Yet another miniature from Lord Hothfield's collection illustrates the work of Vaslet ([Plate XXXIII.]), of whom we know hardly anything, save that he lived in York and Bath and that he was a clever worker in pastel. He seems to have visited Oxford in 1779, 1780, and 1789, and there is a good collection of his pastel portraits on paper in the Warden's Lodge at Merton College, the portraits carefully signed and dated; on the majority of them the artist calls himself as L. Vaslet of Bath. There are other collectors in Oxford who have specimens of his work in pastel, but in miniature his paintings are very rare. They are distinguished by a cloudy, flocculent appearance, very much resembling pastel work, and making it evident that the artist was more at home in the use of that material than he was in water-colour.
Our very brief survey of English miniature work must end with Sir George Hayter, by whom we illustrate a portrait of the Countess of Jersey, from the collection of Lady Maria Ponsonby ([Plate XXXIV.]). He was portrait painter to Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but is better known for his historical paintings than for portraits, and he is almost the last of the nineteenth-century miniature painters whose work possesses any special attraction. After his time and that of his contemporaries Sir William Ross, J. D. Engleheart, Robertson, Newton, and Thorburn, the art of miniature painting died away until its revival in recent times.
The painters who worked in enamel occupy a section of miniature work apart, although in many instances the best known enamellers painted portraits also on ivory or on vellum, but they are especially known for their works in enamel. There is little need for us here to do more than define enamel work as a vitreous glaze attached by fusion to a metallic ground, but only those who have attempted to paint portraits in enamel can have any idea of the enormous difficulty of this method of portraiture when fine results are desired. Of all the men who were successful in this most complicated process, Jean Petitot stands out supreme, and his portraits, as a rule excessively minute in size, are distinguished by a delicacy of detail, marvellous in its microscopic exactitude. When it is remembered that the colours were painted on to the panel of gold in the form of a powder, only slightly mingled with a medium, that they did not represent by their tint the colour they were to present when fused, and that the slightest error in the fusing would ruin the plate and cause the colours to run into one another, the marvel is but enhanced when the exquisite works produced by this incomparable artist are examined. The specimen from Mr. Ward Usher's collection ([Plate XXXV.]), which is illustrated in colour, is a good example of Petitot's portrait of Louis XIV. He painted the face of "Le Roi Soleil" so often that he must have become familiar with every detail of it, and there is hardly any collection of his works which cannot boast of one of these wonderful little enamels. The story of the painter himself is of considerable interest, and the details of his religious difficulties and of his return to Geneva are well set forth in a book about him written by E. Stroehlin, and published in Geneva in 1905; while some further special information more recently discovered can be found in an article by the writer of this essay in the "Nineteenth Century" for January 1908. He left behind him a wonderful little pocket-book containing his own and his wife's portraits, and a narrative of part of his career, written by him in beautiful handwriting. His own portrait belongs to the Earl of Dartrey, and there are some wonderful examples of his work in the Louvre; but the best of his portraits are in England, and there is no collection to rival that of South Kensington in this respect. Perhaps his most extraordinary work is the box belonging to Mr. Alfred de Rothschild, which has fourteen portraits upon it; but his largest, with one exception, is that of Mary, Duchess of Richmond and Lenox, which we illustrate from Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection ([Plate XXXVI., No. 2]). It is signed and dated 1643 and is 5-1/2 inches square, the only miniature exceeding it in size being that at Chatsworth, representing the Countess of Southampton, and dated 1642. The latter is, however, unfortunately damaged, whereas the one in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection is quite perfect. With these two exceptions, almost all Petitot's miniatures are exceedingly tiny in size. The only other enameller whose work we illustrate was named Prieur, and he married, as her second husband, Marie, the only sister of Jean Petitot. Prieur was a wanderer; we find his work in Poland, Denmark, Russia, Spain, and especially in Denmark, where there are many of his portraits, and where he is believed to have died in 1677. He visited England charged with commissions from the King of Denmark, and, while there, painted a portrait of Charles II. and another of Lady Castlemaine, both from Cooper's miniatures. He was also responsible for a portrait of Charles I. ([Plate XXXVI., No. 1]), but whether contemporary or not we cannot say, for so little is known of Prieur's history, that he may have visited England before 1669, when we know he came over to paint Charles II. In all probability, however, this delightful work, which now belongs to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, is a copy by Prieur from the portrait of the King by Vandyck. Prieur executed several delightful enamel badges for the Danish Orders, and appears to have been in high repute at the courts both of Frederik III. and Christian V.
We have now to deal briefly with the long range of foreign miniature painters, the chief of whom were resident in France, although not always natives of that country. There was a regular tradition of miniature painting in France, extending from the times of the Clouets down to those of the great painters Isabey and Augustin. The works by Jean Clouet were, of course, more of the nature of paintings in manuscripts, and if we are accurate in attributing one of the great gems of Mr. Morgan's collection to Jean Clouet himself, it adds one to the only other seven portraits which have been, with any amount of accuracy, given to this painter. All of the seven are illustrations in one manuscript volume, and probably this eighth was either executed for the same purpose, or has actually been removed from a contemporary work of that kind. When we come to the later Clouets, François especially, we have actual miniatures, and in several instances the drawings for the portraits exist, also enabling us to identify whom the miniatures represent. It would be impossible within the limits of this short essay to deal with all those who succeeded the sixteenth-century men, and we have to make a big jump to the eighteenth century, because it was during that time that the most notable of the French miniature painters flourished, and their works are by far the most important.
