In America, the form flourished from roughly the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s, produced by some of the most technically skilled painters of the era and owned by everyone from founding fathers to country lawyers who simply wanted a record of their wife’s face.
The American version of the form descended from a European tradition that had been running since the 1500s, when Flemish artist Hans Holbein the Younger introduced small portrait paintings to the English court of Henry VIII. The word “miniature” itself has nothing to do with size — it comes from miniare, the Latin term for the red lead pigment used in medieval manuscript illumination, which is where the form got its start.
By the 18th century, the key material shift was from vellum to ivory, a change credited to Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera. Ivory was more luminous than vellum and let painters render skin, hair and fabric with far more accuracy. It was also technically unforgiving — the surface was hard, non-porous and slippery, meaning watercolor wouldn’t readily adhere, and errors were nearly impossible to correct without lifting the paint entirely. Artists had to develop precise crosshatching and stippling techniques just to make the medium work.
In America, the first known portrait miniature on ivory dates from 1740, and by 1758, John Singleton Copley had taken up the form, establishing a distinctly American style — linear, direct and focused on individual likeness rather than the flattering conventions popular in Britain.
Charles Willson Peale of Philadelphia was among the most prolific of the early practitioners, painting miniatures of Revolutionary War officers at Valley Forge and completing a portrait of George Washington in 1777. The Peale family essentially became a miniature dynasty: his brother James, his son Raphaelle and his granddaughter Mary Jane Simes all worked in the form across three generations.
The art reached its peak popularity around 1800, when demand was high enough that major oil portraitists routinely offered miniature sittings alongside their larger work. Gilbert Stuart arrived in New York in 1793 with the Irish miniature painter Walter Robertson, and they took sittings together — Stuart for the full-scale oil portrait, Robertson for the matching miniature.
The objects themselves were personal in a way that went beyond just displaying someone’s face. Many were designed to be worn — set into lockets, brooches or pendants — and it was common for a miniature to carry a lock of the subject’s hair on the reverse, woven or braided under glass. In some cases, the hair was actually dissolved into the paint and used in the portrait itself.
The mourning miniature was its own related category, featuring sepia watercolor scenes of neoclassical figures grieving at urns and tombs, often paired with hairwork on the back. What may seem like morbid curiosities to us today was actually the standard way educated Americans processed grief and kept the dead present in their lives throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries.
By the mid-19th century, miniaturists were pushing toward larger formats and sharper detail, essentially trying to replicate oil portraits — a race they were already losing. The daguerreotype arrived in 1839 and within a decade had pulled most of their clientele away.
- Bolton, Theodore (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 228 Pages - 03/07/2016 (Publication Date) - Leopold Classic Library (Publisher)
Some miniaturists pivoted to coloring photographs; others offered both in their studios. The two media even shared the same small leatherette cases lined in velvet. But the economics weren’t survivable. A painted miniature required multiple sittings, years of technical training and considerable expense. A daguerreotype took minutes. By around 1850, artists who had been at the height of their careers — like Thomas Seir Cummings and Richard Staigg — were essentially forced out of the form.
What’s left is a body of work that holds up well as both art and document. The best American miniaturists were capable painters by any measure, and because the form demanded likeness over idealization, their subjects tend to look like actual people — which makes them useful to genealogists and historians as much as to collectors.
The pieces collected here span the colonial and early republic periods, drawing on a 1927 essay by scholar Harry B. Wehle and an 1905 auction catalog of works by artist and theatrical manager William Dunlap. The images — several of which are enlarged for legibility — give a sense of the range of the form, from finely stippled portraits in gold frames to small watercolors on ivory that were once small enough to close inside a hand.
Early American miniatures: Portraits of history
By Harry B Wehle – Country Life (July 1927)
AMONG the possessions of the well-to-do families in Colonial and Early Republican days there were none which were more jealously treasured than the portraits in miniature.
