The Tansey Miniatures Foundation

Die Miniatur Über den Künstler

The Tansey Miniatures Foundation

DE
The Miniature About the Artist

Lady with an Arrow

Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin

Miniature portraits were usually supposed to remind their owner of a beloved person and were intended to be kept private. For this reason, miniature painting allowed motifs which would have caused great offence in large-format portrait painting. This lady with blonde curly hair probably figures as an armed hunter from Diana's entourage. She is wearing a daring translucent gown of tulle which partly reveals her left breast.1 Diana and her companions were regarded as being both chaste and unapproachable, which the artist likely used to suggest how challenging it had been to win her over. The butterfly caught on the arrow may symbolise the loss of the lady's freedom through love. Her yearning look completes the message of love. Her face, which is directly turned towards the observer, corresponds to the classicist ideal of unaffected immediacy.2
B. P.

1 Augustin painted only a few miniatures with an erotic aspect, among which are a portrait of a nude lady lying on a leopard fur from 1790 (Wallace Collection, London) and a portrait of a bare-breasted lady playing the lyre from 1795 (Musée du Louvre, Paris). The pose with the left elbow resting on an object can be found in many of Augustin's portraits from the 1790s.
2 A study of this portrait is in the property of the heirs of the artist. Cf. Pappe 2015, p. 260, no. 243. It shows the sitter with different hairstyle.