Nattier began as a miniature painter, and his mother painted miniatures, and is said to have taught him his art. Later on, he became a well-known portrait painter, but speculating in the wild schemes of John Law, lost his fortune, and a good many of his friends. Once he took up with miniature painting to re-introduce himself to the clients he had lost when he neglected art for the excitement of finance, then dropped it again, and confined his attention down to the time of his death to portrait painting. We illustrate a delightful portrait of Madame Dupin ([Plate XXXVII., No. 1]), the wife of a writer on finance, whose book was suppressed by the order of Madame de Pompadour; but we remember the fair lady who is set forth in this portrait more by reason of the fact that Rousseau was at one time her secretary, and was very much attached to her. The portrait shows her in the hey-day of beauty.
By Hall, the Swede, who lived in Paris, and is generally regarded as a Frenchman, we illustrate a portrait of the Countess Sophie Potoçki ([Plate XXXVII., No. 2]), the celebrated Greek beauty, who became a member of one of the noblest families of the Polish aristocracy. Her story is a strange one. She was born of Greek parents at Constantinople, purchased as a slave by the Russian general De Witte, who made her his mistress; but one night, losing a considerable sum of money at cards, when playing against Count Felix Potoçki, he received an offer from his opponent to waive all claims if the Russian general would pass over his slave to Count Felix. The offer was accepted, and Sophie Clavona became the property of the Polish Count, who was already deeply in love with her. Despite the expostulations of his friends, he promptly made her his second wife, and they lived happily together for many years, while her heritage of beauty has been handed down through succeeding generations. Her portrait was painted over and over again, and the example of it which we illustrate remained for a long time in the private gallery of the family at Warsaw, together with a replica which is still there. It was finally sold to a French dealer, from whom it passed into the hands of its present owner. The famous beauty is in a deep red costume, which wonderfully sets off the charm of her countenance. Another work by Hall from the same famous collection ([Plate XXXVII., No. 3]) represents the ill-fated Princesse de Lamballe, "beauty, goodness and virtue personified, but all her goodness and gentleness could not soften the hearts of those inhuman tigers who immolated her on the altar of Equality." Few scenes are more pitiable than that of the execution of this beautiful woman. She had never committed any action which could have incurred the hatred of the people, but she was the friend of the Queen, and the possessor of considerable wealth; reasons enough to bring upon her head the wrath of the tyrants who preached freedom to France. This miniature is particularly charming in its domestic quality. Madame de Lamballe is shown in her room, engaged in making a wreath of flowers, and every detail concerning her occupation, and the room in which she is seated, is delightfully rendered; but the whole composition is kept so well in hand that the details do not obtrude, nor in any way draw aside the attention from the fair countenance of the lady herself.
The work of Pierre Pasquier is very rare, and not a single example of it is to be seen in the Louvre. He was born in 1731, and died in 1806. He worked largely in enamel, and a great many of his portraits appear on the wonderful snuff-boxes which were given to ministers or eminent diplomatists. Several of them are in Russia. He was distinguished by an unerring perfection of draughtsmanship, and this is especially set forth in his profile portraits, one of which, signed and dated, we illustrate from Mr. Morgan's collection ([Plate XXXVIII., No. 2]). It is probably the finest example of Pasquier's work in existence, and is little more than a sketch in black on ivory, with a steel-blue background, the ivory being left clear where the portrait appears. We do not know who it represents, but it was probably a study for an enamel left incomplete. It is dated 1786, and in its rigid economy of line, exquisite low-toned scheme of colour, and perfection of drawing, occupies an exceedingly high place in miniature painting, and leaves us only regretful that we are ignorant of the name of the sitter.
The example we illustrate of the miniature work of Fragonard must also be anonymous ([Plate XXXVIII., No. 1 ]). It is a boy's portrait, and has been said, with a certain amount of evidence, to represent one of his own sons, it certainly does resemble a sketch of one of Fragonard's children, which the artist has named, but not sufficiently for us to be sure respecting the accuracy of the attribution. No one, however, but Fragonard could have painted it, the colour is so daintily placed upon the ivory as to give the effect of having been wafted upon the material, and resting upon it with a feathery lightness. There is generally a good deal of yellow in Fragonard's portraits, or else the colour scheme is mainly grey and white, and this portrait belongs to the second division we have mentioned. It is very pleasing, the face of a quiet, thoughtful child, charmingly represented, and a good example of the work of one of the greatest decorators France ever knew. Fragonard's miniatures are rare, we may add, very rare, and probably no one has such a collection of them as is to be found in the cabinets of Mr. Pierpont Morgan.
By Garriot, a painter who was born in 1811 at Toulouse, studied at Madrid, and painted in Geneva, we illustrate from Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection a portrait of the Marquise de Villette ([Plate XXXIX., No. 2]), better known as "Belle et Bonne," who was practically adopted as a daughter by Voltaire, and married to the Marquis de Villette at midnight, in November 1777, in the great man's chapel of Ferney, her six uncles being present on the occasion. Ferney had belonged to her and her six uncles, and Voltaire was the means of reclaiming it from the possession of certain of his neighbours into whose hands it had illegally passed in 1761. It was in the arms of "Belle et Bonne" that Voltaire passed away on the 30th of May 1778, when he was eighty-four years old.
A very interesting miniature from the same collection is the one representing a granddaughter of Nattier the artist, painted by Louis Sicardi ([Plate XXXIX., No. 1]), one of the best miniaturists of the time of Louis XVI. Sicardi painted for over fifty years, produced a great many delightful works, and was responsible for the decoration and portraits that, set upon gold snuff-boxes, were such favourite presents at the French Court.