Miniature

This 4 x 3in (10 x 8cm) oil on ivory miniature, offered by Lawrences (20% buyer’s premium) of Bletchingley, is attributed to the English miniature painter William Mineard Bennett (1778-1858).

This month, London Art Week (LAW) uses the digital platform it launched over the summer to run Art History in Focus. The event combines online discourse with exhibitions and objects on offer in galleries (and on gallery websites), putting the spotlight on two major themes: women artists and framing.

An intriguing Indian miniature portrait drew strenuous competition against an estimate of just £30-50 at Clarke’s (18% buyer’s premium) in Shaftesbury, Dorset.

Indian miniatures are a common sight at UK auctions. With a keen, dedicated and often very knowledgeable collecting base, they remain a somewhat independent but active sub-set of the art market.

A group of portrait miniatures sold recently by John Nicholson’s (30/25% buyer’s premium) in Haslemere, Surrey included this English school image, c.1700, of William Fermor, 1st Baron Leominster.

In 2017, this lost portrait miniature of a young Dickens emerged at an auction in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa where it sold together with some household goods for the equivalent of £27.

The Comerford collection of portrait miniatures, offered for sale by Chiswick Auctions last month, was acquired almost in its entirety by a single bidder.

The sale of portrait miniatures held online by Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) included a watercolour on ivory of the artist William Holman Hunt (1827-1910).

This early 19th century portrait miniature offered for sale at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) in Leyburn is widely believed to depict the Irish naval officer Sir Henry D’Esterre Darby (1749-1823). To the reverse is a crystal retaining a lock of hair.

Artist Sarah Biffin (1784-1850) is believed to have had the condition phocomelia and was born without hands, arms or feet.

More reliable today than they ever were in their lifetime, the male line of the Stuarts attracted the familiar devoted following at the annual Scottish Silver & Applied Arts sale at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium).

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

An 1817 miniature of Napoleon by British painter Henry Bone (1755-1834) is among the highlights at Ellison Fine Art’s exhibition of portrait miniatures this month.

Nicky Gould of Gould Antiques offers a range of small items including portrait miniatures, perfume bottles and various objects of vertu from the 16th-20th centuries. She next exhibits at Olympia.

Dealer Philip Mould stages 'Jewel in the Hand: Early Portrait Miniatures from Noble and Private Collections' at its Pall Mall gallery from March 12-April 18.

A dealer's one-day London show comes hot on the heels of major exhibitions that are drumming up interest in miniatures.