← If Jewels Could Talk with Carol Woolton
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- [00:00]
Emma Rutherford
Foreign. I often think that really the equivalent right now of a portrait miniature is the image on your. On your mobile phone, something that you carry with you, just like a miniature. It's the same sort of size as a miniature and it's something you. You've chosen and it's something you're looking at all the time, but you're not necessarily. You know, every time I get my phone out, I don't necessarily just say, hey, everyone, look what's on my phone. It's just for me. Carol.
- [00:29]
Carole Houlton
I'm Carole Houlton, the voice of jewellery. Welcome to if Jewels Could Talk. I'm an author and broadcaster and the woman who initiated the role of jewellery editor at magazines like Tatler and Vogue. This is a podcast for everyone, for people who do like jewellery, for people who don't realise they like jewellery, and anyone intrigued by fascinating facts, new ideas and forgotten histories. So join me as I tell sparkly tales and meet all sorts of people delving into four centuries of jewellery culture and investigate what's happening now. I am delighted to be here today with Emma Rutherford. She's a specialist in portraiture, the founder of the Limner Company. She specialises particularly in portrait miniatures from the 1520s to the 1870s and silhouettes. She's the author of the book Silhouette the Art of the Shadow and is the curator of many exhibitions. And indeed, we met at one which was held at Compton Verney called the Reflected Self. Emma, thank you for joining us today.
- [01:43]
Emma Rutherford
Thank you. It's my pleasure.
- [01:44]
Carole Houlton
I mean, portrait miniatures are obviously an art form, but they had specific uses, didn't they? And I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about some of the uses that these jewels and little artworks had.
- [02:00]
Emma Rutherford
Well, first of all, just to slightly dispel the little element. Yes, they are small and they are small because of their purpose, but in fact, the word miniature refers to their origin, which they derive from the illuminated manuscript. And there was a red lead pigment called minium, which. Which is connected to the word miniature. So a miniature is really defined by its materials and technique, which in the early years, up until about 1715, so they emerge in the 1520s, really comes all from the illuminated manuscript. So the word limning you mentioned, my company is called the Limner Company. So early miniatures were called limnings, which comes from the word illuminari, as in to give light. Illuminated manuscript, which I always sink, is such a beautiful description of painting. Giving. Giving light. So although, yes, they are small, they're. They're really defined by their Their materials and, and their technique, which is watercolour on vellum. So exactly the same as those wonderful.
- [03:14]
Carole Houlton
Leaves in an illuminated manuscript, which were sacred books, essentially.
- [03:19]
Emma Rutherford
Yes, but interestingly, the, the secular documents that were produced at the time, if Henry VIII was to sign a sort of legal agreement with somebody, there would be one of those wonderful enormous illuminated first letters. And within that letter, the letter H, and within that would be a portrait of Henry VIII produced by the illuminated manuscript artist. And that portrait of the king was the king there by proxy. So it's bodily stood in for the king who couldn't physically be there. So it's really interesting that miniatures, I think somebody once said if you, with courage and a pair of scissors, you could make your first portrait miniature simply by cutting out that portrait from a document. But it also, there's a sort of, there's a resonance with those portraits in those documents that is missing in other portraiture because it's, it's standing in for that person.
- [04:22]
Carole Houlton
So, so it's really as, as close as you can get to the person being there with you.
- [04:26]
Emma Rutherford
Exactly. And, and miniatures all, all the way through their history, give that unmediated access to reality that other forms of portraiture don't have. So initially they had, they had quite a strong diplomatic role. So if you, if you were French, you would say portrait miniatures originated in France. If you are English, you say, say that portrait miniatures originated in England. And this comes really from the first exchange of portrait miniatures between the English and French royal families, between Henry VIII and Francis I. Ultimately they were diplomatic, but it was almost as if these monarchs were giving away a little personal slice of themselves. So they become incredibly important in a very sort of multi layered way. It's not like sending you. Okay, we, we need to make Francis very happy. Let's send him the finest, I don't know, piece of embroidery we can or, or tapestry or something incredibly fine that we've produced here in England. But miniatures, it was a little bit like Henry sending the tip of his finger or something.
- [05:42]
Carole Houlton
I mean, something so personal.
- [05:44]
Emma Rutherford
So personal. But of course, at this level they are also wrapped up in, in, in very, very high quality jewels. So they are set into the finest metalwork and they are often studded with, with jewels as well. So there, there's incredible combination of something very heartfelt and personal, but also a way of showing off, which is, of course, diplomacy at this level.
- [06:12]
Carole Houlton
So was the showing off confined to the gemstones or was it also in the lightness they portrayed? Because obviously being, they want to show the high status and wealth and that they were the sort of finest princes. So were they actually truly like them or did they embellish that fact in the painting?
