaited volume on the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of American portrait miniatures will be released next January, and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

American Portrait Miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

This volume catalogues the world’s most comprehensive collection of American portrait miniatures, ranging in date from the early 18th to the 20th century and representing 155 artists. Jewel-like and intimate, the pieces portray spouses, children, and other loved ones and were usually created for personal use. The Museum’s collection is also significant for its self-portraits by artists and for portraits of notable public figures. Each of the nearly six hundred works is illustrated and described in detail, and a biography and bibliography are provided for each artist. An introductory essay conveys the history of the collection.

About the Author
Carrie Rebora Barratt is Curator, American Paintings and Sculpture, and Manager of The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, and Lori Zabar is Research Associate, American Paintings and Sculpture, both at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Product Details
• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art (January 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030014895X
• ISBN-13: 978-0300148954

A private collector has recently posted a number of British portrait miniatures from his collection on his blog.  They are outstanding pieces and well worth viewing. Please see: http://portraitminiature.blogspot.com/2009/05/18th-century-miniatures-1700-1770.html .

It would be wonderful if other private collectors followed suit. Not only is it a joy to view miniatures from people’s collections, but it is educational to see them and widen the spectrum of known pieces by different miniaturists.

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

Here is a good summary of the book An Orchid Thief  by Susan Orlean (@susanorlean on Twitter)–which was later made into a film starring Meryl Streep–including a quote that captures the frenzy of collectors:

Orchidelirium is the name the Victorians gave to the flower madness that is for botanical collectors the equivalent of gold fever. Wealthy orchid fanatics of that era sent explorers (heavily armed, more to protect themselves against other orchid seekers than against hostile natives or wild animals) to unmapped territories in search of new varieties of Cattleya and Paphiopedilum. As knowledge of the family Orchidaceae grew to encompass the currently more than 60,000 species and over 100,000 hybrids, orchidelirium might have been expected to go the way of Dutch tulip mania. Yet, as journalist Susan Orlean found out, there still exists a vein of orchid madness strong enough to inspire larceny among collectors.

The Orchid Thief centers on south Florida and John Laroche, a quixotic, charismatic schemer once convicted of attempting to take endangered orchids from the Fakahatchee swamp, a state preserve. Laroche, a horticultural consultant who once ran an extensive nursery for the Seminole tribe, dreams of making a fortune for the Seminoles and himself by cloning the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii. Laroche sums up the obsession that drives him and so many others:

“I really have to watch myself, especially around plants. Even now, just being here, I still get that collector feeling. You know what I mean. I’ll see something and then suddenly I get that feeling. It’s like I can’t just have something–I have to have it and learn about it and grow it and sell it and master it and have a million of it.”

Even Orlean–so leery of orchid fever that she immediately gives away any plant that’s pressed upon her by the growers in Laroche’s circle–develops a desire to see a ghost orchid blooming and makes several ultimately unsuccessful treks into the Fakahatchee. Filled with Palm Beach socialites, Native Americans, English peers, smugglers, and naturalists as improbably colorful as the tropical blossoms that inspire them, this is a lyrical, funny, addictively entertaining read. –Barrie Trinkle, from Amazon.