Creating an Heirloom Display

Miniature portrait of Marie Antoinette, gouache on ivory, in an ormolu frame.

 
Some years ago I began a journey, cleaning and restoring a large collection of miniature portraits that had belonged to my great-grandmother.  A group of these had been set aside for my niece, Elizabeth, and long after I had finished cleaning them, I was still struggling with a way to arrange them in some kind of display, to both protect and present them in a relevant way.

Miniature collection, cleaned and restored, and arranged for framing!

Enter the wonderful Christine Lando.  Christine is an artist and archival framer,  with whom I share my studio in San Francisco.  She located a vintage oval frame with convex glass in which to set the collection.  The frame had been spray over with gold-brown radiator paint and its glass had been glued in place with gobs of silicone caulk.  While Christine studied the grouping of the miniatures and devised ways to attractively mount them in a reversible, museum-quality manner, I set about cleaning and re-gilding the frame itself.

Christine Lando, framer extraordinaire, made careful notes in preparation for mounting this display of miniature portraits.

Auntie Lynne, gilding the antique oval frame

gilding in progress

The frame was re-gilded using composition leaf, on a base of casein gesso made by Sinopia. This was then shellacked, antiqued, and waxed to make a nice vintage "French" looking finish.

The finished piece makes a very sweet display for this collection,  and a nice decorative addition to my newlywed niece's new home. 

Seven beauties presented in a vintage gilt frame with convex glass.

Soon after completing this display, I decided to make a similar heirloom as a gift for my sister.   To compliment the goth aesthetic of her home, I chose three portraits out of the collection that are just a tad creepy.  Christine created a shadowbox frame out of her personal stash of Italian mouldings, this one with a verdigris guilloche pattern.

A group of three miniature portraits of Marie Antionette, mounted in a shadowbox frame by Christine Lando

Included in this trio is my favorite big-eyed portrait of Marie Antionette,  beautifully painted and set  in an ormolu frame (see first image.)  This piece had a noticeable crack in it, damage that occurred after the frame had been back-stuffed with paper and cardboard (to keep it tight or something) which then got wet and swelled, pushing the fragile ivory substrate into the pillowed crystal front until it snapped. Someone then glued it to a piece of paper and stuffed it back into its frame.  After removing all the garbage from the back of the painting, I set it in a press for a few days to flatten it, and then cleaned it and restored just a few tiny areas. It is stable and won't get any worse, and in this setting, I think the remaining fracture adds a certain je ne sais quoi. 


See this previous post for up-close photos of these miniature portraits.
Have something special needing an inventive framing solution?
Christine Lando  artist, archival framer    415.821.6485

Lynne Rutter Studio

Lady Smitson

One of the remarkable miniature portraits collected by my great-grandmother is this charming painting of "Lady Smitson," as this is labeled on the back.  Having inherited this collection, I am carefully cleaning and documenting each piece as I have time.  This painting is signed "Gram" on the front, and dated "80" on the reverse, and set into an elaborate frame of brass.

Lady Smitson

Lady Smitson is realistically and beautifully painted, with texture and brushwork recalling the English School style.  Her clothes and hair are in the fashion of the 1780's. The I don't think this is a copy of another painting but rather an original and lively (and possibly idealized) portrait of a beautiful and fashionable lady. Who was she?  I wish I knew.




you may click on the images to view them larger

Lynne Rutter Murals + Decorative Painting

Eye of the Beholder

 Lover's eye portrait pin with seed pearls, circa 1810

Since writing my first post about miniature eye portraits  (September 2008) or "Lovers Eyes" as they are often called,   I have managed to get even a bit more obsessed with them, and even succeeded in finding one for my very own (above) via Tail of the Yak in Berkeley, one of my favorite sources for inspiring things.

Last year I started restoring a family collection of miniature portraits and have spent many hours looking closely at how they were painted.

I like to paint at very large scale, and in so doing I closely examine and celebrate details and moments in paintings that would otherwise just be accents.  Perhaps because of this examination, these intimate little gems really enthrall me, and I have been researching the techniques involved in creating them. Usually miniature portraits were painted with gouache or watercolor on ivory, and later cellulose nitrate, also known as ivorine.  Lover's eyes  were nearly always mounted into jewelry:  pins, pendants, and sometimes rings.   Mourning jewelry sometimes took this form as well.
In my research I found a number of artists  from the 20th century who were working in this medium, as well as contemporary artists who are reviving this art in their own fashion.

Tabitha Vevers has painted some beautiful lover's eyes based on portraits by Simon Martini, Ingres,  and even Man Ray.
The image at left is one of Vevers' lover's eye miniatures, painted in oils after a Bronzino portrait.

Mona Connor has recently started a series of miniature eye portraits using  egg tempera, and has even started a blog about this project.

Eye portrait of Erling Wold,  250% of life size, oil on panel ©Lynne Rutter

I might continue to work larger than life, but I am so inspired by these tiny tributes, and the methods used to create them, that I may be launching a new project of my own soon.

Lynne Rutter Studio

La dernière Dauphine

portrait of Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Bourbon
gouache on ivory, signed "Chatain" circa 1825

When I went off to school, my father presented me with this painting so I could have something nice in my tiny dorm room. How long I've been attached to this wonky portrait with the bright eyes, its Empire gilt-brass frame of oak and laurel garlands and inexplicable rhinestones. I have moved it with me from one (tiny) bedroom to another for over 30 years.