- [06:35]
Emma Rutherford
Well, it's very hard to know because, of course, photography is not invented at this, so we don't really know what anybody really looked like. But miniatures had a tradition right from the outset of being painted with the person there in front of you. So as a interesting side fact, a lot of miniaturists were sent abroad to become spies because you, you have to have the person in front of you. You've got time passing where you're chatting, you're trying to get the best out of your sitter and you're, you're painting something directly onto a piece of vellum. You're not sketching, going away and working it up and thinking, oh, gosh, I've made the nose a little bit big, I'd better reduce that. So, so you. I think in terms of portraiture in general, portrait miniatures, or limnings, as they were called, generally agreed to be the best likeness of that person. In fact, we have a, we have an unfinished miniature of Elizabeth the first where it's really obvious. She has no teeth, for example, she looks like somebody who's taken their dentures out. She's got an incredibly high hairline where she's obviously lost a lot of hair. She's got these hollowed eyes, she's, she's almost skeletal. This miniature is unfinished and it's quite possible that Elizabeth took one look at.
- [07:58]
Carole Houlton
This work and said, forget that.
- [08:01]
Emma Rutherford
It is really, really fascinating. And you, with early miniatures of Henry viii, for example, you have him without his beard, which is always a bit of a shock. You know, you, where's the beard? Where's the kind of standard Henry that we're used to? But because this is a portrait of the artist is taking it directly from Henry' face. He's sitting there, he doesn't have a beard. He starts growing a beard a bit later. But there's, there's very, very few portrayals of him without his famous beard. So, yeah, they're, they're, they're really, really fascinating. I think for any historian of any.
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Carole Houlton
Period, I'm very interested that spies, that limners became spies. Do you have an example of that? Of somebody who was used in that way and sent abroad on a mission?
- [08:47]
Emma Rutherford
Yes, we do have some evidence. So jumping forward a little bit to the 1570s, Nicholas Hilliard, who was Elizabeth first chief image maker, he, he was a miniaturist, interestingly, he was trained as a goldsmith first, so he. He became a freeman of the Goldsmiths Company and he starts painting Elizabeth from the very early 1570s. But then he gets an invitation to go to the French court in the. The mid to late 1570s, where the French, their great miniaturist, Francois Clouet, who we also know from beautiful drawings and paintings, they have a bit of a hiatus at the French court. And Catherine de Medici is obsessed with portrait miniatures. So she's constantly before this, writing to the ear of Leicester saying, send me a really good picture of Elizabeth. I need a miniature of Elizabeth. And until Hilliard comes on the scene, they can't really send a decent image of Elizabeth. Hilliard is a natural genius. He's incredibly brilliant, brilliant at painting portrait miniatures. So finally, Catherine de Medici gets this magnificent miniature of Elizabeth and can see really what she looks like. So the French court invite Hilliard over to France. I think he goes in 1576. It's a very, very tumultuous time. There are the two brothers who are. Henri Trois is on the throne, but his brother is the Duke de Lancen. There's the two rival courts. There's a lot of religious unrest. The poor ambassad from England is constantly writing back saying he can't let anybody in his household out at night because they're Protestant, they're likely to be murdered and Hilliard is Protestant. But nevertheless, despite Elizabeth totally relying on him, she agrees for him to go to France. And we assume this is partially because he paints both brothers. He paints the king and he paints the king's brother. He's clearly in their information gathering and reporting back to the ambassador, who's reporting back to Walsingham.
- [10:50]
Carole Houlton
So they're so personal, so many levels, because obviously, also it was a great source of love to be transferred, wasn't it? And to keep a loved one nearby and to wear it. Whether you could talk about this love or you had to secrete it, they become.
- [11:07]
Emma Rutherford
I mean, after this initial sort of diplomacy level that they enter at, really, they very quickly become something that is quite a performative object in the role of courtly love, but. But also genuinely has. They have a role in. In secret affairs and. And clearly genuine love affairs as well. So. So you do get incredible stories. I mean, I'm. I'm working on a miniature at the moment, which I can't really talk about, but it's. It's so fascinating. It's. It's from the 1590s and I mentioned that portrait miniatures were painted on Vellum. Which is of course, floppy. And in order to make the vellum a surface on, you could paint, they were pasted onto playing cards. So if you take a miniature out of an Elizabethan miniature out of its frame, out of its case and turn it over, you have. You have a playing card reverse with a, with a suit on it. And there's great debate whether Hilliard would have ever risked painting Elizabeth on anything other than the Queen. Queen, yeah, probably not. But that does seem to have been the case. But in other words, ways, there doesn't seem to be any connections. But the miniature I'm working on at the moment is a. Has a two of hearts on the back, but one of the hearts has been completely obliterated with a spear that someone has quite crudely painted over. And what's really interesting, we don't yet know whether this is a dagger to the heart. There is a connection with this miniature, potentially with Shakespeare. We don't know whether this is a spear for Shakespeare. Wait for the press to get hold of this. It's going to be very interesting. But, but one of the most fascinating things is that somebody would have had to have taken this miniature out of its jeweled case to do that. Yeah. And to deface this, this heart. And of course, miniatures at this state, they are, they are encased in a way that allows them to be worn. You know, you can possibly wear something painted on watercolor and vellum next to your skin, it would just come off. The painting would just come off. So the jeweled case becomes an intrinsic part of, of the. The miniature and its, and its performance and its purpose. There's an amazing story about Robert Cecil's niece arriving at court with. And she's, she's in Elizabeth's retinue at court, and Elizabeth spots a miniature that she's wearing and she sort of refuses to show Elizabeth. So Elizabeth just snaps it, grabs it off her, physically grabs it off her and discovers it's this portrait of Robert Cecil. And she's so furious with this girl for not revealing that she's wearing one of her closest advisors that she pins this miniature to her shoe. And Elizabeth bangs around court all day with this miniature on her shoe as it's. She's disgusted. This is the lowest place to put the miniature. And then Cecil, of course, starts writing sonnets and about how wonderful Elizabeth was and, you know, he's quite happy to be on her shoe, the lowest point of her physical body, etc. Next day at court, Elizabeth comes in, it's pinned to her Elbow. So miniatures were a way of holding somebody physically close to you, but you could also be quite, you know, you could use it as part of your display of love for that person and.
