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Portrait of an unknown woman
Charles Robertson - Enlarge image
Portrait of an unknown woman
- Object:
Portrait miniature
- Place of origin:
Ireland (possibly, painted)
- Date:
ca. 1800 (painted)
- Artist/Maker:
Charles Robertson (artist)
- Materials and Techniques:
Watercolour on ivory
- Credit Line:
Bequeathed by John Reginald Jones
- Museum number:
P.98-1962
- Gallery location:
Portrait Miniatures, room 90a, case 17
This miniature is framed in a locket with a hair ornament set on the reverse. The fashion for hair ornaments set in the back of miniature lockets developed in the late 18th century. The giving of tokens of hair was a long-established practice. When Queen Charlotte appointed Samuel Finney as her miniature painter in 1763, she sent him a lock of her hair. This, he wrote in his memoir, should be 'preserved by his family with the same care and reverence as a good catholick would the relicks of his patron Saint'. The back of a miniature provided a perfect setting for such tokens, but the fashion for hair ornaments grew to such an extent that they were sometimes merely decorative rather than sentimental. This is a highly ornate decoration, with flourishes of hair joined with swags of seed pearls, and the initials of sitter laid in seed pearls over a hair ground. It is not clear whether it is made with hair from the sitter or is an example of this fashion, which now seems rather odd.
