Lover's Eyes

Lover’s

EYES EYES Lover’s

eye

miniatures

from the

skier collection

Collectors’ Preface

It all began with a forbidden romance NAN AND DAVID SKIER

8

W

hen the Prince of Wales, later crowned King George IV of England, laid eyes on the twice-widowed commoner Maria Fitzherbert at the opera in 1784, it was love at first sight. British law forbade the Prince to marry Maria because she was Catholic. History tells us that George and Maria were wed in secret and that they exchanged miniatures depicting each others’ eyes, painted in watercolor on ivory and set into jewels, as tokens of their love for one another. Because each miniature represented only a single eye, the anonymity of the lovers was preserved. Thus began the short-lived phenomenon of eye miniatures, popular between the years 1790 and 1820, as keepsakes of love and as mementos of loss.

We both clearly recall our first encounter with a lover’s eye. An elegant ring, bearing the image of a single eye surrounded by enamel, diamonds, and pearls, was nestled among the many treasures in Edith Weber’s booth at the Cyclorama Antiques Show in Boston. We were captivated by its uniqueness and by the tiny painting of an exquisite gray eye, particularly appropriate for us because David is an eye surgeon. We were also enchanted by the love story which accompanied it. We discovered years later that it was Edith who had coined the term “Lover’s Eye.” We could not have anticipated that the purchase of this ring would begin decades of discovery, seeking out these rarities which are at once works of art, precious jewels, and fragments of history. How poignant it is that each eye represents an actual person and an actual story of a long-ago love or bereavement, now lost to the passage of time. We continue to be fascinated by these enigmatic jewels. We hope that you will be fascinated as well.

Cat. 1 Blue enamel, diamond, and pearl ring, ca. 1790.

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Cat. 11 Yellow gold brooch with red coral border, ca. 1820.

Cat. 63 Yellow gold brooch surrounded by red coral, ca. 1820.

Cat. 34 Yellow gold ring with oval bezel surrounded by foiled garnets, 1827.

Cat. 87 Heart-shaped gold ring with Hessonite garnet surround, ca. 1790.

Cat. 36 12-karat gold oval brooch surrounded by tablecut garnets.

fasten their teeth, and it was also considered by them a charm against lightning, whirlwind, and fire. It was credited with many other talismanic properties, among them being potency against the influence of the evil eye.” 17 These ancient associations carried on into modern times.

According to Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe, “The amuletic power of coral to ward off the evil eye continued in Western culture in the nineteenth century in the form of children’s coral bead necklaces or coral branches attached to baby’s rattles.” 18 Two brooches in the Skier collection (cat. 11 and cat. 63) have very similar deep red coral surrounds, which dates them from the first half of the nineteenth century. 19 It is interesting to consider whether or not the coral was thought to protect only the wearers of these brooches, or if, by proxy, its protective powers extended to the subjects of the eye portraits.

Garnets

The garnet has been called the “most desirable gemstone of Georgian day jewellery.” 20 Garnets in varying hues were commonly used in the jeweled settings for lover’s eyes, providing dramatic surrounds for rings (cat. 34 and cat. 87) and brooches, either alone (cat. 36 and cat. 58) or combined with pearls (cat. 46). According to Ginny Redington Dawes and Olivia Collings, “Flat cut garnet jewellery was in demand in the eighteenth century, as it was affordable, attractive on almost every complexion, and looked particularly well on young women.”21 Among the traits popularly associated with the stone were felicity, constancy, and friendship, specifically “true friendship.”22 An individual might have given an eye miniature with a garnet surround to a dear friend or bosom confidante as a symbol of their amity.