- [14:35]
Carole Houlton
The relationship and what state the relationship was at at that moment. But I'm interested. So the miniature that you're working on now, you are trying to define who it's of, who commissioned it.
- [14:49]
Emma Rutherford
We're pretty sure we know who it's of and we're pretty sure of the date. So it's constructing a story around that. And because they're in these beautiful jeweled cases that nobody wants to necessarily take them out, you know, when you, when you do get the opportunity. And this, this one was in a, a very basic case. I mean they were, they were just found in a, in a box, abandoned and literally in a shoebox. We were able to take it out and have a look at the back. But this has added a whole new layer of compl to the story. And, and I like the idea that if this was a spurned lover, which is what the theory that we're actually working on, that that spurned lover kept the case, which was probably worth a lot of money because these cases, I mean, one, one of the things Elizabeth did with miniatures was that she, she would give her picture to a favored courtier and they of course would, would be very, very grateful for the image of the Queen. You know, it's a very intimate act almost, you know, as you say, these were exchanged between lovers. So for the Queen to give you her picture was really taking her in you into her inner circle. But what she didn't do was, was provide the frame. And what you were expected to do was to then go to the best goldsmiths and produce a frame which Elizabeth would want to see because she would have to come into court wearing it of the highest quality, I mean, and, and spend, I mean, the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds now on something.
- [16:22]
Carole Houlton
So essentially a double edged sword. Sort of a bit like when she invited herself to stay and would arrive with the whole retinue and it cost thousands and thousands of pounds.
- [16:33]
Emma Rutherford
It is the equivalent of we're going to have to build a new wing. Yeah, yeah, but it's, but it was clever and very typical of Elizabeth to use miniatures in such a manipulative way. Way. And she does it when she's courting foreign princes as well. So, so she, she really uses the miniature to, to the full advantage.
- [16:54]
Carole Houlton
So how long do you think that miniature had been in that shoebox for?
- [16:57]
Emma Rutherford
We think it had Been in. In the shoebox probably for about 50 years. It had been reframed in a. In a very basic sort of 19, early 1900s frame. Not even gold. And it's. Yeah, it is really going to cause quite a lot of reports.
- [17:17]
Carole Houlton
That's so exciting. So when will it be released? When you can release this information, it'll.
- [17:22]
Emma Rutherford
Probably be in about a month's time.
- [17:23]
Carole Houlton
Watch this space. We'll report back.
- [17:25]
Emma Rutherford
You may well want to.
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Carole Houlton
Yes, mainly they're aristocratic, upper middle class. It's not a sort of widespread ritual or pastime, is it?
- [17:36]
Emma Rutherford
Well, interestingly, Hilliard was absolutely useless with money and he was never really properly remunerated by Elizabeth. He didn't get a proper sort of role at court. It's quite surprising for a very long time. So although he seems to have had plenty of commissions, he would also take on commissions from anybody who could pay. So he has also provided us portrait historians with fascinating portraits of people from the merchant classes. I mean, when he was in France, for example, he painted Pierre de Ronsard, who is this great poet, but in a very. I mean, I. This was a portrait that was just called An Unknown Man Until 2019, when I did some work with a colleague and we discovered that it was Ronsard. But up until that point, it had just been a man in a tall black hat, looking very unaristocratic in very, very plain clothing. It's dated and it has the age of the sitter and lovely calligraphy around the border, so. Which chimed exactly with Ronsard. And then you do get portraits of women who are just in the merchant classes. They're wearing really surprisingly plain clothing. But as long as you could pay Hilliard, he would take on.
- [18:54]
Carole Houlton
He'd do anybody. Yeah. He would get your secrets out. At the same time, there was one that you had in the Compton Verney exhibition, which was a sort of unknown man in an open neck shirt and a beard. Yes. And I thought, he looks so strikingly modern.
