Part 4

Our very brief survey of English miniature work must end with Sir George Hayter, by whom we illustrate a portrait of the _Countess of Jersey_, from the collection of Lady Maria Ponsonby (Plate XXXIV.). He was portrait painter to Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but is better known for his historical paintings than for portraits, and he is almost the last of the nineteenth-century miniature painters whose work possesses any special attraction. After his time and that of his contemporaries Sir William Ross, J. D. Engleheart, Robertson, Newton, and Thorburn, the art of miniature painting died away until its revival in recent times.

The painters who worked in enamel occupy a section of miniature work apart, although in many instances the best known enamellers painted portraits also on ivory or on vellum, but they are especially known for their works in enamel. There is little need for us here to do more than define enamel work as a vitreous glaze attached by fusion to a metallic ground, but only those who have attempted to paint portraits in enamel can have any idea of the enormous difficulty of this method of portraiture when fine results are desired. Of all the men who were successful in this most complicated process, Jean Petitot stands out supreme, and his portraits, as a rule excessively minute in size, are distinguished by a delicacy of detail, marvellous in its microscopic exactitude. When it is remembered that the colours were painted on to the panel of gold in the form of a powder, only slightly mingled with a medium, that they did not represent by their tint the colour they were to present when fused, and that the slightest error in the fusing would ruin the plate and cause the colours to run into one another, the marvel is but enhanced when the exquisite works produced by this incomparable artist are examined. The specimen from Mr. Ward Usher's collection (Plate XXXV.), which is illustrated in colour, is a good example of Petitot's portrait of _Louis XIV._ He painted the face of "_Le Roi Soleil_" so often that he must have become familiar with every detail of it, and there is hardly any collection of his works which cannot boast of one of these wonderful little enamels. The story of the painter himself is of considerable interest, and the details of his religious difficulties and of his return to Geneva are well set forth in a book about him written by E. Stroehlin, and published in Geneva in 1905; while some further special information more recently discovered can be found in an article by the writer of this essay in the "Nineteenth Century" for January 1908. He left behind him a wonderful little pocket-book containing his own and his wife's portraits, and a narrative of part of his career, written by him in beautiful handwriting. His own portrait belongs to the Earl of Dartrey, and there are some wonderful examples of his work in the Louvre; but the best of his portraits are in England, and there is no collection to rival that of South Kensington in this respect. Perhaps his most extraordinary work is the box belonging to Mr. Alfred de Rothschild, which has fourteen portraits upon it; but his largest, with one exception, is that of _Mary, Duchess of Richmond and Lenox_, which we illustrate from Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection (Plate XXXVI., No. 2). It is signed and dated 1643 and is 5-1/2 inches square, the only miniature exceeding it in size being that at Chatsworth, representing the Countess of Southampton, and dated 1642. The latter is, however, unfortunately damaged, whereas the one in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection is quite perfect. With these two exceptions, almost all Petitot's miniatures are exceedingly tiny in size. The only other enameller whose work we illustrate was named Prieur, and he married, as her second husband, Marie, the only sister of Jean Petitot. Prieur was a wanderer; we find his work in Poland, Denmark, Russia, Spain, and especially in Denmark, where there are many of his portraits, and where he is believed to have died in 1677. He visited England charged with commissions from the King of Denmark, and, while there, painted a portrait of Charles II. and another of Lady Castlemaine, both from Cooper's miniatures. He was also responsible for a portrait of _Charles I._ (Plate XXXVI., No. 1), but whether contemporary or not we cannot say, for so little is known of Prieur's history, that he may have visited England before 1669, when we know he came over to paint Charles II. In all probability, however, this delightful work, which now belongs to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, is a copy by Prieur from the portrait of the King by Vandyck. Prieur executed several delightful enamel badges for the Danish Orders, and appears to have been in high repute at the courts both of Frederik III. and Christian V.

We have now to deal briefly with the long range of foreign miniature painters, the chief of whom were resident in France, although not always natives of that country. There was a regular tradition of miniature painting in France, extending from the times of the Clouets down to those of the great painters Isabey and Augustin. The works by Jean Clouet were, of course, more of the nature of paintings in manuscripts, and if we are accurate in attributing one of the great gems of Mr. Morgan's collection to Jean Clouet himself, it adds one to the only other seven portraits which have been, with any amount of accuracy, given to this painter. All of the seven are illustrations in one manuscript volume, and probably this eighth was either executed for the same purpose, or has actually been removed from a contemporary work of that kind. When we come to the later Clouets, François especially, we have actual miniatures, and in several instances the drawings for the portraits exist, also enabling us to identify whom the miniatures represent. It would be impossible within the limits of this short essay to deal with all those who succeeded the sixteenth-century men, and we have to make a big jump to the eighteenth century, because it was during that time that the most notable of the French miniature painters flourished, and their works are by far the most important.