Turquoise

Only two specimens in the Skier collection incorporate turquoise in their settings: a striking quatrefoil brooch, circa 1820, in which the vibrant blue-green stones provide a colorful punctuation to the pearl surround

48 Lover's Eyes

Cat. 11

Cat. 63

Cat. 34 Cat. 87

Cat. 36

Symbol & Sentiment 49

Fake or Fashion ELLE SHUSHAN

Fashion is always silly

T

Horace Walpole

he first decade of the twentieth century saw small-town newspapers all over America publish articles about eye miniatures. The Falls City Tribune (Nebraska) told readers that the “delicately painted picture of the eye glowing with life is rapidly becoming a favorite memento of the absent friend.”2 In 1907, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch announced the trend under the headline “Eye Miniature Is Newest Jewel,” going on to explain that “London Society Folk…have taken up the new fad and it promises rapidly to become more popular than anything like it in recent years.”3 A big-city paper with wider sources, the San Francisco Examiner headlined their story “Miniatures of Your Eyes—Latest Fad,” illustrating it with the eyes of London’s beau monde—Queen Alexandra and her rival, the Countess of Warwick, among them. 4 Perhaps the most fantastic was a double locket, one side set with the right eye, the other with the left eye of the Duchess of Marlborough (fig. 19). The star power of the sitters was such that the article neglected to acknowledge the artists.

1900 was certainly not the first wave of fashion for eye miniatures. As early as 1785 there were rumblings of the nascent fad. Horace Walpole,

Cat. 62 Gilt metal and blue enamel oval pendant, blue right eye with curls of hair and clouds, ca. 1860 (detail).

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Fig. 33 Eye miniature, 20th century. Watercolor on ivory, diameter 7⁄16 in. The NelsonAtkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Starr and the Starr Foundation, Inc., F58-60/197.

Image courtesy of The NelsonAtkins Museum of Art, Media Services / Photo: Gabe Hopkins.

Fig. 34 Eye miniature, 20th century. Watercolor on ivory, diameter: 7⁄16 in. The Nelson-

Fig. 33

Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Starr and the Starr Foundation, Inc., F58-60/198.

Image courtesy of The NelsonAtkins Museum of Art, Media Services / Photo: Gabe Hopkins.

Fig. 35 Gold brooch with cast foliate border, ca. 1900. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art

Fig. 34

Museum; Gift of Henry D. Hill, 1967.110.

Fig. 35 84

Lover's Eyes

Cat. 63 Yellow gold brooch surrounded by red coral, blue right eye, ca. 1820.

Cat. 65 Yellow gold brooch surrounded by double row of pearls, brown left eye with brown curls, ca. 1820.

Cat. 46 Silver rounded rectangular brooch surrounded by half seed pearls and garnets, blue right eye, date unknown.

Cat. 63

Cat. 65

Cat. 46 Fake or Fashion 85

Fig. 61 114 Lover's Eyes

die down, leaving a few embers to glow, until they are again fanned into flame. Love never dies.

1 Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History of Taste (London: John Murray, 1995), 14–15, 23.

2 “The Turquoise Craze,” Times (Philadelphia), April 15, 1898, accessed October 30,

Fig. 61 Dress with lover’s eye motifs, designed by Johnson Hartig (American, born 1970) for Libertine, Spring 2017 Ready-to-Wear Collection.

Photo: Edward James / Indigital.tv via vogue.com.

2020, https://www.newspapers.com/image/53398992/.

3 “An Expensive Fad,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, September 5, 1898, accessed October 30, 2020, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/62204542/.

4 The precise location of the eye on the chimneypiece is confirmed by a description offered by Marie Henriette Norbert, Princess of Lichtenstein (1843–1931), in her book Holland House, first published in 1874, in which she writes, “Above the centre lookingglass, which is elliptical, placed lengthways, appears a sketch of Lady Holland’s eye within a Florentine frame.” Princess Marie Liechtenstein, Holland House, 3rd ed.

(London: MacMillan and Company, 1875), 282.

5 George Charles Williamson, “Miniature Paintings of Eyes,” The Connoisseur 10, no.

39 (Sept.–Nov. 1904): 149.

6 G. S. Holland Fox-Strangways, Earl of Ilchester, Chronicles of Holland House, 1820–1900 (London: John Murray, 1937, 322–23), quoted in Hanneke Grootenboer, Treasuring the Gaze: Intimate Vision in Late Eighteenth-Century Eye Miniatures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 59 and 186–87, fn. 33, 34. For Grootenboer’s discussion of the symbolism of the all-seeing eye of God, see pp.

62–66.