- [19:13]
Emma Rutherford
Yes. Yeah.
- [19:14]
Carole Houlton
He could have been in a Dolce and Gabbana advertisement.
- [19:18]
Emma Rutherford
I like that. Yes, definitely. No. Well, this. This is obviously, you were talking about the miniatures as a love token. And probably the most famous one is that incredible miniature in the VNA of the young man set against flames. And Hilliard, being a goldsmith, had a fantastic ability to use real gold and real silver in his miniatures. So the flames behind this young man, he's put shell gold in the background there, so that in candlelight, this miniature would literally have flickered as if it were on fire. A Miniaturist like Hilliard would use something called shell gold because he held the paint in muscle shells. I don't know if you saw those in the Compton Verney exhibition. So shell gold and shell silver. It's the perfect. A mussel shell is the perfect size for a miniaturist to, to put their. Their paint. But yes, this, this miniature in, in the va of the young man. I mean, his, his shirt is slashed to the waist and in fact, he's holding out a medallion that. So he's a real. I mean, he's literally the first medallion man. He's huge, sort of lovely chain with a. With a medallion on the end. We don't know whether it's a. It's a locket that opens out with a miniature of his lover, but he's clear, he's consumed by the flames of passion. There is, there's, there is no sexier image, I think, in, in British portraiture. And this image is. Is a 16th century one. So you. That they can be extraordinarily intimate and people wore in miniatures something that, that they would never wear in public, let alone in a. In a. In a painting, you know, be painted for posterity, but, you know, in your underwear, really, which is what it was. But you wouldn't go out without your waistcoat on top.
- [21:01]
Carole Houlton
Yes.
- [21:02]
Emma Rutherford
Yeah. I mean, they, they really are extraordinarily intimate and their insights into the private life of. Of Elizabethans, which we're always trying to find out. How did people really feel?
- [21:15]
Carole Houlton
Yes. I wonder, you know, because obviously the illusion of how we portray ourselves now in sort of Instagram images and that idea of the reflected self that you had at Compton Burnie. But really, miniatures, in a way, had to be the idealized self, didn't they? I mean, now, you know, people can be presented in all kinds of terrible images or just body parts, really. And these were, obviously, you want to look your best for your lover.
- [21:47]
Emma Rutherford
It was also important to be recognisable. So I think with miniatures, I would say, rather than idealise, this was your best self. And it didn't. I think miniaturists tried hard not to strip away anything that made you. You. So there was a miniature in Compton Verney in the final part of the exhibition of a gentleman. He's, He's. He was perhaps in his sort of late 50s, early 60s, and he had an underbite where clearly he couldn't put his bottom teeth away very easily. When his face was relaxed, they were, they were there. And these are portrayed by the artist he hasn't painted his mouth in a way that this chap didn't have. You know, this. This man would have been instantly recognizable to his family because he had no orthodontic treatment. And I think in the 1780s when it was painted, so. And then there's a miniaturist called John Smart, he's working in the 18th century, who literally paints. If you've got crow's feet, he's putting them in. If you've got a wart, it's there.
- [22:53]
Carole Houlton
So if people wanted flattery, not to go to him.
- [22:56]
Emma Rutherford
But then again, his miniatures absolutely sparkle. They're so beautiful, but they're also so truthful. I wouldn't say he flattered people because he did put things in that perhaps you would want to airbrush out. He still gave everybody a beauty. And I guess that was always the balanced skill of the miniaturist. I mean, Hilliard, back in the 16th century, talks about how you must flirt with your sitters. I mean, presumably female sitters for him. But to get the best out of them, to. To get that liveliness in the. In the face that you. You wanted to bring that person to life in a. In a 2D image because of the person who was commissioning it, somebody who loved them, who knew them. It's impossible to say. But, I mean, yes, of course, that there would be an element of. Of flattery and idealization, but not perhaps as much as we might think, and.
- [23:50]
Carole Houlton
Not maybe as in the grand portraits that would be on show.
- [23:54]
Emma Rutherford
Yeah, they. I think people understood that they were for posterity. Miniatures were much more ephemeral in that they were usually painted for a very specific occasion. So usually it's at the point of betrothal in the 18th century, when people of a certain class were married and they had powdered hair. When miniatures were exchanged, the additional little bit of information that you put in that miniature, other than the portrait on the. The front was. Was a lock of hair on the back. And quite often this was an unpowdered lock of hair. So you knew that your future husband or wife, under all that horrible greasy grey powder, was blonde or auburn or. And it's this additional little bit of intimacy and information that's contained in. In the miniatures at.
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Carole Houlton
At that stage, stripping away the etiquette of court and finding the real person.
- [24:49]
Emma Rutherford
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
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Carole Houlton
But these sittings. So how long would they sit for?