Descendants of these early families today, where they have inherited such little portrait treasures, are apt likewise to guard them proudly. Hence it is no easy matter to build up a collection of fine American miniatures.
The collector who wishes to assemble a presentable group of such objects must have more than a burst of energy and a fairly heavy account at the bank. He must have knowledge and judgment and be prepared to bide his time.
Perhaps it is the scarcity of good material in this field to be found in the art and antique shops which must account for the fact that so little, comparatively, has been written about the delightful art of the American miniaturist.
The recent exhibition of early American miniatures held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York served to some extent to call attention to the importance of the miniature painter in the life and art of America during the days before the coming of the cheap and popular daguerreotype.
The organizers of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum made no attempt to include works by all the known miniaturists working in America during the flourishing period of the art.
Their aim was to exhibit miniatures by those artists only whose work revealed proficiency and that undemonstrable thing called “quality.” And yet there were as many as fiftynine artists represented.
In the matter of workmanship, the American miniaturist has, as a general thing, nothing to fear from a comparison of his work with that of English or French work of the same period.
There were, to be sure, such sixteenth and seventeenth-century miniaturists as Hans Holbein, Nicholas Hilhard. and Samuel Cooper in England, and the Clouets in France, whose equals we need not hope to find in America or elsewhere. When we come to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, we no
longer find giants in the European field, and the American work, also without furnishing forth any great geniuses, nevertheless reveals splendid craftsmanship coupled with refined taste and an especially noteworthy honesty of purpose.
When the French miniaturists were devoting themselves to a pursuit of style, and the British, almost to a man, pursued an ideal of shallow beauty and the expression of class, the Americans applied their excellent technical equipment to a faithful delineation of individual character.
Nowhere in American miniature painting is there anything comparable to the exquisite but altogether insubstantial and unindividualized confections of Cosway or to the Plimers’s countless ox-eyed ladies, all apparently sisters.
Not many years ago writers on early American portraits in oils used to tell us that Gustavus Hesselius was the first painter in America. Since then we have learned of several still earlier ones. In the same way, perhaps, future study may reveal miniaturists working in America in the seventeenth century.
At present, the earliest whose works are known is John Watson, who made small portraits in pencil and India ink on pieces of parchment or paper. His known works are few and by no means beautiful to look upon. Watson was born in Scotland and settled about 1715 in Perth Amboy, NJ.
The best known and most prolific of the early painters around about Philadelphia was Charles Willson Peale. Young Peale came from Maryland, where he had been trained to the trade of saddlery, and it was with a newly made saddle that he paid John Hesselius for some instruction in portrait painting.
On a trip to Boston and Newburyport in 1765 he is said to have painted his first miniature, a self-portrait.
During his two years in London, 1767-69, he earned his living mostly by his miniature painting. Upon his return to Maryland, Peale, now twenty-eight years old, entered at once upon the production of his most delightful work, both in oils and in miniatures.
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He settled in Philadelphia early in 1776. During the Revolution, he served as an officer in the Army, and painted at high prices a considerable number of miniatures of his fellow officers, especially during the winter at Valley Forge.
He painted a miniature of General Washington in 1777, and about 1785, he made miniature copies after some of his own oil portraits of Washington.
Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale are almost invariably painted on very small oval slices of ivory. They usually exhibit much charm, especially in the matter of color, the flesh running off into olive shadows, whereas the colors of the costumes range from related olive tones up into very fresh pastel shades.
A look of provinciality about some of Peale’s works is due to a tendency to exaggerated and insensitive simplification in the modeling of his heads.
In 1786, Peale writes that he has given up painting miniatures and hopes that his younger brother, James, may be “going into a hurry of business.” James Peale was eight years younger than Charles Willson and had become a painter as the result of the elder brother’s encouragement and instruction.
Although he painted portraits in oils he is known best for his works in miniature, which are numerous and fine, the color being delicate and often very distinguished, with pure and luminous backgrounds. Most of his miniatures were painted between 1787 and 1800 and they are usually dated and signed “LP.”
