Self Portrait thumbnail 1
Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Portrait Miniatures, Room 90a, The International Music and Art Foundation Gallery

Self Portrait

Portrait Miniature
ca. 1795 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This self-portrait miniature by Anne Mee shows two popular pathways for female artists in the eighteenth century: miniature painting and self-portraiture. Because of their intimate nature and small scale, miniature painting was considered more appropriate for women artists, who also benefited from the small size and portability of the materials needed to paint these delicate watercolour pictures on ivory. While many women artists would go on to find extensive patronage and commissions, their access to sitters was sometimes restricted early in their training. One subject was always available: your own likeness. This portrait miniature may have been painted by Anne Mee herself. It remains one of her most remarkable works, demonstrating the artist's soft but intensely emotive technique and her Romantic tendencies.

Anne Mee (b. Foldsone, ca. 1770-1851) was a British miniature painter active in the early nineteenth century. She likely trained with her father, John Foldsone, before taking lessons with George Romney. Her portrait practice supported the family financially after the passing of Mee’s father in 1784. In 1788, the poet William Hayley wrote of Mee:

‘I am sitting for him [George Romney] to a young female genius in miniature, who, at the age of seventeen, will, I trust, under his patronage, most comfortably raise, and support by her wonderful talent, a drooping family.’

Mee was celebrated during her lifetime and gained the patronage of Queen Charlotte and the Prince of Wales. Her husband, Joseph Mee, was supportive of her practice, though the diarist Farrington remarked that he ‘consented to let her paint ladies only who were never to be attended by gentlemen.’ Though reserved, he must have understood the financial incentives in letting Mee continue to paint: her practice was exceptionally lucrative, surpassing prices charged by male contemporaries like Richard Cosway. Mee exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution between 1804 and 1837.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleSelf Portrait (generic title)
Materials and techniques
Watercolour on ivory
Brief description
Portrait Miniature, Self-Portrait, by Anne Mee, watercolour on ivory, ca. 1795
Physical description
Portrait miniature on ivory of a woman, turned slightly to right and looking to front, wearing a cream dress, her hair about her shoulders and fabric around her head, set in a metal frame.
Dimensions
  • Height: 7.6cm
  • Width: 5.7cm
Dimensions taken from Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1962. London: HMSO, 1964.
Styles
Credit line
Given by Mrs Arthur R. Fuller
Historical context
Portrait miniatures were frequently exchanged between loved ones and family in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain as tokens of affection and remembrance.
Subjects depicted
Summary
This self-portrait miniature by Anne Mee shows two popular pathways for female artists in the eighteenth century: miniature painting and self-portraiture. Because of their intimate nature and small scale, miniature painting was considered more appropriate for women artists, who also benefited from the small size and portability of the materials needed to paint these delicate watercolour pictures on ivory. While many women artists would go on to find extensive patronage and commissions, their access to sitters was sometimes restricted early in their training. One subject was always available: your own likeness. This portrait miniature may have been painted by Anne Mee herself. It remains one of her most remarkable works, demonstrating the artist's soft but intensely emotive technique and her Romantic tendencies.

Anne Mee (b. Foldsone, ca. 1770-1851) was a British miniature painter active in the early nineteenth century. She likely trained with her father, John Foldsone, before taking lessons with George Romney. Her portrait practice supported the family financially after the passing of Mee’s father in 1784. In 1788, the poet William Hayley wrote of Mee:

‘I am sitting for him [George Romney] to a young female genius in miniature, who, at the age of seventeen, will, I trust, under his patronage, most comfortably raise, and support by her wonderful talent, a drooping family.’

Mee was celebrated during her lifetime and gained the patronage of Queen Charlotte and the Prince of Wales. Her husband, Joseph Mee, was supportive of her practice, though the diarist Farrington remarked that he ‘consented to let her paint ladies only who were never to be attended by gentlemen.’ Though reserved, he must have understood the financial incentives in letting Mee continue to paint: her practice was exceptionally lucrative, surpassing prices charged by male contemporaries like Richard Cosway. Mee exhibited at the Royal Academy and the British Institution between 1804 and 1837.
Bibliographic references
  • Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1962. London: HMSO, 1964.
  • Anne Mee, The gallery of beauties in the court of his most excellent majesty George the Third, London, 1812.
  • Paris A. Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830, New Haven and London: Yale University Press and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022, p. 246.
Collection
Accession number
P.12-1962

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Record createdFebruary 26, 2003
Record URL
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