Self-portraits – Artist portraits

The artist as his/her own model (self-portraiture) has often been not just the cheapest but also the simplest method. The gaze is serious, as you might expect when the artist has been eyeing him/herself in the mirror. Nationalmuseum has over 30 self-portraits by leading miniaturists, as well as artist portraits. Together they tell us something about artists’ self-image and social pretensions.

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Collections within the Collection

The world’s biggest collection of miniatures contains objects from several historical collections that once belonged to the likes of Charles I of England and Gustav III. It also includes famous individual collectors such as Horace Walpole and John Pierpont Morgan. As they were light-sensitive, the objects were often stored in cabinets. In other cases, the miniature is all that remains after the sale of precious mountings.

Three portraits by two different artists, mounted in a novel way, for the collector Horace Walpole. On the left is Arabella Stuart, a relative of Queen Maria Stuart (the picture above). The portrait is painted by the Frenchborn Isaac Oliver and shows the artist’s vibrant realism. His son Peter Oliver’s portrait of the Digby family was modelled on a painting by van Dyck. Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) was a prominent diplomat and scientist. His wife Venetia was considered one of the era’s great beauties.

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The Technique of Miniature Painting

The French word miniature does not refer to size but to the technique of painting with red lead. As in mediaeval manuscripts, this was applied to vellum. Enamels are regarded a part of miniature painting, albeit not in a strictly technical sense. Around 1700 ivory also was used as a painting surface, and in about 1820 large-format ivory was first extracted with the veneer method. This was just before miniature painting was lost to photography.

The French-born Belgian artist Louis-Marie Autissier’s self-portrait from 1817 is unusually informative in that it shows a number of the miniaturist’s tools. Along with various brushes and spatulas we see two palettes, a magnifying glass, a container of paint, a jar of gum Arabic and a glass of water. An amusing detail is that the large miniature, partly concealed under a sheet of paper on the table, is in fact the self-portrait.

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Migrating Artists

Much as other art forms and crafts, miniature painting knew no geographic boundaries. Lucas Hourenbout and Hans Holbein, who laid the foundations of miniature painting in England, were born in Gent and Augsburg respectively. Other foreign artists did the same in a number of countries, including Sweden. The greatest miniaturists were migrating artists such as Jean Petitot the Elder, born in Geneva, or Domenico Bossi from Trieste.

This portrait of the Swedish envoy to Constantinople (Istanbul), Carl Fredrik von Höpken, was probably painted in 1741 by Jean-Étienne Liotard, a Swiss artist known for his lifelike, mimetic style. This is one of his first enamel portraits. The Swedish diplomat von Höpken had been in Constantinople for several years attempting to negotiate an agreement with the Ottoman Empire to strengthen Sweden’s position against Russia.

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French Women Miniaturists

Several French women miniaturists came to prominence in the second half of the 18th century. Demand for portrait miniatures was great, for public use as grace gifts as well as for private use. This provided a reliable living, not least for women, and paved the way for their dominant position during the first half of the 19th century. Lizinka-Aimée-Zoé de Mirbel and Marie-Victoire Jaquotot were that period’s most famous miniaturists.

Miniature portraits by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard are rare. This portrayal of a woman painting her husband’s portrait was executed five years after Labille-Guiard’s debut in 1774. Like many other women, she realised early on that miniature portraits provided a secure living. Her teacher was François-Élie Vincent, a Swiss neighbour of her father’s fashion boutique in Paris. Labille-Guiard later began to make pastels that she often repeated in a smaller format.

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Great Britain 1500–1700

Portrait miniatures as an art form began in Flanders. It arrived in England as early as during Henry VII’s reign in the 1520s, courtesy of the hired artists Lucas Hourenbout from Gent and Hans Holbein from Augsburg. Nicholas Hilliard and the Olivers, father and son, took it to new heights. England thus became the leader in miniature painting in the 17th century, with the likes of John Hoskins and his nephews Samuel and Alexander Cooper.

In this portrait of Sir Robert Dudley, illegitimate son of the Earl of Leicester and Baroness Sheffield, Hilliard highlights the social standing of his model in the composition and the many accessories. An interesting detail is the locket on Dudley’s left shoulder, probably containing a miniature of his father or the queen. Dudley was an explorer and cartographer. He moved to Italy and converted to Catholicism after he failed to claim his father’s peerage.

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Great Britain 1700–1850

Miniatures painted on ivory arrived in Britain already in the 1710s. Technically they were similar to painting on vellum. Foreign miniaturists initially dominated, but after 1750 Jeremiah Meyer of Tübingen revolutionised ivory painting with his linear style. Among his pupils was Cosway and Crosse, while Smart went his own way with his finedot manner. During the first half of the 19th century miniaturists moved closer to oil painting in format and style.

