Thomas Hardy, poet and author, was one of four miniatures that my mother painted. This was commissioned by her step-father who thought it would sell when he exhibited them in the lobby of the Royal Hotel in Weymouth where my grandfather worked part time in his retirement as their accountant. Thomas Hardy used to live in nearby Dorchester and his novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d’Urbervilles often featured Weymouth and the surrounding “Wessex” countryside.

Regarding the technique used to paint the miniatures, my mother showed me the brush she used which was a very simple wooden stick with a single small Woodcock’s pin-feather mounted in the end. When the feather would wear and become dull, she would use tweezers to stick a new one in its place. Apparently, this was the traditional favored brush of Victorian miniaturists. For the substrate of the painting, she used a product called Ivorine, a small sheet of Cellulose Nitrate that had the appropriate color and texture to simulate the ivory sheets used by miniaturists in earlier less enlightened times. Of course the traditional oval shape was the product of slicing those ivory tusks in cross section. Be sure to click on the image to see a greatly magnified view of the original.

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