This miniature, and its pair of the sitter’s wife (Museum no. Evans.166), show that a beautiful miniature need not be the preserve of the youthful and beautiful. It is Meyer who is generally seen as revolutionising the appearance of British miniatures on ivory from the 1760s. Painting in watercolour on ivory rather than vellum had led artists to work in a cautious manner. Ivory is oily and non-absorbent, and watercolour can be lifted from the ivory by any new brushstroke. This encouraged artists to lay colour on in careful dots and touches, side by side rather than blended. By the 1750s miniaturists had begun to find ways to improve the ivory surface and their painting techniques by cutting ivory more thinly and developing ways of removing excess grease. The flow of paint was also improved, allowing greater freedom of handling, which resulted in the watercolour being more transparent. Artists began to exploit the pleasing effect of the luminous ivory showing through the paint. Meyer was the first artist to realise fully the potential of these changes. He abandoned the use of cautious dots, and instead used the brush more adventurously, creating a graceful network of lines of varying length and colour, as can be seen in this superb miniature. The bravura of this technique, which allowed for no alterations, was quite unlike the careful, hesitant brushwork of earlier British artists working on ivory.