Catalogues

Lady With Flowers.

This enamel miniature shows a young lady in a white dress with a purple shawl. She sits at a table in front of a high, pillar-structured wall and is tying a posy from red, yellow, blue and white flowers. Additional blossoms are splayed in her lap. Her look is directed towards the miniature's viewer, somehow conveying the impression, that the bouquet, as a mark of affection is meant for him.

In contrast to the prevailing enamel painting in his day, this unknown, probably German artist, used a very reduced colour range. The miniature is dominated by brown and grey tints, against which the reddish tones of the flesh parts and the purple of the shawl vividly stand out. The harmonious composition in a horizontal oval bears witness to an adept artist, who did not shy away from rendering his model in a knee-length-portrait and with both her hands. The two dark spots on her décolleté and on her left hand, resulting from the firing process surely must have annoyed him; paintings being damaged by a heating mistake during firing processes in the kiln had still been a considerable hazard of enamel in the first half of the 18th century.

B.P.