Eye Miniature

The vogue for eye miniatures took hold during the early years of the nineteenth century. It is supposed to have originated in the days of the French Revolution and to have had erotic and political significance. In 1786 Richard Cosway (62.49, 24.80.499) painted Mrs. Fitzherbert's eye for the Prince of Wales, later George IV (Stephen Lloyd, Richard and Maria Cosway, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1995, p. 118, no. 60, colorpl. 54). George Engleheart (38.146.16, 26.168.14, 11.218) first recorded making a miniature of an eye for a lady in 1796 (G. C. Williamson, "Miniature Paintings of Eyes," Connoisseur 10 [1904], pp. 147–49), and William Wood (95.14.95, 95.14.97) painted the eye of Mrs. Oliphant in 1806 (no. 6148 in his ledger). William Pether (68.213) is known to have made some signed eye miniatures (e.g., no. P.154-1931 in the Victoria and Albert Museum). Although the names of other eminent miniaturists are frequently attached to the British examples, they are usually by lesser hands.

[2016; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]

Mr. and Mrs. John W. Starr, Kansas City, Mo. (until 1954)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Eighteenth-Century Woman," December 12, 1981–September 5, 1982, unnumbered cat. (p. 60).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 291(3).

Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 128, 201, no. 291(3), ill.