This miniature was part of a collection assembled by my great-grandmother, who was something of a francophile. Over the last few months I have been cleaning and restoring the collection.

The portrait subject was unknown to me until recently when I opened the frame and discovered her name written on the back: La Dauphine Duchesse D'Angoulême. The painting is signed in the lower right front Chatain. After a bit of research I found that the noted miniaturist Hippolyte-Louis Garnier (best known to San Franciscans for his portrait of Lola Montez) had done a portrait of S.A.R. le Mme. La Dauphine, Duchesse D'Angoulême, around 1825, and made this lithograph after that painting. Chatain almost certainly copied after the same work by Garnier.

Garnier, Hippolyte-Louis (Paris, 1802 - 1855)
La Dauphine, Duchesse D'Angoulême
original lithograph with hand coloring, 1825

Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France (1778-1851) was the Crown Princess and Duchess of Angoulême. She was the daughter of King Louis XVI and Marie Antionette, sole survivor of her immediate family, and the wife of Louis Antoine of Artois, the Duke of Angoulême. During the time this portrait was created she was in line to become the Queen of France, a title she subsequently held for a mere 20 minutes. She spent most of her adult life in exile in England and Scotland.

You can read more about the life of Marie-Thérèse in the historical novel Madame Royale by Elena Maria Vidal, and on Elena's wonderful blog, Tea at Trianon.

Lynne Rutter Murals + Decorative Painting

Miniature Portraits

Recently I have been spending some time cleaning and getting to know the miniature portraits collected by my great-grandmother. Many in her collection were acquired from a sale at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and most of those were portraits of Marie Antoinette.
I will be posting the entire collection in sections here as I have time.

Portrait of Marie Antoinette with a rose, signed "A.T." gouache on ivory backed with white kid leather, in gilt wood frame.

 

 

 

 

Oval portrait of a dark-haired lady dressed in the Italian fashion, watercolor on ivory, unsigned.

 

Portrait of Marie Antoinette in a green dress, gouache on ivory, signed “Chatain.” Backed with white kid leather and set in a simple ornamental oval frame with watch-crystal type pillowed/beveled glass. Very likely painted as a copy of another painting, as a souvenir.

 Portrait of Marie Antoinette in an apricot dress, unsigned watercolor on ivory. This painting is much smaller and older than its elaborate frame, which dates from the late 1870's.

Very fine and pretty portrait of a young girl, gouache on bone ivory, signed "Gericault 1812" backed with white kid leather, in its original simple brass frame.

Want to know more about miniatures?
Read here about my obsession with Miniature Eye Portraits

Elle Shushan in Philadelphia has a fine business collecting and selling miniatures.

Check out this huge on line gallery of a number of collections on this extremely informative site: "Artists and Ancestors"

Lynne Rutter Studio

Eye Candy

A splendid miniature eye portrait from the Victoria and Albert Museum, with a diamond teardrop

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, miniature eye portraits were all the rage. This was after the late 17th century rage for miniature portraits of any kind. They were painted most often using watercolor or gouache, on a substrate of ivory or parchment, then set into a bit of jewelry- a pin or pendant.

In Victorian times the eye portrait was often a piece of mourning jewelry, but the origin of this form was as a token of love.
I have had, for rather a long time, an obsession with eyes, used as symbols in my paintings. So naturally I am fascinated with these tiny symbolic paintings, the lover's eyes.

An assortment of lovers' eye jewelry  from the Georgian period

According to The Art of Mourning:
"Eye portraits are considered to have their genesis in the late 18th Century when the Prince of Wales (to become George IV) wanted to exchange a token of love with the Catholic widow (of Edward Weld who died 3 months into the marriage) Maria Fitzherbert. The court denounced the romance as unacceptable, though a court miniaturist developed the idea of painting the eye and the surrounding facial region as a way of keeping anonymity. The pair were married on December 15, 1785, but this was considered invalid by the Royal Marriages Act because it had not been approved by George III, but Fitzherbert’s Catholic persuasion would have tainted any chance of approval. Maria’s eye portrait was worn by George under his lapel in a locket as a memento of her love. This was the catalyst that began the popularity of lover’s eyes. From its inception, the very nature of wearing the eye is a personal one and a statement of love by the wearer. Not having marks of identification, the wearer and the piece are intrinsically linked, rather than a jewellery [sic] item which can exist without the necessity of the wearer."

I'd love to be a collector of these, or to have just one of them. Perhaps I will paint one of or for my own best beloved, as a follow-up to the maxi-eye portraits I painted a few years ago, of Erling Wold, myself, and our "adopted" daughter, Laura Bohn.

Eye portraits of Erling Wold, eye self-portrait, and Laura Bohn, at 250% of life size, oil on wood panels

Treasuring the Gaze more about Georgian lover's eye portraits.
Check out the highly enviable collection of Cathy Gordon
Oeil en miniature by Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien
Even more lover's eyes from Candice Hern

The Art of Mourning more about Victorian mourning jewelry
Interested in collecting? Antiques Roadshow has some tips.

Lynne Rutter Studio