DOI Heft:
No. 139 (September, 1908)
DOI Artikel:Baldry, Alfred Lys: Modern miniature painting
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28255#0195
Modern Miniature Painting
MURIEL, DAUGHTER OF
CAPTAIN ARTHUR GORE
BY MARION LLEWELLYN
charm of the miniatures of an older time are
not to be found in our own day; yet we must
accept this loss as part of an aesthetic evolution
and be thankful at least that a sincere conven-
tion has not been allowed to degenerate into
unmeaning conventionality.
The miniatures that our contemporaries have
to show us must, as a rule, be recognised frankly
as portraits in little, as studies of character in
which the individuality of the sitter is closely
observed, and in which decorative obligations
are considered only so far as is desirable in all
sound portrait painting. The best miniaturists
now are those who perceive that the great reduc-
tion in the scale of the portrait makes necessary
some kind of decorative arrangement, and who
in this perception approach most closely to the
old masters of the art; but even these most
enlightened workers do not attempt more than
a certain simplifying of the details which are
required in larger portraits; they show little
desire to attempt the studied and elegant for-
mality qf their predecessors or to retain that
difference of style which was formerly made
between miniatures and ordinary portraits on a
larger scale.
The reproductions which are given here of the
work of some of the ablest of living miniaturists
mark well the changes which have taken place in
the character of the art. In The Marchioness of
Lansdowne, by Mrs. Massey, there is the nearest
approach to the manner of the old school, to the
reticence of colour and the subordination of detail
which were the fashion more than a century
ago. The same qualities are evident in the clever
Study by Miss M. S. Baker, and the portrait of
Miss Rosalie Emslie, by Mrs. Emslie, and to some
extent in the clever head of Miss Gertrude
Peppercorn, by Mr. Lionel Heath, though this last,
with its more definite statement of intimacies of
character, is in the nature of a compromise between
the old style and the new. The other examples,
Miss Baker’s Miss Rayna Simons, Miss Nicolson’s
Brown Study, Mrs. Emslie’s Mrs. Hardy, Mrs.
Llewellyn’s Muriel, Daughter of Capt. Arthur Goie,
Mrs. Stone’s Arthur Reddie, and the two portraits
of young girls by Miss Hepburn Edmunds, show
the modem tendencies of the art, and are in their
strength, their actuality, and their decision of
manner typical illustrations of what is best in
miniature painting as it is practised tc-day. The
three pictures, My Wife, by Mr. Lionel Heath,
and the two by Miss Laura Hills, Fire Opal and
The Black Mantle, are significant in another way,
THE MARCHIONESS OF LANSDOWNE
BY GERTRUDE MASSEY
177
MURIEL, DAUGHTER OF
CAPTAIN ARTHUR GORE
BY MARION LLEWELLYN
charm of the miniatures of an older time are
not to be found in our own day; yet we must
accept this loss as part of an aesthetic evolution
and be thankful at least that a sincere conven-
tion has not been allowed to degenerate into
unmeaning conventionality.
The miniatures that our contemporaries have
to show us must, as a rule, be recognised frankly
as portraits in little, as studies of character in
which the individuality of the sitter is closely
observed, and in which decorative obligations
are considered only so far as is desirable in all
sound portrait painting. The best miniaturists
now are those who perceive that the great reduc-
tion in the scale of the portrait makes necessary
some kind of decorative arrangement, and who
in this perception approach most closely to the
old masters of the art; but even these most
enlightened workers do not attempt more than
a certain simplifying of the details which are
required in larger portraits; they show little
desire to attempt the studied and elegant for-
mality qf their predecessors or to retain that
difference of style which was formerly made
between miniatures and ordinary portraits on a
larger scale.
The reproductions which are given here of the
work of some of the ablest of living miniaturists
mark well the changes which have taken place in
the character of the art. In The Marchioness of
Lansdowne, by Mrs. Massey, there is the nearest
approach to the manner of the old school, to the
reticence of colour and the subordination of detail
which were the fashion more than a century
ago. The same qualities are evident in the clever
Study by Miss M. S. Baker, and the portrait of
Miss Rosalie Emslie, by Mrs. Emslie, and to some
extent in the clever head of Miss Gertrude
Peppercorn, by Mr. Lionel Heath, though this last,
with its more definite statement of intimacies of
character, is in the nature of a compromise between
the old style and the new. The other examples,
Miss Baker’s Miss Rayna Simons, Miss Nicolson’s
Brown Study, Mrs. Emslie’s Mrs. Hardy, Mrs.
Llewellyn’s Muriel, Daughter of Capt. Arthur Goie,
Mrs. Stone’s Arthur Reddie, and the two portraits
of young girls by Miss Hepburn Edmunds, show
the modem tendencies of the art, and are in their
strength, their actuality, and their decision of
manner typical illustrations of what is best in
miniature painting as it is practised tc-day. The
three pictures, My Wife, by Mr. Lionel Heath,
and the two by Miss Laura Hills, Fire Opal and
The Black Mantle, are significant in another way,
THE MARCHIONESS OF LANSDOWNE
BY GERTRUDE MASSEY
177