: "American Miniatures of Children 1770-1950," a group of 24
"portable portraits" of or about the offspring of American
families, as they became increasingly child-centered, is on view
in the Trumbull Gallery at the Yale University Art Gallery
through the fall.
The works were selected from the museum's permanent collection of
some 250 American miniatures, from which other thematic displays
will be organized in the future.
"We are fortunate to have an outstanding collection of American
miniatures at Yale," said Amy Kurtz Lansing, graduate research
assistant in the department of American paintings and sculpture
and organizer of the display. "Our already fine collection was
greatly enhanced by recent gifts and promised bequests at the
time of the exhibition 'Love and Loss: American Portrait and
Mourning Miniatures,' in 2000, and we are grateful to have
examples of these in this selection."
During the time that the miniature was popular in America, from
the mid-Eighteenth to the mid-Nineteenth centuries, family
relationships grew increasingly important and children were newly
cherished. Many of the portraits exhibited, such as Eliza
Goodridge's circa 1832 image of Julia Porter Dwight, the
great-niece of Yale President Timothy Dwight, are intended to
capture and retain for the parents a tender or playful moment in
a child's rapidly changing life. The period was, however, one in
which mortality rates, particularly of young children, were high
and several of the images are posthumous portraits or mourning
allegories.
Viewers are brought to the mid-Twentieth Century with two
portraits, in the traditional miniature medium of watercolor on
ivory, by Glenora Richards of her son Tim, first as a baby, in
1943, then as a boy in 1950.
The gallery is at Chapel Street, For information,
203-432-0611.
