Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1810

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1810,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.4105.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1810,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.4105.

The resurgence of eye miniatures in the early twentieth century led some unscrupulous dealers to cut down eighteenth-century portrait miniatures to include only the eye, often creating an awkwardly cropped composition in order to fit the eyes into period cases.¹ Although this miniature initially appears to be a cut-out based on the inclusion of neighboring facial features, closer inspection reveals that the artist indeed intended it as an eye miniature.² The sitter’s untamed eyebrows and short, boyish haircut indicate that the portrait likely depicts a man. His face is presented in three-quarters view, facing right, allowing a glimpse of the other side of his nose. However, there is a shadow where his left tear duct should begin. This amount of negative space, especially when the head is slightly turned, is implausible for a full portrait. Since the artist never realized the sitter’s left eye, we can conclude that the portrait has not been cropped, and the single-eye composition is intentional.

This composition, painted around 1810, differs from later eye miniatures, when artists focused solely on the eye, eliminating any indication of a nose. While the sitter’s hair often still appeared, artists sometimes circumvented this by including cloud surrounds. Here, the artist appears uncertain about where to place the face. The eye is painted slightly higher than center, and the bottom of the support ends where the sitter’s mouth should begin. This ambiguity, the hint of just enough context of a face, compels viewers to imagine the rest of the sitter’s portrait in their minds.

In 1809, Henry Greswold Lewis, patron to English painter John Constable (1776–1837), noted a miniature that was a “human eye & enough of the forehead to know the likeness.”³ In the Nelson-Atkins portrait, the added environment of forehead, nose, and upper lip better illustrates the individual while still focusing on the eye and its allure. The artist further captured the viewer’s attention by painting cerulean blue in and around most of the eye socket. The saturated blue diverges from the speckles of deep pink in the innermost corner of the eye. The sitter’s sun-kissed nose and the peachy mark making across his cheekbone and between curls of hair bring a warmth to the portrait. The miniature, smaller than a thumbprint, hints at a countenance but maintains its intimacy through the cropped composition and the sitter’s anonymity.

Notes

1. Elle Shushan, ed., Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection (London: D. Giles, 2021), 87. These period cases usually had braided hair originally in them.

2. Conservator Stephanie Spence opened the miniature on November 18, 2021. After examining the edges of ivory, she determined that the miniature did not appear to be cut down from a larger image.

3. Martin Gayford and Anne Lyles, Constable Portraits: The Painter and His Circle, exh. cat. (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2009), 104.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 213, p. 72, (repro.), as Eye Miniature.