- [24:54]
Emma Rutherford
It varies really, over. Over time, but most miniatures take around six or seven hours to paint. So that's. That's a couple of hours. Over sort of three or four days for the sitter. But somebody like John Smart, who I mentioned before, he, he went against convention in terms of painting miniatures and he did sketches first. He was by all accounts quite a dull man and quite, I think one contemporary calls him a muckworm. He's, he's clearly hard working, absolute genius artist, but not someone that you want to particularly spend a lot of time with. So I think to get around how long he took to paint these incredibly detailed miniatures, he would do a sketch first. And his sketches are wonderful because they have notes on the back about, about colors and sometimes little notes on personality as well, which are not always very kind. He probably took a little bit of less time with the, with the person there, but then a lot more time creating the actual miniature.
- [25:55]
Carole Houlton
So not that long.
- [25:56]
Emma Rutherford
Not that long, no.
- [25:57]
Carole Houlton
And they're sitting there with their muscle shell. What's the thickness of the brush that they'd be using?
- [26:03]
Emma Rutherford
Well, again I hear a lot. Oh, they must have used a single hair brush. But of course it's single hair brush wouldn't hold any paint. So they, they used squirrel hair brushes that come down to a very, very fine point and they used a real variety of brushes. But, but of course they are extraordinarily tiny. I mean it's quite hard to, to convey with some of the details in.
- [26:26]
Carole Houlton
The miniatures just how extraordinary. They must have had good eyesight.
- [26:31]
Emma Rutherford
Yes.
- [26:32]
Carole Houlton
Only it could probably work in the real light of the day as well.
- [26:36]
Emma Rutherford
Exactly. You know, they were very confined to daylight hours, clouds, north facing light. They also had problems with the fact that there was so much in the atmosphere. You know, everybody's burning fires. Miniatures are very susceptible to things landing on them. So because they're watercolor. Hilliard writes in his, in his treatise Be Careful of Spittle, you can't really talk over miniatures. Certainly couldn't sneeze over one. It just sort of blasted. So he talks about, you know, making, making sure that nothing falls on the surface of the miniature. He even says try not to have dandruff. Can you imagine?
- [27:11]
Carole Houlton
And all the powder coming from the hair. That must have been a bit of a problem.
- [27:15]
Emma Rutherford
Yes, definitely later on that, that would have been a problem. But they're very specific miniatures in, in the way that they are painted and conceived and everybody sort of understood that they had. There were certain rules around, around miniatures. But I, I mean I've come across some incredible things in, in artists logbooks where miniatures were, were painted. And at the end of the sitting the instructions are that this miniature should be taken under cover of night to somebody, you know, and it's usually a, you know, portrait of a woman that then, or a man and then taken undercover of night to the, the lover of that person. And, and I, I love this sort of undercurrent and, and the underground nature of miniatures is just endlessly fascinating that they're not for public consumption, they're not that portrait on the wall that you can have a crowd of people looking at and commenting on. They're an absolute one on one experience.
- [28:10]
Carole Houlton
And I guess we can tell so much about fashion through them. And maybe Hilliard's use of silver and gold with the paint helped him depict jewellery and fashion in a much more realistic way.
- [28:23]
Emma Rutherford
Yes, and certainly we were talking about flattering sitters, but I mean the jewels in miniatures in the Elizabethan period were absolutely fact specific. You know, then Hilliard had had access to the Royal Jewel House and being trained as a goldsmith, he created an extraordinary technique to produce jewels, reproduce jewels in, in two dimensions. So when you get a Hilliard miniature under a microscope and you look at a ruby, for example, what he's, he's done there is created a layer of shell gold and then on top of that he's used a pinhead to melt, well, he's melted some turpentine resin, red resin for a ruby, picked it up with the end of a pin and dropped it onto this shell. I know, but when I say a pin. So when you look at the, the jewels in the miniatures under a microscope, they are the size of a pinhead. And then he would use shell gold for the setting of the ruby. So he would create a setting in actual gold, which is powdered gold mixed with honey. And again we're talking the size of a pinhead. But the shell silver underneath would act as a reflective surface and of course the resin is transparent. So it would be like looking through an actual ruby. But when you see some of the miniatures of Elizabeth and obviously she is covered in jewels, the amount of time it would have taken to create these, these, these individual jewels and unfortunately the, the silver that Hilliard uses or used oxidize over time. So when he creates a pearl with a, with a, obviously a white paint and then he would put a drop of silver on the top to give it a sheen, that's where it would catch the light, that's oxidized. So that looks black now. So quite often you look at, it looks like women are wearing necklaces of frog spawn. But in fact they would have, have shone glittered Truly glittered.
- [30:26]
Carole Houlton
The lace must have been difficult to depict.
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Emma Rutherford
Yeah, the lace. So we had a. We had an image in Compton Vernier of a Hilliard miniature, which was taken in raking light. And if you. Which I obviously would never recommend, but if you were to run your finger over a lace rough in a Hilliard miniature, it would feel like a doily. They are really totally three dimensional. They look like he squeezed toothpaste on to create these incredibly complex roughs, which, of course were sort of folded in figures of eight. And, you know, he's got the shadow there where they catch the shadow. They are absolutely astonishing. But then lace was unbelievably expensive and such an important status symbol that he had to recreate that incredibly accurately.