Nattier began as a miniature painter, and his mother painted miniatures, and is said to have taught him his art. Later on, he became a well-known portrait painter, but speculating in the wild schemes of John Law, lost his fortune, and a good many of his friends. Once he took up with miniature painting to re-introduce himself to the clients he had lost when he neglected art for the excitement of finance, then dropped it again, and confined his attention down to the time of his death to portrait painting. We illustrate a delightful portrait of _Madame Dupin_ (Plate XXXVII., No. 1), the wife of a writer on finance, whose book was suppressed by the order of Madame de Pompadour; but we remember the fair lady who is set forth in this portrait more by reason of the fact that Rousseau was at one time her secretary, and was very much attached to her. The portrait shows her in the hey-day of beauty.

By Hall, the Swede, who lived in Paris, and is generally regarded as a Frenchman, we illustrate a portrait of the _Countess Sophie Potoçki_ (Plate XXXVII., No. 2), the celebrated Greek beauty, who became a member of one of the noblest families of the Polish aristocracy. Her story is a strange one. She was born of Greek parents at Constantinople, purchased as a slave by the Russian general De Witte, who made her his mistress; but one night, losing a considerable sum of money at cards, when playing against Count Felix Potoçki, he received an offer from his opponent to waive all claims if the Russian general would pass over his slave to Count Felix. The offer was accepted, and Sophie Clavona became the property of the Polish Count, who was already deeply in love with her. Despite the expostulations of his friends, he promptly made her his second wife, and they lived happily together for many years, while her heritage of beauty has been handed down through succeeding generations. Her portrait was painted over and over again, and the example of it which we illustrate remained for a long time in the private gallery of the family at Warsaw, together with a replica which is still there. It was finally sold to a French dealer, from whom it passed into the hands of its present owner. The famous beauty is in a deep red costume, which wonderfully sets off the charm of her countenance. Another work by Hall from the same famous collection (Plate XXXVII., No. 3), represents the ill-fated _Princesse de Lamballe_, "beauty, goodness and virtue personified, but all her goodness and gentleness could not soften the hearts of those inhuman tigers who immolated her on the altar of Equality." Few scenes are more pitiable than that of the execution of this beautiful woman. She had never committed any action which could have incurred the hatred of the people, but she was the friend of the Queen, and the possessor of considerable wealth; reasons enough to bring upon her head the wrath of the tyrants who preached freedom to France. This miniature is particularly charming in its domestic quality. Madame de Lamballe is shown in her room, engaged in making a wreath of flowers, and every detail concerning her occupation, and the room in which she is seated, is delightfully rendered; but the whole composition is kept so well in hand that the details do not obtrude, nor in any way draw aside the attention from the fair countenance of the lady herself.

The work of Pierre Pasquier is very rare, and not a single example of it is to be seen in the Louvre. He was born in 1731, and died in 1806. He worked largely in enamel, and a great many of his portraits appear on the wonderful snuff-boxes which were given to ministers or eminent diplomatists. Several of them are in Russia. He was distinguished by an unerring perfection of draughtsmanship, and this is especially set forth in his profile portraits, one of which, signed and dated, we illustrate from Mr. Morgan's collection (Plate XXXVIII., No. 2). It is probably the finest example of Pasquier's work in existence, and is little more than a sketch in black on ivory, with a steel-blue background, the ivory being left clear where the portrait appears. We do not know who it represents, but it was probably a study for an enamel left incomplete. It is dated 1786, and in its rigid economy of line, exquisite low-toned scheme of colour, and perfection of drawing, occupies an exceedingly high place in miniature painting, and leaves us only regretful that we are ignorant of the name of the sitter.

The example we illustrate of the miniature work of Fragonard must also be anonymous (Plate XXXVIII., No. 1). It is a boy's portrait, and has been said, with a certain amount of evidence, to represent one of his own sons, it certainly does resemble a sketch of one of Fragonard's children, which the artist has named, but not sufficiently for us to be sure respecting the accuracy of the attribution. No one, however, but Fragonard could have painted it, the colour is so daintily placed upon the ivory as to give the effect of having been wafted upon the material, and resting upon it with a feathery lightness. There is generally a good deal of yellow in Fragonard's portraits, or else the colour scheme is mainly grey and white, and this portrait belongs to the second division we have mentioned. It is very pleasing, the face of a quiet, thoughtful child, charmingly represented, and a good example of the work of one of the greatest decorators France ever knew. Fragonard's miniatures are rare, we may add, very rare, and probably no one has such a collection of them as is to be found in the cabinets of Mr. Pierpont Morgan.