His portrait of Mrs. William E. Hulings, an excellent example, was painted in 1789, while that of his nephew Rembrandt Peale is dated 1795, in which year the sitter was seventeen years old.
Other members of the Peale family to achieve distinction as miniature painters were Raphaelle Peale, a son of Charles Willson Peale, who painted about the year 1800 in a style somewhat resembling that of his uncle James, and Anna Claypoole Peale, James’s daughter who began her career about twenty years later than Raphaelle.
Mary Jane Simes, a granddaughter of James Peale, also painted very creditable miniatures which date from the 1830s.
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One of the finest groups of miniatures painted in America during the eighteenth century undoubtedly consists of the small, finely stippled portraits painted in the 1770’s and ‘8o’s in Charleston, S. C, and now generally attributed to Henry Benbridge, whose excellent oil portraits of Charleston people have been known for some years to students of early American painting. He married a Miss Sage of Philadelphia, who was called in her own day “a very ingenious Miniature Paintress.”
In New England, meanwhile, there were three miniaturists of note whose period of activity extended from about 1758 to 1788. The first of these was John Singleton Copley, whose oil portraits of New England Colonials are justly celebrated. His rare works in miniature likewise show power and beauty. The ivories
are very small, the modeling strong, the color distinguished, and the expression of character much stressed, as it is in his works on the larger scale. Two self-portraits, one of which is painted on porcelain, he appears to have copied from his pastel self-portrait.
That such a practice was possible to him is proved by a letter dated October 29, 1769, from Captain John Small in which he writes Mr. Copley politely, “The miniature you took from my Crayon picture has been very much admired and approved of here by the best judges.”
It was in the summer of 1774 that Copley left America. His young half-brother, Henry Pelham, remained in Boston about a year longer before he, along with other Tory refugees, fled to Halifax en route for England. Miniatures by young Pelham are exceedingly rare and have an extraordinary robustness and energy of character.
His little portrait of Stephen Hooper, now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is referred to in a note from Pelham to Hooper dated Boston, September 9, 1773, which runs: “Agreeable to your directions, I have done your portrait in Miniature and have had it sett in Gold.”
Immediately after the War, we find Joseph Dunkerley advertising himself in the Boston Independent Chronicle as a painter of miniatures and a teacher of drawing. A few very small and exquisite miniatures have been attributed to him on the basis of his little portrait painted in 1787 of Mary Burroughs, which bears an old engraved inscription on the frame.
Among the works attributable with fair certainty to Dunkerley are the portraits of the architect Charles Bulfinch and his wife, probably painted in the year of their marriage, 1788.
Some time previous to the breaking out of the Revolution, there came to Boston a highly trained Irish miniature painter named John Ramage, and he was followed by several other accomplished European painters “in little” after the war was safely over and the United States as a unified nation had settled down to normalcy and prosperity.
During the Revolution, Ramage served in the Royal Irish Volunteers, but before the fighting was over he appears to have settled in New York and resumed his career as an artist. He remained until 1794, in which year, having become involved in debt, he was sold up by the sheriff” and withdrew to Halifax.
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While in New York, he had a brilliant clientele including the Washingtons, the Gerrys, and the Pintards, reminding us thus of the fact that New York was at that time the seat of the Federal goverrment. Ramage’s miniatures, which are small, richly colored, and very finely finished, are usually found in beautifully chased gold frames of the artist’s own making.
In 1791, young Archibald Robertson, an excellent miniaturist, came to America from Scotland and lived for the remainder of his days in New York. He established an academy of painting together with his brother, Alexander, of whom he painted a beautiful miniature, now owned by descendants. Two self-portraits and a comparatively large miniature of his young wife are also delightful works and admirably painted.
