Memorial for Solomon and
Joseph Hays.
NEW HAVEN, CONN. - Call it serendipity, but it was almost by
chance that Yale University Art Gallery recently received one of
the best private collections of American portrait and mourning
miniatures in the country. Davida Deutsch, the well-known
collector and scholar, had called Robin Frank, associate curator
of American sculpture and paintings, to discuss an article she
was working on.
Robin responded by inviting Davida to speak to Yale students
about women's needlework and mourning art, a subject on which
Deutsch is an expert. "Over lunch, Davida mentioned that she had
miniatures and asked if I'd like to see them," the curator
recalled.
A satisfying lunch it was. As a result, 95 miniatures are now the
promised bequest of the collector and her husband, Alvin Deutsch,
a 1958 graduate of Yale Law School. Along with the holdings of
former Yale curator John Hill Morgan and his wife, Leila,
acquired by the art gallery in the 1940s, and miniatures given to
Yale by Francis P. Garvan in the 1930s, the Deutsch collection
forms the backbone of "Love and Loss: American Portrait and
Mourning Miniatures."
Organized by Frank, this outstanding show continues at Yale
through December 30. Next year, it will travel to the Gibbes
Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C. (February 10-April 8, 2001) and
to Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. (April 27-July 31, 2001).
Until July, the tiny personages were practically members of the
Deutsch family. "I had no idea how many I had. They were all over
the house - in drawers, in cubby holes," said the collector, who
frequently displayed them as they were meant to be seen,
suspended on a ribbon around her neck. "We had planned to divide
them among different institutions. Now that they are all at Yale,
it's satisfying to know that they will be used to teach," the
collector said.
Yale's already fine group included such icons as the first
miniature painted by a native-born American, Benjamin West's
self-portrait of 1758 or 1759. The piece was a love token to
Elizabeth Steele of Philadelphia, who broke the young painter's
heart when she declined his offer of marriage. The Deutsch gift
included two later portraits by Raphaelle Peale, both superb,
which enable the museum to show the entirety of the Philadelphia
painter's career. Rich in mourning art, the Deutsch assemblage
also included miniatures by artists not previously represented at
Yale, among them Thomas Birch, William Doyle, and David Bradley.
Davida Deutsch's interest in miniatures developed gradually. In
1977, she published her first article in The Magazine
Antiques on mourning prints for George Washington. A
fascination with Washington's death as a cultural phenomenon led
her also to study needlework, portrait miniatures, and artifacts
of mourning. "Young women began stitching mourning pieces. This
took me into the area of women's education," Deutsch explained.
"The silk embroideries had figures with beautifully painted
faces, which had to have been done by professionals. That led me
to portrait miniatures. It all sounds like an odd combination,
but there was a connection." The connection is clearly drawn in
Deutsch's forthcoming book, The Polite Lady: Or A Course of
Female Education. In it, the author considers the many
artistic genres - needlework, painting, drawing, wax work, shell
work and filigree work - familiar to an educated woman of the
early Nineteenth Century.
Methodical in her research, Deutsch says her collection grew by
happenstance. "I bought my first miniature in the 1970s, in
Raleigh, N.C.," she recalled. "It was a little girl and she cost
me $40. The dealer apologized for the price."
"I never really consciously thought about buying miniatures. I
didn't feel I had to find one of each. I just bought them when
they moved me. Sometimes I was moved but didn't buy them because
they were too much money," she said with a laugh. "I never cared
about getting things beyond 1830, and I don't like anything
sappy."
Portrait miniatures have a distinguished history as personal art
and portable keepsakes. In this country, the genre flourished
between 1740 and 1840, gaining momentum after the Revolutionary
War and declining with the introduction of photography. Most
American miniatures were painted in watercolor on thin disks of
ivory and housed under glass in finely worked gold lockets,
brooches or bracelets. A lock of the sitter's hair was sometimes
enclosed on the reverse.
Behind every miniature is story of love and, sometimes, loss. It
was the emotion embedded in these tiny visages that Frank hoped
to recover, and that is what makes "Love and Loss" different than
past displays. "In some cases we have been able to give back to
these objects the ties of family and friends that brought them
into being. I'm sure that behind other miniatures there are
wonderful secrets that we haven't yet ferreted out. I hope that
in hearing and seeing the details, visitors will understand that
behind every object there is a private history worth knowing,"
the curator said.
Frank discovered miniatures as a graduate student at Yale. "In
many ways these objects were orphans. I would go down to storage,
open drawers and find them lying there. At Yale, we consider them
paintings, but you can't understand them without a strong
background in the decorative arts." The trade has been similarly
confused about their status. "Miniatures get put in Americana
auctions here in the states, but are shoved into Silver and Vertu
sales in London," said Elle Shusan, the only antiques dealer in
the country who exclusively specializes in these jewel-like
marvels. "I consider them art. Why should Charles Willson Peale
go from painting big in the art department to painting little in
the decorative arts department?"
Perhaps the disagreement over nomenclature discouraged
scholarship, which got off to an early start with Anna
Hollingsworth Wharton's research in 1898, continued with Early
Portrait Painters in Miniature by Theodore Bolton in 1921,
but nearly disappeared until the 1980s, when Robin Bolton-Smith
published Portrait Miniatures in the National Museum of
American Art. Dale Johnson followed with American Portrait
Miniatures in the Manney Collection in 1990.
"You always wonder why another scholar didn't get there first,"
admitted Frank. That was until she discovered how difficult it is
to research miniatures, which are usually unsigned and often
unidentified. "One obstacle to study is that there are only a few
conservators of miniatures in the entire country."
Conservation, in fact, was a key component of the Yale project.
With funds from the Getty Grant Program, the museum engaged
Katherine G. Eirk. The independent conservator worked closely
with Theresa Fairbanks, chief conservator for works on paper at
Yale. "Second only to the joy of holding these objects in our
hands was the insight we were able to get from examining them. It
was a very rich and layered experience," Frank recalled. "In
Theresa's lab at the Yale Center for British Art, a microscope
attached to a video camera allowed us to have a scholarly
dialogue about what we saw."
The findings are presented in Love and Loss: American Portrait
and Mourning Miniatures by Robin Frank. What started as a
straightforward project to catalogue the museum's collection
became, through the enthusiasm of both its author and its
publisher, Yale University Press, a volume that is as beautiful
as it is scholarly. Within days of being published, this bijou of
a book, which is reduced in size but shows miniatures to scale,
had found its way to the recommended table in the bookstore of
the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Perhaps because of their small scale and intimate nature,
portrait miniatures remain undervalued. Folk art collectors have
bid up the works of Mrs Moses B. Russell, whose charmingly naive
likenesses can sell for $30,000 or more. In general, however,
most American miniatures sell for $10,000 or less. In January,
Christie's will offer a huge exception, a portrait of George
Washington by the preeminent American miniaturist, John Ramage.
From the collection of Eddy Nicholson, it last fetched a record
$623,000 at auction in 1988.
Elle Shushan has one piece of advice for would-be collectors:
"Don't buy a miniature unless you love the sitter. Beyond that,
every collector has his own view. I have clients who collect only
American examples, others cut off at 1825. I even have a client
who buys only officers in red coats of identified regiments." One
good place to look at portrait miniatures - American, English,
and Continental - is on Shushan's Web site,
www.portrait-miniatures.com.