- [31:12]
Carole Houlton
And I guess there was a cue to go to the best portrait miniature artists. And I was quite interested in the exhibition and how you said that. Actually that became a sort of. It wasn't a political act at all that you'd have Cromwell going to the same miniature artists as Charles II when he was reinstated as monarch.
- [31:35]
Emma Rutherford
Yeah, it's clever, I think, to remain politically neutral as an artist. I curated an exhibition for the Philip Mould Gallery on the artist Samuel Cooper a few years ago, and Cooper worked for. For the Royal family and then. And then for Oliver Cromwell. And in fact, he produced the portrait that we call the Warts and All portrait, where that phrase comes from. Because Cromwell said to Cooper, if you don't paint me as I am, everything, warts and all, I won't pay you a penny. So that's where the. The expression comes from. But we used to joke while we were doing that exhibition that Samuel Cooper, the artist, must have had an amazing receptionist who sort of, you get a round head come in and, yes, you go out this door, sir, while a cavalier comes in, like for his sitting. Because he was literally painting both sides simultaneously. And then, as you say, the. The royal family and. And Cromwell. It must have been quite difficult.
- [32:34]
Carole Houlton
Yeah. So in that case, they weren't really spying, they were trying to keep their mouths shut.
- [32:38]
Emma Rutherford
Right. Keep their jobs in order to. To. To keep painting.
- [32:42]
Carole Houlton
And then you also talk about how they're used. Miniatures were used as a parlour game, as sort of novelties.
- [32:49]
Emma Rutherford
Yes. So you do get these funny offshoots with miniatures. We did include in the exhibition a really fascinating pair of miniatures which are actually painted in oil on copper. So they're not true miniatures, they're really just small paintings. And they came with them a set of what are called mica talcs which are. There's a mica rock which splits very cleanly with these transparent discs. And in fact mica was, it was often used for window panes. It almost feels like plastic, but it's a natural substance. And on these discs were painted different costumes that you could overlay onto the original oil paintings. And these were clearly painted and produced during the interregnum when Cromwell is, is in charge of the country. And this is a puritanical regime. But what was quite funny was with the female sitter in this pair, you could dress her up as a naughty nun or you could give her the amazing huge diamond earrings and a mask as if she was going to a ball. Which of course none of that was happening during this period. So it was a sort of, again, a bit of a subversive underground way of, of using small portraits. And they were kept in these leather cases so you could pile up the, the mica sheets and put them on top of the, the little oil painting and close the leather case and secrete it on your person and no one would be none the wiser that you were.
- [34:25]
Carole Houlton
Yeah, I've been mocking these people.
- [34:28]
Emma Rutherford
Exactly. Exactly. Yes. It's nice to know that. Yeah, that was, that was all, all, all happening. And they were clearly having some fun with it as well.
- [34:36]
Carole Houlton
And then later on they were painted on ivory as opposed to vellum, sort of Victorian, Georgian, Georgian.
- [34:43]
Emma Rutherford
From about 1715. Ivory becomes the support for the watercolour paint. And we're not quite sure why. I mean ivory at that period was used in all sorts of ways. It was a fairly readily available material and the initially miniaturists sort of covered the ivory with very thick paint because, because watercolour on ivory is a really, really impossible task. Ivory is oily. To try and get a water based paint to stay on. I mean I have tried it myself and it just slides out. It's really, really difficult. And the ivory had to be prepared. You had to put little, had to rough it up so that the paint would sort of sit in little nicks on the surface. It had to be ironed between sort of grease poop through sheets to try and extract some of the oil from it. You sort of slightly think why bother? Until artists like Richard Cosway come in and they use that luminosity of the ivory to show through, to give the, that kind of colour to, or that tone to flesh tones. But, but it's, it is a very odd choice in, in the beginning to, to use ivory. There's some thought that ivory was a was a sort of precious material in that, you know, it's, it's, it was abundant, but not that abundant and much more expensive than something like paper. So yes, perhaps it all goes in with the preciousness of, of these small.
- [36:06]
Carole Houlton
Jewel like paintings and wanting them to last.
- [36:10]
Emma Rutherford
Yes, yes, that's true. Although fugitive watercolor is not great in terms of things lasting. A lot of miniatures that have been exposed to the light.
- [36:22]
Carole Houlton
And then of course it became quite fashionable just to have the eye PA which made it even less recognizable to the outside world. And only you knew that close up eye of your lover.