Still another Robertson, Walter by name, who had no kinship with Archibald and Alexander, came from Ireland in 1793 on the ship which brought back Gilbert Stuart.
In the following year, he painted a portrait of Washington in his military uniform, an exquisite marvel so far as color and workmanship go, whatever may be said for or against it as a likeness.
Robert Field, the English artist, made an engraving after this portrait which was published in 1795. Walter Robertson appears to have remained only two or three years in America, but he must have painted a good deal in New York and farther South.
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The present writer has identified fourteen miniatures as by him, all of which, excepting the Washington portrait, had until recently been attributed to other artists. His work probably is technically the most exquisite ever performed in America but there is a suspicious similarity among his miniatures which indicates that they were poor likenesses.
Of the foreign miniaturists who worked in the United States at this time probably none has been so famous as Robert Field, whose engraving of Robertson’s Washington miniature has already been mentioned. He came from England about a year later than Walter Robertson and painted principally in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston.
His miniatures have as a rule great solidity and character, and vary in color from sober brown schemes to dainty rose-and-white confections. In 1808 Field left this country for Halifax, where he soon gave up working in miniature for painting in oils.
The years which furnished these several foreigners with a prosperous and discriminating clientele also brought to maturity the best native American talent in the art of miniature painting.
The finest native talent which has ever entered the field in this country was undoubtedly that of Edward Greene Malbone. He was born and grew up in Newport, R. L, where he was allowed for a season to help the scene painter in the local theatre.
Samuel King, an unsuccessful portrait painter, is said to have given him some instruction too, but in the main Malbone was self-taught. Apparently, it was by persistently copying English engravings that the gifted boy became one of the best of all American draughtsmen.
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In 1794, when he was seventeen, Malbone slipped away quietly to Providence and wrote back to his family that he was making a success in his elected profession. A portrait of Nicholas Power of this time shows already a sure method and Malbone’s characteristic spirit of gentility.
After two years in Providence, the young man went to Boston, and the Bostonians also liked his work. At the age of twenty, he painted his beautiful self-portrait which is signed with his initials and dated. Like most of the painters of his time, Malbone was obliged to journey from city to city in search of clients.
Besides Boston, Newport, and Providence, he visited more than once Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia. In 1801 he went with his friend Washington Allston for a few months’ visit to England. In the spring of 1806, after a career of twelve short years, he was forced by illness to give up painting and about a year later he died.
Allston once wrote: “Malbone had the happy talent, among his many excellences, of elevating the character without impairing the likeness; this was remarkable in the male heads; and no woman ever lost any beauty from his hand; nay, the fair would often become still fairer under his pencil.”
Despite the sentimental tone of this statement, there is vital truth in it, for although Malbone’s art is idealistic his feminine sitters are amazingly various and well individualized, and his men have not been emasculated.
Benjamin Trott was another of America’s first-rate miniaturists. He is said to have come from Boston to New York about 1791, and soon began making copies on ivory of portraits by Gilbert Stuart.
He was obsessed with a desire to learn the secret of Walter Robertson’s quality, and a number of well-drawn miniatures which ape Robertson’s style and which include some copies after Stuart, may be attributed to Trott with fair certainty.
In 1805, according to William Dunlap who knew him, “Mr. Trott visited the Western World beyond the mountains, traveling generally on horseback with the implements of his art in his saddlebags.”
We know that several portrait miniatures were painted at this time in Kentucky and Virginia, including the excellent portrait of Charles Wilkins.
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These and some more which Trott painted during the first years after his return to Philadelphia constitute his finest work. They are powerfully and simply drawn with a candid view of the sitter and a fine understanding of the mutual relation of ivory and pigment.
Charles Fraser, who learned his style principally from Malbone, was one of the fortunate miniaturists who was able to find sitters enough in his own city. He lived in Charleston, and gave up his practice of law as soon as he felt able to support himself by painting.
