Citation
Chicago:
Blythe Sobol, “James Scouler, Portrait of a Woman, 1778,” 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. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1500.
MLA:
Sobol, Blythe. “James Scouler, Portrait of a Woman, 1778,” 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. 3, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1500.
Artist's Biography
See the artist’s biography in volume 4.
Catalogue Entry
This portrait by James Scouler depicts a stately woman wearing the latest fashions for 1778, the year the miniature was painted. Her à la turque (turquerie): The term “à la turque,” or “Turkish style,” was used throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to describe a wide range of artistic styles and artforms, from fashion to furniture and even music. For Europeans, the Turkish categorization served as a generalized inspiration for a style perceived as “exotic” and loosely derived from designs sourced from across Turkey and the Middle East. “Turkish” figures in such designs were heavily stereotyped and often sexualized.-inspired gown reflects the growing influx of imported block-printed cottons and calicos from India, as well as the influence of the portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792).1Dr. Johnson’s 1773 dictionary entry for calico describes it as “An Indian stuff made of cotton; sometimes stained with gay and beautiful colours.” Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. “Calico, n.s.,” accessed July 10, 2024, https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/1773/calico_ns. The sitter’s unpowdered brown hair is piled high on her head, with a curled lock falling over her right shoulder, a style also favored by Reynolds’s sitters and the most fashionable set. Her white gown is decorated with shell gold: Shell gold was prepared by miniaturists in advance of painting in a multistep process. First, gold leaf was ground into a fine powder and mixed with honey. Water and a binder, such as gum arabic, were then added to make it paintable. Once applied to the surface with a brush, the shell gold was burnished with a weasel’s tooth to make it shine. Because gold leaf was costly, it was sparingly used, even with miniatures, for jewelry and accents on clothing. Its name was derived from the mussel shells in which it was traditionally stored. accents along the neckline, reflecting the gold embroidery on her blue shawl. The shawl, whose elegant folds hint at neoclassical drapery, is attached to the gown’s center bodice with a red jeweled brooch and draped across her right shoulder and back. The shawl’s minute gold embroidery is echoed in the white-on-white adornment of the gown, with shading in blue pigment added by Scouler.
Scouler used gouache: Watercolor with added white pigment to increase the opacity of the colors. to provide greater opacity in the gown and vibrantly hued shawl.2Leo R. Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe in the 16th, 17th, and 19th Centuries (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964), 2:742. A combination of complex hatched: A technique using closely spaced parallel lines to create a shaded effect. When lines are placed at an angle to one another, the technique is called cross-hatching. and stippling is evident in areas where Scouler wanted to create depth and shadow, as in the left side of the sitter’s neck and face, along the hairline, and around her mouth and chin. Scouler appears to have deliberately scratched into areas he wanted to outline or highlight, perhaps with the point of his brush handle, including, for example, underneath the brows and along the outline of the lower face.
Scouler’s manner of noticeable cross-hatching and scratching into the paint surface may account for some of the coarseness ascribed to his style, in contrast to the finer, more fluid technique of Scouler’s close contemporary John Smart (1741–1811), to whom he is often compared.3“Many of [Scouler’s] early miniatures show a marked resemblance to the work of Smart”; Daphne Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger, 1972), 1:497. Scouler and Smart, unlike their schoolmate Richard Cosway (1742–1821), were also united in their preference for portraying their sitters with unflinching realism. Scouler’s emphasis on the beauty and detailing of his sitter’s attire far exceeds his interest in flattering his sitters. He did not shy away from revealing his sitter’s maturity through her thin lips, the fullness below her chin, and the creases beneath her eyes. Nevertheless, she remains an elegant woman, whose blue eyes are highlighted by the blue of her shawl.
Notes
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Dr. Johnson’s 1773 dictionary entry for calico describes it as “An Indian stuff made of cotton; sometimes stained with gay and beautiful colours.” Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. “Calico, n.s.,” accessed July 10, 2024, https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/1773/calico_ns.
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Leo R. Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe in the 16th, 17th, and 19th Centuries (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964), 2:742.
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“Many of [Scouler’s] early miniatures show a marked resemblance to the work of Smart”; Daphne Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger, 1972), 1:497.
Provenance
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.
Exhibitions
The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 51, as Unknown Lady.
British Portrait Miniatures: An Exhibition Arranged for the Period of the Edinburgh International Festival, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Edinburgh, August 20–September 18, 1965, no. 181, as An Unknown Lady.
References
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 265.
British Portrait Miniatures: An Exhibition Arranged for the Period of the Edinburgh International Festival, exh. cat. (Edinburgh: Arts Council Gallery, 1965), unpaginated.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 51, p. 21, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.
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