- [36:36]
Emma Rutherford
This is such a fascinating sort of sidestep again for miniatures. So we know the story of George Princepherel. Yes. And Mariah Fitzherbert who he's totally obsessed and in love with and they have this marriage which obviously is morganatic marriage. And then she disappears for a year thinking that he'll get over her. And of course he doesn't. He just gets more and more ardent and in their exchange of letters and gifts he says, so I'm. I'm now sending you a port. Just my eye in miniature, which I think you'll, you'll find is an incredible likeness. And this act really sparks off this incredible fad of just having your. I painted. I sort of imagine the ton in, in London, that highly fashionable set around the Duchess of Devonshire and George IV all going around wearing these eyes. They're all in these incredibly unhappy aristocratic marriages. They're all having affairs with each other and you're wearing an eye. And you can imagine people trying desperately to sort of peer at this eye, to work out whose eye you're wearing. Who are you having a fling with? Whose eye? And of course they're set in beautiful brooches with, with diamonds and pearls and sometimes you have a pearl as a tear glued onto the ivory. So artists got more and more sort of inventive with these eyes. I think the intimacy of miniatures really comes through in these eye miniatures. But there is also. There's a portrait in an American museum by an American miniaturist called Sarah Goodrich of just her breasts which was sent to her married. It's very modern and it's called. Yeah. And it's painted in the early 19th century. And every time I've put it on Instagram I've been sort of taken down for a while. But it is. Yeah, it's historical portrait miniature.
- [38:39]
Carole Houlton
That's what goes on on Instagram now between selfies that get passed around.
- [38:44]
Emma Rutherford
Yes.
- [38:45]
Carole Houlton
Yeah. It's amazing. I find the eyes, very emotional to look at, actually, because some of them, as you say it has the little tear. Pearl. Teardrop. And although that might be just a sense of longing or they've been parted for a brief time, you can read all kinds of stories into just looking at that one eye, can't you?
- [39:06]
Emma Rutherford
Well, I mean, we, we struggle enough with portrait miniatures to identify sitters because unlike oil paintings, there's nowhere to write anything. You know, you can't put stick a label on the back of a miniature because you're probably covering up some beautiful enameled case or something. It just doesn't happen. So with eyes, it's like, oh, really? In fact, just before I, we started recording the podcast, I'm cataloging a extraordinary box which is set with eight eyes and trying to work out the relationship. They. All the eyes seem to be from people who are all the same sort of. Of age. They're different.
- [39:44]
Carole Houlton
So it's not a family situation.
- [39:47]
Emma Rutherford
I'm veering virtually towards orgy here because I'm like.
- [39:52]
Carole Houlton
It'S impossible because actually, as you say, in the Georgian period, if you weren't sleeping with someone else, it was really frowned upon. I mean, you had to have a lover, didn't you?
- [40:04]
Emma Rutherford
Yeah, I, I sold a fabulous portrait miniature which is going to. Going really back to the ancestral family home of Elizabeth Foster, who was the third person in the menageri trois between Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and her husband, the Duke, and Elizabeth or Betty Foster. And this beautiful miniature by George Englehart was carried around by her stepson. That's your sort of archetypal marriage really, of the late 18th century, where you have a couple marrying, two status coming together and then, you know, they're both having an affair with this other woman. But also Georgina has an affair and has to go into exile and have a. Have a child and leave that child in France despite. I mean, she's, she's so lacking in love in her marriage, her children just. She becomes really quite obsessive about her. Her children and sort of. And breastfeeds them and things that are totally out of convention for the, for the time. But, but yeah, that story, I mean, we think we've seen. Seen the worst of human life today or the most scandalous really of human life today in terms of celebrities. But it was all, it was all going on and almost much more publicly back then. So, yeah, that's, there's so many fascinating stories. But yes, eyes. Eyes are, are wonderful and fascinating and weird, but they also, as a art historian Drive me mad.
- [41:37]
Carole Houlton
But you don't have so many breasts to decide who's a. Who's.
- [41:41]
Emma Rutherford
No, they are. That, that was a one off.
- [41:45]
Carole Houlton
And then of course photography comes in in the sort of what mid 19th century. People aren't really rushing to the portrait miniature painters anymore.
- [41:54]
Emma Rutherford
No, there are so many connections between really portrait miniatures and photography, including the fact that miniaturists, they, they, they're itinerant. You know, the certain miniaturists who don't have a very cushy studio in London will move around the country. So in fact I'm recording this from bath season. Miniaturists would hire out rooms above particular shops and establishments and it was part of the entertainment of the day to go to have your miniature painted. And of course everyone's looking for husbands and so it's, it's perfect for miniaturists to set up somewhere like, like Bath for the season. Photography comes in and, and of course it provides everything that miniatures couldn't it. It provides an, an amazingly accurate image in a very short period of time.
- [42:43]
Carole Houlton
Can't provide color though. No.