This event occurred in 1818, when Fraser was thirty-six, and he was still active in 1850. His portrait of his young niece, Jane Winthrop, which is one of his loveliest works, was painted probably ten years before he gave up the law.
His rich and various color, broadly stippled on the ivory, is perhaps the most individual quality in his work, though his search for the expression of character, especially in his portraits of elderly sitters, is extraordinary.
Some early American portrait miniatures created on ivory
During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, there were many excellent artists of secondary importance working on ivory.
In Boston, there was Henry Williams, who made beautifully executed portraits in wax, in lead pencil, in pastel, and in miniature on ivory. In that city also worked the country girl, Sarah Goodridge, whose work never quite achieved urbanity.
But it was to New York that most of the young artists came to make their way. Anson Dickinson came down from Connecticut and painted fine miniatures in New York and Albany from about 1804 to 1818, but he is said to have disappointed the promise of his youth and fallen into dissipation.
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Another of the New York group, Joseph Wood, became one of the ablest of American miniature painters. He ran away from his father’s farm at the age of fifteen because he longed to paint. For some years, he was in partnership with John Wesley Jarvis.
Jarvis later became one of the foremost painters of oil portraits, and Wood went to Philadelphia and Washington. His work as late as 1828 was still excellent, though poverty and death were only a few years off.
Another New York miniaturist whose work deserves admiration is Henry Inman. His touch was fine and delicate and his color unique by reason of its daintiness. He was apprenticed to Jarvis for several years.
His miniatures were painted between 1821 and 1827. In the latter year, because he preferred to paint in oils, he turned over his miniature commissions to his former pupil and partner, Thomas Seir Cummings.
The somewhat naive but finely executed work of Cummings brings the art of the miniaturist down to the middle of the century.
Meanwhile, there had developed two New Englanders whose work is superlatively fine. One, the self-taught Alvan Clark of Massachusetts, took up his work as a painter in mature life and dropped it as suddenly after a few years to devote himself to manufacturing telescopes.
The second, Richard M. Staigg, of Newport, was also self-taught except for some few lessons from Washington Allston. He learned much of what he knew by copying Malbone’s work, but soon developed a broad, flowing stroke of very modern character.
His best-known work was done in Boston where he caught admirably the psychology of the secure and civilized upper class. Both Staigg and Cummings were still in their prime when, just after 1850, the craze for the daguerreotype forced them to abandon miniature painting.
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Early American portrait miniatures by William Dunlap
From a 1905 auction brochure: Collection of ivory miniatures and water color views in New York by Wm. Dunlap, artist and theatrical manager
1. Ivory Miniature of William Dunlap (1766-1839). By himself. In square, gold-gilt, pendant frame. (See colored plate.)
Key to antique portraiture (below)
2. Ivory Miniature of a Gentleman. Unknown. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame.
3. Ivory Miniature of a Gentleman. Unknown. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame
4. Ivory Miniature of Mrs. Darley, celebrated actress and mother of the artist, Felix O. C. Darley. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame.
5. Ivory Miniature of Mrs. Wignell, celebrated actress. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame. Has been engraved by Edwin.
6. Ivory Miniature of a Gentleman. Unknown. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame.
7. Ivory Miniature of James Fennell, the actor. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame.
8. Ivory Miniature of a Gentleman. Unknown. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame.
9. Ivory Miniature of a Lady. Unknown. In oval, gold- gilt, pendant frame.
16: Ivory Miniature of a Gentleman. Unknown. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame.
Key to antique portraiture (below)
9. Ivory Miniature of a Lady. Unknown. In oval, gold- gilt, pendant frame.
10. Miniature in oil of a Lady. Unknown. In square, gold- gilt, pendant frame.
11-14. Ivory Miniature of a Gentleman. Unknown. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame.
15. Ivory Miniature of a Military Gentleman. Unknown. In oval, gold-gilt, pendant frame. This bears a strong resemblance to Hugh Williamson.
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