"Surrounded with Brilliants": Miniature portraits in Eighteenth-Century England - Bibliography

(3.) For an analysis of portraiture as organizational concept and practice in 18th-century England, see Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portmiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). For issues of 18th-century luxury, see, for example, the classic account by John Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).

(4.) Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz, A Picture of England: Containing Description Of the Lasts, Customs, and Manners of England, new trans. (London: n.p., 1797), 316.

(5.) Christopher Lloyd and Vanessa Remington, Masterpieces in Little: Port roil Miniature front the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (London: Royal Collection Enterprises, 1997).

(6.) John Murdoch. Seventeenth-Century English Miniature in the Collection of the Victoria anti Albert Museum (London: Stationery Office, 1998), 2.

(7.) See Murdoch et al., 177. The question of the display of miniattires at the Royal Academy exhibitions, which commenced in 1769, will be dealt with in the exhibition at Somerset House, A Rage of Exhibitions and the accompanying publication, edited by D. Solkin, published by Yale University Press, 2001.

(8.) Lord Ronald Cower, The Great Historic Galleries of Englantl (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle and Rimington, 1881). vol. 2, 29. One surviving 18th-century arrangement comprises a series of miniatures of four members of the family of Paul Vaillant, attributed to Joseph Daniels. ca. 1790, in their original gilt frames, arranged as a kind of beribboned posy hanging from a trompe l'ocil ribbon anti clearly intended to be hung on the wall, reproduced in Tessa Murdoch, ed., The Quiet Conquest: The Huguenots 1685-1985, exh. cat., the Museum of London, 1985, cat. no. 254, color p1. 11.

(9.) I am indebted to John Murdoch for an insight into the complex construction of those parts of the ensemble that historians of art have tended to discard: "Seventeenth-century gold and champleve enamel locket with a convex back, enamelled all over the outside, within outlines reserved in gold, with a device of swirling asymmetrical design, made up of foliate scrolls ending in a 'flower' of diminishing beads (cosse de pois), in a narrow border, all in opaque white on a ground of translucent blue; the rounded edge is blue with the arris reserved as a thread of gold, between pairs of white dots; the glass convex, chamfered at the rim; the hanger a rim loop set on a double arch, the sides enamelled blue, with two white blobs on short pins above each arch; below the loop are three hinge barrels, and at the bottom a clip post for the cover; underneath, a lug pierced for the pendant (probably a pearl) now lost. Many small areas of enamel lost. The front cover also in champleve enamel of similar design; the hinge plate in white enamel with the reserved gold in symmetrical scrolls; the inside of the lid engraved with strap-work knot to the edges of the oval. ..."; Murdoch (as in n. 6), no. 56. Murdoch acknowledges the help of Michael Snodin in the analysis of frames.