Monogrammist D. M., Portrait of a Man, 1664

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Monogrammist D. M., Portrait of a Man, 1664,” 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. 2, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1231.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Monogrammist D. M., Portrait of a Man, 1664,” 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. 2, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1231.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This portrait of an unknown man is a noteworthy addition to the limited collection of portrait miniatures that include the monogram “DM” and may, in fact, be among that artist’s earliest known dated works. The interpretation of this monogram has sparked ongoing art-historical discussions. In his notebooks, compiled in forty volumes starting in 1713, George Vertue initially mistook it as the mark of Nicholas Dixon (ca. 1645–after 1708).¹ By 1933, Basil Somerset Long, a prominent authority on miniatures and keeper of the department of paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, identified a miniature with this monogram that was inscribed with the name “David Myers” on the reverse in a later hand, and thus he connected “DM” to Myers.² Miniature scholar Daphne Foskett uncovered another inscription connecting “DM” to Myers,³ and Graham Reynolds has concurred that the initials DM “probably [correspond to] Daniel Myers,” whose name is sometimes also conflated with David’s.⁴ However, in the absence of definitive evidence substantiating this connection, and of any further information about an artist or artists named either David or Daniel Myers, the artist who made this miniature remains known only by his monogram.

Painted in an unpretentious and naïve manner,⁵ the sitter appears in a black robe with a white band collar, a type of formal neckwear worn by members of clergy and lawyers and also seen in some types of academic dress. This specific type of neckwear, called “bands” or sometimes “Barrister’s bands,” takes the form of two oblong pieces of cloth tied to the sitter’s neck. Bands are usually made from strips of bleached Holland, a fine, plain-woven, or dull-finish linen from the Netherlands. Here the artist DM carefully depicts the creases of the band at the neck, especially the detail of the turned-over inside corner of the left band. The artist has also rendered the wrinkles and folds of the sitter’s forty-year-old face in definitive strokes, firmly hatched in dark brown and sanguine that draw attention to his sagging jowls and eyelids. Stippled blue shading models the face by highlighting the hollows of the sitter’s eyes and cheeks; the tone appears again in his lips, giving them a deathly pallor that is the antithesis of youth. The sitter’s long, natural hair is rendered in an auburn wash modeled with gray to delineate the curls. He is set partially against a dark curtain background extending to the left edge of his face, beyond which is a dramatic blue sky with large puffs of white clouds vertically hatched in orange, alluding to either a sunset or a sunrise.

A concentrated group of miniatures bearing the monogram DM are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where one gains a better sense of the artist’s clientele. Here he can be seen in context as a copyist of Samuel Cooper (ca. 1608–1672), in a miniature of English nobleman John Holles, 2nd Earl of Clare,⁶ and as an ambitious portraitist in his own right, in his extraordinarily large miniature of an unknown woman and dog, dated 1671.⁷ He also painted individuals who were close to the court of King Charles II, including Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, who served as secretary to Charles II and became his chief minister upon the Restoration.⁸ Although there is no known portrait by Samuel Cooper of Lord Clarendon that the artist DM might have copied, DM may have shared patrons or acted as a more accessible alternative to the busy Cooper, who was appointed court painter in 1663, the year before the present portrait was realized.

Notes

1. John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: H.M. Stationery Office in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997), 293, 294n1. Murdoch quotes Vertue: “This mark of the limner I take it to be Dickson, the first and last letter.” Murdoch continues, “writers up to Goulding confused Nicholas Dixon with ‘D.M.’”

2. Basil Long came across a miniature in the collection of Dr. Law-Adam in Surrey, a portrait of the Earl of Clarendon, which is inscribed on the back: “purchased 3 Septr 1803 / Edwd Hyde Ld Clarendon / . . . / painted / by David Myers.” This miniature was offered for sale at Bonhams on November 21, 2007, as David Myers, Portrait of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609–1674), 1674, watercolor on vellum, 6 3/4 in. (17.1 cm) high, lot 71, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/15265/lot/71. See Basil S. Long, British Miniaturists: 1520–1860, 2nd ed. (London: Holland Press 1966), 281–82.

3. See Daphne Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 1:391.

4. See Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniature, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 73.

5. Daphne Foskett refers to Myers’s style in this way. See Foskett, Dictionary of British Miniature Painters, 1:391. As of the publication of her Dictionary, Foskett had identified at least sixteen known miniatures by him.

6. See “Monogrammist D.M.,” John Holles, 2nd Earl of Clare (after Samuel Cooper), after 1656, watercolor on vellum, 1 x 7/8 in. (2.5 x 2.2 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.30-1952, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82137/john-holles-2nd-earl-of-portrait-miniature-d-m.

7. See “Monogrammist D.M.,” Unknown Woman with Her Dog, 1671, watercolor on vellum, 7 11/16 x 6 1/4 in. (19.5 x 15.8 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.13-1949, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070032/an-unknown-woman-portrait-miniature-d-m.

8. See Charles Harding Firth, “Hyde, Edward (1609–1674),” in Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder, 1904), 28:370–89.

Probably James Thursby-Pelham (1869–1947), London, by 1947 [1];

With an unknown owner, by March 31, 1949 [2];

Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, Fine Portrait Miniatures, Sotheby’s, London, March 31, 1949, lot 67, as Miniature of a Man, by Morrison, 1949 [3];

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1971;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1971.

Notes

[1] This is according to the 1949 sales catalogue, which states, “From the Pelham Collection.” James Thursby-Pelham collected a large group of plumbago miniatures. See David Loggan, Mrs. A. Harrison, 1681, plumbago on parchment, 5 in. (12.7 cm), sold at Christie’s, London, “A Life’s Devotion,” November 20, 2013, lot 104, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5733147.

[2] According to the 1949 sales catalogue, “Other Properties” sold lots 67–84.

[3] According to the lot description, “A Fine Miniature of a Man, signed ‘D.M. 1664,’ the man, aged forty, is depicted head and shoulders three-quarters dexter, gaze directed at spectator, brown hair falling to a deep linen collar over a black robe, against a curtain, cloud and sky to dexter side, oval, 2 1/2 in. From the Pelham Collection. Basil Long records this artist working in England circa 1663–1676. The example in question is very close to the man in armour in the H. E. H. Digby Collection, signed and dated 1663 and illustrated by Long in ‘British Miniaturists,’ fig. 39.” The annotated catalogue for this 1949 sale is located at University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr. The annotations include the buyer of lot 67: “Morrison £26.”

Monogrammist D. M., Miniature of a Man, November 19, 1664, 2 3/8 in. (6 cm) high, sold at Sotheby’s February 9, 1956, sale, lot 50 [1].

Notes

[1] The miniature is reproduced in the sale. According to the lot description, “At this time he [D. M.] was painting miniatures with the rather unusual dark curtain to his sinister and cloud and sky to dexter as can be seen from the Pelham miniature of the same year, sold in these rooms 31st March, 1949, no. 67.”

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 19, as Unknown Man.

Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures (London: Sotheby’s, March 31, 1949), lot 67, as Miniature of a Man.

Fine Portrait Miniatures; Enamels, Gold Watches, Fine Shagreen, Fabergé, and Gold Snuff Boxes (London: Sotheby’s, February 9, 1956), 10.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 19, p. 13, (repro.), as Unknown Man.