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22/9/2005

Portrait Miniatures

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

From the Merchiston Collection

Visitors to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this autumn will see for the very first time the exquisite works that make up the outstanding Merchiston Collection, in the Gallery’s fifth annual presentation of portrait miniatures. Portrait Miniatures from the Merchiston Collection will reveal the output of some of the finest Scottish, English and Irish miniaturists working between the mid-sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. The Merchiston Collection was assembled by a Scottish private collector in the 1970s and 1980s who has generously declared her intention to bequeath these miniatures to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

The Collection includes a number of notable historical figures. Among these is a tiny pair of lockets depicting Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-88), painted by Nicholas Hilliard. Of interest from the seventeenth century are paintings on vellum by Samuel Cooper of the Irish magnate James 12th Earl and later 1st Duke of Ormonde (1610-88), and a work by Richard Gibson of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York (1637-71), the first wife of James VII and II. From the late-eighteenth century there are works of the tragic actress Mrs Yates (c1728-87) by Samuel Cotes and a miniature depicting Sir Charles Cockerell (1755-1837), a key figure in the East India Company, painted by Diana Hill. A number of works from the first half of the nineteenth century feature miniatures representing fashionable aristocrats such as Sarah Sophia, Countess of Jersey (1785-1867) by AE Chalon, and the family of Baroness Howard de Walden (1808-99) by Sir William Charles Ross.

The Merchiston Collection is especially strong on miniatures painted from 1750 with the revival of painting in watercolour on ivory, and up until 1850, when the miniature business suffered a sudden collapse in the face of the relentless rise of a new form of image-making – mechanical and monochrome photography. Of particular visual interest is the rectangular portrait on ivory by the Jewish artist Joseph Daniel of an Unknown Gentleman offering to the viewer a glass of water. This miniature was painted in the spa town of Bath, where Daniel was a resident at the end of the eighteenth century. Equally arresting is the frank portrayal of Mrs Mary Robertson painted in St James’s Square, Edinburgh, in 1809, by the outstanding local miniaturist Alexander Gallaway.

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is the home of Scotland’s national collection of portrait miniatures, which numbers around 150 works. In the days before photographs, the portrait miniature was a discreet and permanent means to keep the memory of an absent loved-one alive. These intricate portraits are most often painted in oil or enamel on copper, bodycolour on vellum (parchment) and watercolour on ivory. Most of the key Scottish artists who worked on this small scale are included in the collection. Pre-eminent from the seventeeth century are works by David Paton, a draughtsman who worked in lead point on vellum; John Bogle, Archibald Skirving and an early work by Sir Henry Raeburn represent the eighteenth-century, a period characterised by the increasing use of ivory as a paint surface; the nineteenth-century is represented with works by Andrew Robertson and Robert Thorburn.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, written by Dr Stephen Lloyd, Senior Curator of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and priced £9.95.

Further information and images available from the NGS Press Office.
Tel 0131 624 6325 / 314 / 332 / 247
National Galleries of Scotland
Bridge Lodge, 70 Belford Road
Edinburgh EH4 3DE

Supported by Dunard Fund

SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh
Admission free

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