The very marked attention which the miniatures in the Royal Academy attracted this year is one of many things which show how great a revival there has been in the taste for miniatures—a revival which is one of the most significant features in the history of modern art.
When photography appeared, it had no difficulty for a time in sweeping miniatures out of the field, for many people preferred the novelty of an exact portrait to a "work of art."
But the pendulum of taste has again swung back. We no longer accept a coloured photograph as a substitute for a genuine miniature, but realise that the two things are quite distinct. At the same time, there are to-day a number of so-called miniaturists who content themselves with copying photographs. But all those whose work is here represented condemn the practice, and do their work from the life. This involves, of course, several sittings for the person to be painted—a fact sometimes resented. Two famous miniaturists wanted to paint King Charles II., so to save time he made them paint him at the same sitting.
Mr. Cecil Rhodes is a man who thinks sittings are superfluous. He gave a commission to Miss Carlisle—a clever portrait painter and miniaturist—to paint his portrait, but nothing could induce him to give a sitting. Miss Carlisle therefore had to dodge him in all sorts of ways to see what manner of man he was.
He used to pass her studio on his way to the Park in the morning, so Miss Carlisle was always on the watch for him and on many other occasions, about which he knew nothing.
[By Edith Maas. [By Maud Coleridge. [By Annie G. Fletcher.
"DELIA." MISS MURIAL WILSON. "SWEET GENEVIEVE."
Miss Carlisle was born in South Africa, where her grandfather, General Sir John Bisset, was well known. Curiously enough, when Miss Carlisle was quite a young girl she came over to England on the same boat as Mr. Cecil Rhodes. He was then, she says, "a long and lanky youth, who spent all his time in reading books." He was coming to Oxford to keep his terms.
By the way, there was a famous lady miniaturist in the days of Charles I. named Carlisle, and to show his appreciation of her work the King presented her with £500 worth of ultramarine!
To paint a miniature is as arduous a task as to paint a large picture in oils, and requires quite as much skill. Miss Coleridge—whose miniature of her uncle, Chief Justice Coleridge, attracted so much attention in the Academy this year, and is reproduced on p. 202—says: "I find the work, though I love it, even harder than painting large portraits; it requires quite as much thought and care. It is only by working straight from the life, studying your model's expression and character, that you can hope to be even the most humble disciple of the art as it was in the last century.