- [42:45]
Emma Rutherford
But the miniaturists who really were then out of a job when photography really gets going become colorists in, in studios for, for photographers. So there was actually a bit of a sort of like well, photographs are great, but people were so used to seeing these wonderful colored portraits that I mean even, even in the Victorian period where, where they're very, where we're very close to photography being invented, the colors are just, just astonishing and beautiful. Then you get these sepia images. I think people were rather horrified. So they are initially colored. There's a sort of Edwardian revival as well with miniatures there. And there are a couple of really amazing exhibitions at the South Kensington exhibition now the VA in the 1860s where they pulled in particularly early miniatures and people became very, very interested just at the point where photography is really becoming cheap and accessible to everybody. There's a sort of huge nostalgia for the, for the portrait miniature and, and I'm happy to say that's sort of back now really. People are, are gripped by them and the stories that they can tell and just how beautiful they are as well. There's, there's nothing quite like, like miniatures.
- [44:05]
Carole Houlton
Have you ever been painted in a miniature?
- [44:08]
Emma Rutherford
I've had my silhouette taken a lot.
- [44:10]
Carole Houlton
Have you?
- [44:11]
Emma Rutherford
I did. I sat for a photograph that was done by a photographer called Bettina von Schweil at the va. She was artist in residence there and she was looking at the miniatures in the va. Collection and was being very inspired by, by those and it was very weird being the other side of the, of the let of the lens or the, the. I mean she very much worked as an, as an artist or works as an artist artist and sort of deciding what to wear. You know, you don't want to wear anything that is going to go out of date, but also it's a photograph. So it is capturing a moment in time just as miniatures were. So I wanted to look sort of fashionable and, and it was, yeah, it was a very, very good experience to have because it obviously it gives you a huge insight into how people that I'm looking at now in antique miniatures must have, must have felt. So I also took my daughter. She was, she was photographed at the time and she was a very sort of wriggly irritated, didn't want to sit still. Eight year olds. So now every time I look at a portrait of a child, a portrait miniature of a child, I think, oh, you poor artist. This child entertained. But, and you know, and they obviously don't see the point in the same way that adults do. So it was, it was a really interesting experience. But, but no, that there are miniaturists around now. There's a raw miniaturist society and another society called the Hilliard Society. But I think once photography came in, our visual perceptions just completely changed around portraiture and you just, you can't undo that and you can't really go back to how interests saw people or tried to produce portraits.
- [45:55]
Carole Houlton
Yes, I do see portrait jewels around modern ones created by contemporary jewelers. But I have to tell you that the majority of them are of people's dogs. So I think that tells something about our society now.
- [46:10]
Emma Rutherford
Yeah, well, I, I often think that really the equivalent right now of a portrait miniature is the image on your, on your mobile phone, something that you carry with you, just like a miniature. It's, it's the same sort of size as a miniature and it's something you, you've chosen and it's something you're looking at all the time, but you're not necessarily, you know, every time I get my phone out, I don't necessarily do just say hey everyone, look what's on my phone. You know, it's just for me and, and it's my husband and my daughter. It was my dog but I thought I better upgrade.
- [46:42]
Carole Houlton
Most people have their dogs, I have to say.
- [46:45]
Emma Rutherford
Yeah, so, but that really is, is the equivalent now I think of a miniature, but nothing, nothing really can take you back to that that experience of being, being presented with a, with a. I mean it must have been a.
- [47:00]
Carole Houlton
Really astonishing moment, free song excitement when you revealed it. And obviously that's why George IV and Maria Fitzherbert sent about eight or nine between them, didn't they? They had them done the whole time.
- [47:12]
Emma Rutherford
He did. He's buried with, with a miniature of, of Mariah.
- [47:16]
Carole Houlton
Very touching.
- [47:17]
Emma Rutherford
Never. He never fell out of love with her. But no, the, the miniatures are, are, are the central point of their, of their love story.
- [47:26]
Carole Houlton
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us, Emma. Fascinating. And everybody look at their selfies this morning and think what they want on their phone because it says a lot about them. And thank you so much and we look forward to hearing more about what you're up to in the future.
- [47:41]
Emma Rutherford
Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure.
- [47:47]
Carole Houlton
Thank you for the listening. For this and other episodes of if Jules Could Talk, please go to our website, carolwalton.com do share it anywhere you can. If you've enjoyed it and we love to have a rating and a comment and if possible, a star. The book of the podcast is out now at all good bookstores and from Amazon. And join me again in two weeks for the next jewelled nugget. In fact, this is going to be our season finale. We are going to take a little summer break after this. We might come back with a special episode answering questions towards the summer holidays. But this will be our great season finale and it's a really good one. I wanted to ask the question of you whether you contemplated the idea of putting on lipstick, adding colour to enhance your face as a. A bit like wearing a coloured piece of jewellery. And my season finale guest is the legendary makeup artist Val Garland. She's going to talk about colour, her career and dipping her toe into designing a costume jewelry line. So you're going to hear it first on if Jules Could Talk. So join me in two weeks and thank you very much for listening. Bye Bye. If Jules Could Talk with Carol Woolton is produced by Natasha Cowen. Music and editing by Tim Thornton. Graphics by Scott Bentley. Illustration by Jordi labander.