7 The singular object of the eye portrait’s gaze is suggested by the French inscription on a ca. 1800 brooch in the Skier Collection (cat. 72), which reads, “Il ne voit et ne veira [sic] que toi” or “It sees and will see only you.”

8 Williamson, “Miniature Paintings of Eyes,” 147.

9 The term “the 400” was used to refer to the number of people in fashionable society in New York City during the Gilded Age. “Miniatures of Your Eyes—Latest Fad,” San Francisco Examiner, December 4, 1904, accessed October 31, 2020, https://www. newspapers.com/image/458009014.

10 Ibid.

Love Never Dies 115

Catalogue Compiled by GRAHAM C. BOETTCHER, NAN SKIER, and ELLE SHUSHAN, with the assistance of LAURA WALLACE and MAGGIE KEENAN

easurements are given in M inches as height × width × depth.

Cat. 112 Gold horizontal oval brooch set with graduated split seed pearls, ca. 1900

121

Cat. 101

Yellow gold brooch of openwork daisies and leaves, late 19th century.

Gentleman’s blue right eye. Both the style of the brooch and the handling of the eye indicate a late nineteenth-century date for the piece. The daisy carries various meanings in the language of flowers: alongside the most obvious connotations of purity and innocence are the less common ones of transformation and death. Considering the gender of the sitter, this may well be a mourning portrait.

Dimensions: 11⁄16 × 11⁄16 × ½ in.

236 Lover's Eyes

Cat. 102

Rose gold ring set with a portrait of the lips and nose of a woman.

The portrait was purchased unframed and mounted into the period ring at a later date. Though they are exceedingly rare, there is precedence for lip portraits: from an entry in Richard Cosway’s unpaid accounts, it is known that the artist painted the Prince of Wales’s mouth in 1795 (see Stephen Lloyd’s essay in this volume).

Dimensions: 9⁄16 × ½ × ¾ in.

Catalogue 237

Cat. 109

Gold rectangular brooch surrounded by half seed pearls and turquoise, ca. 1830.

Gentleman’s brown left eye.

Dimensions: 7⁄16 × 5⁄16 × ⅛ in.

244 Lover's Eyes

Cat. 110

Chased gold brooch, with split pearls, enamel belt, and buckle circling two tear-shaped glazed apertures, ca. 1830. Left: lady’s blue left eye; right: gentleman’s brown right eye.

Each aperture engraved on the reverse: LS (blue eye), AC (brown eye).

Dimensions: 5⁄16 × ½ × 3⁄16 in.

Catalogue 245

Cat. 118

Gold navette-shaped bracelet clasp converted into pendant with split seed pearl border surrounding a guilloche inner border, beaded bezel, ca. 1835. Blue left eye of young woman traditionally called Mary Sarah Fox, peeking from behind white foxgloves. Foxgloves are believed to be a source of energy and magic, but they also have negative connotations. Insincerity is a quality of the flower, as is danger (they are the source of the poisonous drug digitalis). In this case, it is likely that the foxgloves are nothing more than a play on the sitter’s name Dimensions: 1⅝ × 1⅛ × 5⁄16 in.

254 Lover's Eyes

Cat. 119

Gold open-link bracelet, with repoussé flower on the clasp centered with a horizontal oval locket, ca. 1810. Within the locket is a portrait of lips engulfed in blue clouds.

Dimensions: 13⁄16 × 1 × 6⅞ in.

Catalogue 255

Contributor Biographies [Barcode and ISBN + EAN (9 0000) EXTENSIoN 978-1-911282-93-8]

Graham C. Boettcher, Ph.D. is the William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, where he oversees the collections of American fine and decorative art before 1945.

Boettcher’s publications include contributions to American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820–1880 (London: Tate Britain, 2002); Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art and Yale University Press, 2007); and Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery (Yale University Art Gallery, 2008).

Elle Shushan of Philadelphia is among the world’s leading dealers in American and European portrait miniatures. In addition to many notable private collectors, Shushan works with outstanding museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. A foremost authority on miniatures, she has lectured and published widely, including articles in The Magazine Antiques, Art + Auction, and Antiques & Fine Art Magazine.

Stephen Lloyd to come.