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Denmark

Danish miniature painting began as an art form exclusively for the court, wholly dependent on foreign artists. The first important Danish miniaturist was Cornelius Høyer, who had studied in Paris in the 1760s. As Danish miniature painting flourished at the end of the century, the Italian Domenico Bossi visited the country, leaving a distinct imprint. After the end of the absolute monarchy in 1849, however, the art form lost significance.

The double portrait of the Baudissin-von Witlebens captures, in miniature, something of the intimate idyll of the bourgeoisie during Denmark’s golden age. There is a touch of naivety to the detailed accessories and the warm colours. Frederik Christian Camradt’s work is recognisable also for his trademark quirk: he always painted models’ eyes light blue.

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Sweden 1647–1700

Until the Englishman Alexander Cooper and the Frenchman Pierre Signac were appointed court painters in 1647, there were no miniaturists working for an extended period in Sweden. They quickly had to deliver portraits of Queen Kristina that were mounted in bejewelled lockets and given as grace gifts. Cooper and Signac, who had international training, paved the way for a flowering of miniature painting in Sweden at the end of the century.

In this portrait of Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, Cooper’s impasto painting comes close to oils, with its rich nuances of light and shade. The white collar and golden hair are very naturalistically rendered. It was executed either during De la Gardie’s studies abroad in 1640–1642 or on his embassy journey in 1646. The encounter was almost certainly a reason for Cooper’s coming to Sweden and becoming court painter in 1647.

Sweden 1700–1792

The Great Northern War did not lead to stagnation within miniature painting; in fact, several German artists enriched the form in Sweden. Exports by many wellknown names were a further sign of the vitality of Swedish miniature painting throughout the 18th century. Peter Adolf Hall and Niclas Lafrensen the Younger had great success in Paris, but the revolution finally forced the latter to return home. All the while, British influence on the form grew.

This portrayal of an unknown priest in a library is a rarity in Swedish miniature painting. The model probably chose this setting to underline his position as a learned man. The portrait can be attributed to Gustaf Torshell on stylistic grounds: a refined pointillism with soft contours. Torshell was drawing-master at the royal fortification administration and of the court’s pages.

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Sweden 1792–1930

The years following the death of Gustav III were dominated by the Italian miniaturist Domenico Bossi. His recurrent sojourns in Sweden left a lasting imprint. Of comparable influence was Jacob Axel Gillberg, trained in Britain and active for 60 years until his death in 1845. Miniature painting then stagnated, becoming a feeble reflection of photography. Siri Derkert’s fresh contribution was the art form’s last creative surge in Sweden.

Domenico Bossi evocatively captures the 30-year-old John Hall the Younger, whose father was a very wealthy Gothenburg merchant of the same name. When he died in the following year, his son was suddenly put in charge of a vast fortune. Hall the Younger was not equal to the task, and was declared bankrupt only five years later. He then scraped by as a beggar, dying in 1830.

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Germany

Developments in geographically divided Germany were correspondingly diverse. In the north, Danish influence was considerable. In Berlin, Munich and Dresden, with their wealthy courts, several different international miniaturists worked, in turn influencing other art centres. French and Swiss artists had a significant role in the southwest. The democratisation, in around 1900, of portraiture led to a flowering of miniature painting here as well.

Anton Rafael Mengs is counted among the very greatest of 18th-century portraitists. As court painter in Dresden and Madrid he is primarily known for his illusionistic works in oil. His portrait miniatures, however, are very rare indeed. This example shows that he also excelled in the delicate art of miniature painting.

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France 1550–1789

Miniature portraiture reached France from Flanders with the immigration of Jean Clouet and his son François. They were influenced by a northern European realist tradition. In the early 1600s, Jean Toutin developed enamel portraits, later to be perfected by the Swiss painter Jean Petitot the Elder. In the early 18th century, the Venetian practice of painting on ivory was taken up here, and Paris quickly became the centre of miniature painting.

Peter Adolf Hall of Borås fundamentally changed miniature painting in France. Instead of using tiny dots and a cold palette, he introduced freer brushwork and warmer tones. His technique can be seen in this self-portrait, where Hall depicts himself a self-conscious artist, informally dressed and without a wig. When he painted it the French revolution had broken out; Hall chose to follow his clients into exile, and died in Liège in 1793.

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France 1789–1900

Peter Adolf Hall, a Swede by birth, became the innovator of French miniature painting in the latter half of the 18th century. Many of the miniaturists who followed were dependent on his technique. The revolution, and later the empire, brought a rapid increase in the number of miniaturists and portraits. The 1820s saw a rise in large-format ivory works, leading to a brief flowering before photography almost fully superseded miniature painting.

François Dumont was one of the leading French miniature painters in the latter half of the 18th century until the Restoration. His extensive production led to some repetition and standardisation in the way he painted. This unusually large miniature portrait of the famous French chemist Antoine François Fourcroy (1755–1809) is, however, one of his leading works with its convincing rendering of the subject and the setting.

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