By Garriot, a painter who was born in 1811 at Toulouse, studied at Madrid, and painted in Geneva, we illustrate from Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection a portrait of the _Marquise de Villette_ (Plate XXXIX., No. 2), better known as "Belle et Bonne," who was practically adopted as a daughter by Voltaire, and married to the Marquis de Villette at midnight, in November 1777, in the great man's chapel of Ferney, her six uncles being present on the occasion. Ferney had belonged to her and her six uncles, and Voltaire was the means of reclaiming it from the possession of certain of his neighbours into whose hands it had illegally passed in 1761. It was in the arms of "Belle et Bonne" that Voltaire passed away on the 30th of May 1778, when he was eighty-four years old.

A very interesting miniature from the same collection is the one representing a granddaughter of Nattier the artist, painted by Louis Sicardi (Plate XXXIX., No. 1), one of the best miniaturists of the time of Louis XVI. Sicardi painted for over fifty years, produced a great many delightful works, and was responsible for the decoration and portraits that, set upon gold snuff-boxes, were such favourite presents at the French Court.

The two greatest, however, of the painters of the French school were Isabey and Augustin, and Isabey, who was born in 1767, forms a curious link between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. He painted Marie Antoinette, Buonaparte, the King of Rome, and the Empress Marie Louise; he also worked for Louis XVIII., received high distinctions from Charles X. and from Louis Philippe, and was appointed Commander of the Legion of Honour by Napoleon III.: moreover, he had a long conversation with the Empress Eugénie (who is still living) in 1854, the year in which he died at the advanced age of eighty-eight. He exhibited between 1793 and 1841, painting portraits of all the eminent persons in France during his long career. Of his earlier work we exhibit in colour two charming companion miniatures from the collection of Mr. Ward Usher, representing the _Empress Josephine_, and the _Empress Marie Louise_ (Plate XL.), while of his later, somewhat more florid work, almost invariably distinguished by the presence of a light gauzy scarf which he wound about his sitter, and which he painted to perfection, we give two portraits, one a portrait of _Catherine, Countess Beauchamp_, from the collection of Lady Maria Ponsonby (Plate XLI.), and the other depicting _Fürstin Katharina Bagration Shawronska_ (Plate XLII.), from the collection of Fürst Franz Auersperg.

One of the loveliest miniatures Isabey ever painted is that representing _Queen Hortense and her son Napoleon III._, in the collection of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. It contains autograph information in the Emperor's handwriting attesting to its history, and is a lovely example of Isabey's easy, graceful, pleasing work. It is illustrated on Plate XLIII.

An interesting feature of some of Isabey's miniatures is the fact that he worked in conjunction with two Dutch artists, the brothers Van Spaendonck. They were expert painters of flowers and fruit, often employed at the Sévres porcelain factories, one of them being as well a professor of natural history and lecturer on flowers in Paris, and the author of one or two books on flowers and flower-painting. There are several examples of the work of Isabey in which one or other of these brothers has supplied the floral decoration, or a group of fruit in the background.

We now come to Jean Baptiste Jacques Augustin, one of the noblest of the miniature painters of France. He was born in 1759, upon the same day, although separated from him by an interval of ten years, as that on which the great Napoleon, whose portrait Augustin was afterwards to paint, came into the world. He came over to Paris as quite a boy, and lived in a house in that city to which he returned many years afterwards, bringing with him a bride, and where, as a married man, he resided for a considerable time. For a while he found life a hard struggle, but his rare merit soon brought him many clients, and from about 1790 onward until the close of his life, he seems to have had a succession of sitters, including all the notabilities of the day. He left behind him a wonderful collection of sketches, contained in various books, and a large number of unfinished miniatures. Some few years ago the members of the family, in whose possession this great collection had remained, desirous of portioning off two of their daughters, offered the collection for sale. The Directors of the Louvre very much desired to purchase it, as it included many works of great importance, but the whole collection passed into the hands of Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and fills one entire cabinet, giving a view of this artist's work altogether unrivalled. The illustrations which we give are of Augustin's later work rather than those of the early years, although with them is included a brilliant unfinished sketch, representing _The Father of Madame Seguin_ (Plate XLIV., No. 2). The one from Mr. Ward Usher's collection represented in colour is a portrait of _Madame Récamier_ (Plate XLV.), that from Mr. Morgan's collection in monotone, the famous _Madame de Boufflers_ (Plate XLIV., No. 1), the friend of David Hume, who introduced the historian to J. J. Rousseau, and is so frequently alluded to in Horace Walpole's letters. When she fled from France, Madame de Boufflers resided for some time in or near London, and Walpole spoke of her as the most agreeable and sensible woman he ever saw, but he was greatly amused at her want of appreciation of his house. She had never seen a printing press until she came to Strawberry Hill, and Walpole arranged that on the occasion of her visit his private press should print a few lines of French poetry in her praise. In one of his gossipy letters we are told that Madame de Boufflers informed Lord Onslow of the birth of Lord Salisbury two hours after his mother had come from the Opera House, and that from Lord Onslow Walpole himself heard the news.

