April - Additions and some new research

One aspect of this website resource is the Guest Gallery, which enables other collectors and researchers to kindly share information about miniature portraits. This month a kind researcher has submitted information about Benjamin Trott and a portrait he painted of Dr John Floyd. To read more, see  View

There have been a variety of additions to the collection, but I have been behind in posting them onto the website, so some have been acquired more recently than others.

One is an attractive miniature by an American artist. Although perhaps not by a top artist, I feel it must be possible to attribute an artist, but so far have been uncertain. Expert opinion on an attribution would be welcome.

The miniature portrait of an unidentfied young lady in a black dress with a white lace shawl was painted in Boston around 1835-1840.

For more detail, see View

Another recent addition is a most attractive miniature of an unidentified young lady in a white dress by a British artist whose work appears infrequently.

The miniature was offered for sale at auction as by an unknown artist, and so was bought very cheaply, but a kind expert has identified the artist as Nicholas Freese (1762-after 1824).

Foskett notes that he was active in London in 1794-1814. Judging by the hairstyle, this would appear to be one of his later works probably dating to around 1810-1812.

Foskett says very little about Freese, but the advent of the Internet has readily enabled research into the artist and so to find how he fitted into 19C society.

For example, his daughter Mary was an actress who married Henry Kemble of the famous theatrical family.

Sadly, he had a son George who was killed during the Napoleonic Wars and Nicholas then exhibited a portrait of his son at the RA in his memory. For more about Nicholas Freese see  View

For two recently acquired French miniatures, one by a previously unknown artist, see View and View  Both miniatures are of similar size, but it is interesting to compare them and see the effects of the French Revolution on men's clothes. The second man has no wig, and is wearing the colours of the revolution, as a patriotic gesture, but also to avoid potential persecution as a Bourbon supporter. It is also interesting to note that the "rosy" background to the 1785 miniature, has turned to a sombre grey colour for the 1795 portrait, something more in keeping with events of the intervening ten years.