Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1800

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1800,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.4102.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Unknown, Eye Miniature, ca. 1800,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.4102.

Both the frame and the eye are physical and metaphorical windows to peer through in this eye miniature of an unidentified sitter. Haunting in its gaze and composition, the portrait was likely not done ad vivum; the shape of the eye and pupil appear lifelike, but the eyelid’s three folds are anatomically inaccurate. The three curved lines indicate a heavily hooded eyelid, reflected below as bags and creases beneath the eye. Varying shades of orange follow the curves and appear in the upper ridges, tying together the peachy-orange tear duct. The eye appears to be a man’s, judging by the shape, lack of flattery, and absence of upper eyelashes. The lower line of lashes, however, are rendered as quick dashes of dark brown in the left corner that fade across the waterline.

The eyebrow is a painted weave of brown and black, alternating strokes on a ground so pale it could be bare ivory.¹ The right side of the eyebrow begins abruptly, and the left side does not end, instead blending into the confusing shadow of what could be the browbone. The eyebrow’s sharp bend, guided along the arcs of lines between eye and brow, combines with the crescent-moon shadow that signals the side of the nose. The effect is a swarm of lines around the eye, slightly separated but creating an overall circular shape. This contrasts with the scalloped border of what resembles blue and gray clouds surrounding the eye.

The clouds, specifically, help date the portrait to the end of the eighteenth century, when patrons began to commission eye miniatures as mementos of loss as well as romantic love.² Artists began emphasizing the cloud surrounds as much as the sitter’s eye and its neighboring facial features.³ Artists frequently employed clouds to symbolize a person’s entrance into heaven.⁴ A posthumous depiction of a deceased loved one could therefore explain the anatomical inaccuracies and celestial decoration encircling the eye in this portrait.⁵ The stickpin setting, worn in an individual’s cravat or lapel, would facilitate a constant reminder of the departed and of life’s fragility.⁶

Notes

1. It is possible the black marks are from the sitter darkening his eyebrows with cosmetics, such as kohl, burnt cork, or soot.

2. There is one instance of a piece of jewelry containing a family of eye miniatures, a more expeditious method of documenting family members than painting each one’s full portrait. See Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection, ed. Elle Shushan (London: D. Giles Limited, 2021), cat. 99 (Pair of Gold Link Bracelets, 1840). Each bracelet has six eyes of men, women, and children.

3. Shushan, Lover’s Eyes, 76; see cat. 113 for a similarly shaped eye and cloud surround.

4. Shushan, Lover’s Eyes, 43, 52. At least thirty-two of the 133 eye miniatures in the Skier collection include cloud surrounds. While the majority of the skies depicted are blue, there are a few examples of brown clouds, indicating stormy heavens.

5. In addition to cloud surrounds, we can look at the Skier Collection for examples of eye miniatures with engraved cases that clearly indicate the object was made in memory of the deceased. See Shushan, Lover’s Eyes, cats. 50–52, 60, 78, 82–83, 89, 117.

6. Ginny Redington Dawes and Olivia Collings, Georgian Jewellery: 1714–1830 (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 2007), 122. It is unclear whether the stickpin setting is original or not, but it closely resembles one illustrated in Shushan, Lover’s Eyes, 77 (fig. 21): Stick Pin with a Portrait of a Left Eye, ca. 1800–1810, private collection.

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. 217, p. 72, (repro.), as Eye Miniature.