Gentleman with Walking Cane in Park

This very atmospheric portrait of a gentleman, which came into the Tansey Collection as a work of Périn, is attributed to the talented French miniaturist Villers here.¹ It shows the same elegant restraint as other works by this artist. Outstanding in this miniature is the masterful creation of the evocative background; it is a park scene with trees, in which the colours blue and purple are predominant.The half-length figure, painted in vibrant colours, is silhouetted against dark towering clouds. The sitter does not reflect the surrounding turmoil in anyway. On the contrary, the young gentleman casually rests his arm on a plinth,carrying a fine stick with a silver knob in his hand.

Miniature painters were often faced with the task of placing their model, who was in fact sitting opposite them, in front of a different setting in the actual painting. The choice of background and accessories had been discussed in advance with the client and sometimes recorded in separate sketches. Whereas some painters nearly always portrayed their sitters in front of a similar background, others displayed a lot of imagination. With Villers, the customer could choose between an interior, a landscape or a park scene and a monochrome surface. The background essentially determined the portrait’s impact, for the viewer unconsciously established a correlation between the subject and his surroundings.