International studio (60.1916/1917)

The Buccleuch Miniatures

He communicated to it the psychological bias of
portraiture pure and simple which we have studied
in its relationship to the art of the miniature as
design.
The Enamel Miniature should receive attention
on its own account. It originated with the fashion
of decorating gems with infinitely small enamelled
pictures of flowers and floral emblems. The
enamels of Petitot are often on a scale smaller
than that of any of the miniatures we have been
regarding, the introduction of a portrait seems
but an extension of the principle of the enamel
flower-piece set in a ring or brooch. The Buc-
cleuch collection is rich in this seventeenth-
century development of the miniature-portrait, and
in this new aspect of bright enamel miniature-


THOMAS OSBORNE, FIRST EARL OF DANBY
AND FIRST DUKE OF LEEDS (163I-I712)
POSSIBLY BY S. COOPER

painting returns to an old ideal. Much of the
purity of effect of the Hilliard and Oliver
method was developed from the art of mediaeval
liturgical missals in which the brightness of stained
glass had been the ideal. How far this more than
natural brilliance of colour served the true ends of
such matter-of-fact portraiture as that practised by
the successors of Petitot is a question. The art
of the miniature as we have it with Petitot was
soon extended to snuffboxes, patch-boxes and
fan-sticks ; passing in this fashion from portraiture
to little subject-pictures, and finally to landscape.
Enamellists in these days were often painters
174

on porcelain. They were decorators but they
never forgot Illustration. The possessor of the
snuff-box was drawn to look into the design


JOHN EVELYN (1620-1706)
UY A CONTEMPORARY ARTIST

because it was delightful; its subject next engaged
his thought, and thought aroused sentiments—here


JAMES SCOTT, DUKE OF MONMOUTH AND BUCCLEUCH
(1649-1685)
AFTER S. COOPER, ATTRIBUTED TO MRS. ROSSE