DID you know that the Gallery’s collection includes a group of 50 portrait miniatures?
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These delightful petite paintings were all donated by a prominent Bendigo antique dealer, Mrs EW Vicars-Foote, in the 1980s, along with a splendid French Empire display cabinet.
A selection of these miniatures has just recently been placed on display in Mrs Vicars-Foote’s antique cabinet.
Originally called ‘liminings’ or ‘painting in little’, a miniature is a portrait or scene painted on a small scale and based on the techniques handed down from the illuminators of the 15th and 16th centuries.
Miniatures were typically painted in watercolour on ivory or a fine animal skin called vellum.
Portrait miniatures were commissioned as personal mementoes of, or for, loved ones, intended to be worn on the person or carried when travelling, and include locks of hair or small braids (belonging to the sitter) on the verso.
Cabinet miniatures are slightly larger versions and are encased in oval or rectangular frames destined to be hung on the wall of placed on a dresser.
Bendigo Art Gallery’s collection includes examples of both portrait and cabinet miniatures.
‘... the miniature, the little picture that could be covered by a kiss or hidden in the palm of the hand, had an intimate and personal quality, it was a pledge of affection, often a gauge of stolen joys; it could be carried by the exiled in never so hurried a flight, could be concealed in the lid of a comfit case ...’ (Scribner's Magazine, February 1897)
Portrait miniatures were also made of famous figures or great paintings.
On display in the Gallery is a superb miniature copy of Thomas Gainsborough’s renowned portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, possibly completed in the 19th century.
Gainsborough’s original painting, finished in 1787, has had a dramatic history – it was somehow lost from the Devonshire’s ancestral home, Chatsworth, later rediscovered removed from its original frame and cut down to suit its new more modest home.
The painting changed hands several times over the 19th century and in 1876 was stolen from renowned art dealer Thomas Agnew and Sons, before finally being bought back by the 11th Duke of Devonshire in 1994.
It only took 200 years for the painting to return to its rightful home.
Unfortunately few of the miniatures in the Gallery’s collection can be easily recognised, and most remain anonymous as we know the names of a very small number of the artists and even less of the sitters.
Yet these tiny works can tell us a great deal about the social history of these sitters – especially in relation to their fashions and social status.
These paintings may be tiny but are well worth a visit.
The portraits and cabinet are on display in Drury Court, entry to the Gallery is by donation.