Of E. W. Thompson, an Englishman, who spent very much of his time in France, and is regarded by the French critics almost as one of themselves, we know very little, but the _Princess de Lieven_, whose portrait he painted (Plate XLIII.), was one of the great ladies of Europe in the nineteenth century. She was a personal friend of Count Metternich and afterwards of Guizot, and Madame de Lieven kept up a steady correspondence with both these statesmen, and exercised, without doubt, a very considerable influence upon European politics.

Two artists of Italian parentage deserve mention, especially as we are able to illustrate, by the permission of their owner, Mr. Ward Usher, delightfully signed examples of their work. By Costa we show an interesting portrait of _Marie Antoinette_ (Plate XLVI.) which came from the Bentinck-Hawkins collection; and by Anguissola, the favourite miniature painter to the court of the great Napoleon, we illustrate, in reduced size, a fine portrait of the Emperor's sister, _Princess Pauline Borghese_ (Plate XLVII.).

Special attention has been given in our illustrations to the work of the great Viennese miniature painter Füger, because very little is known of his work in England, and there are so few examples of it to be found in English collections. The Viennese collectors seem determined that all the finest works by Füger shall remain in their own city, and they are prepared to give high prices in order that they may carry out this desire. One of the chief collectors in Vienna is Dr. Figdor, and he has been exceedingly kind in allowing many miniatures from his collection to be illustrated for the purpose of this essay, amongst them, five by Füger, perhaps a rather large proportion; but it has been felt that, as the work of the painter is so little known in England, it was well in our illustrations to err on the right side, and give several examples of his delightful workmanship. For a long time the details of his life were buried in obscurity, and all sorts of mistakes were made respecting his work, which was confused with that of other painters, and in some instances not recognised at all. It was not until 1905, when Herr Doktor Ferdinand Laban published a very important article upon him, that Füger's true position was apparent, and Dr. Laban was able from family records to set right the errors of those writers, amongst whom we must include ourselves, who had gone astray from lack of the very material Dr. Laban was able to discover. Since then, Herr Eduard Leisching has added considerably to our information in a splendid book he published on Austrian miniature painters, and he has discovered many more examples of Füger's work, who can now be justly recognised as the greatest of the Continental eighteenth-century miniaturists. He has been called the Viennese Cosway, but the work of Füger has very little affinity with that of our English painter. It is far stronger and more severe, and his more graceful portraits are richer in their colour scheme, and far more elaborate in their decorative effect than anything ever painted by Cosway. There are two wonderful miniatures by Füger in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection, one representing three sisters, the Countesses Thun-Hohenstein, and the other Madame Rousbaeck, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Marie Theresa, but Dr. Figdor's illustrations set forth in excellent manner both the strength and the charm of this wonderful painter. Nothing can be more forcible than the sketch of _Prince Hohenlohe_ (Plate XLVIII.), and we realise the power and dignity of the sitter when we regard this marvellous delineation of character. For dainty grace it is difficult to excel the portrait of the anonymous lady (Plate XLIX.), for strength and gracious dignity that of the _Empress Maria_ (Plate L.), while the portrait of _Marie Theresia, Countess von Dietrichstein_ (Plate LI.) is that of a noble dignified lady of high position, splendid courage, and great charm, and that of _Princess Anna Liechtenstein_ (Plate LII.) shows us a thoughtful, learned, and musical lady, a portrait very decorative in colour scheme, and charmingly set upon its oval of ivory.

Another painter whose work was exceedingly popular in Vienna, was Giovanni Battista de Lampi, an Italian born near Trent in 1751, a man very little known outside the narrow limits of the Viennese collectors. He was a wanderer for a few years, painting in Verona, and moving on until he reached St. Petersburg, but when in 1783 he came to Vienna, he was received with open arms, was welcomed by the court and the nobility to such an extent that practically for the rest of his life he resided either in Vienna, or in various towns of Poland from which he could easily reach the capital itself. It was in Vienna that he died at the age of eighty, universally respected and greatly beloved. His wife's portrait is in the gallery at Innsbrück, one of three replicas. The original Lampi retained for himself. His two sons each had replicas, and the remaining one went to his granddaughter, the Baroness Hell, who left it to the museum. One of the replicas which came into the possession of his sons is now a great treasure in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection. The portrait from that of Dr. Figdor, which we illustrate in colour, represents Lampi himself (Plate LIII.), and is not only a fine example of the artist's work, serious, and almost solemn in its aspect, but also peculiarly interesting as showing us what the painter himself was like.