Lady with Plumed Hat

Soyer is one of those miniaturists whose works are easily identified, even though he hardly ever signed them. Characteristics of his style are a mouth delightfully contoured in a warm red, eyeballs shaded spherically with a round, attentively looking iris, and lights in an opaque white, applied with a sharp stroke on white fabrics. The artist always placed the highlight in the eye as a tiny dot near the upper eyelid. Soyer had a preference for grounds tending to blue-green hues, against which the models, painted in fresh colours, were vividly silhouetted. Admittedly, many of the artist’s miniatures possess a kind of “family likeness” due to their repeated physiognomies. He was, however, outstandingly skilled in bestowing a cheerful, yet noble expression on his sitters. With 15 miniatures by the artist in total, the Tansey Collection presumably has the largest collection of Soyer’s works worldwide.

The portrait of the unknown lady with the ostrich feathers in her hair originated in or around the year 1783. The ball-shaped hairstyle with the curls falling down to her shoulders and the plumage was high fashion in Paris that year. The white fichu is portrayed in a noticeably differentiated way, enlivened with stripes of glossy silk. It allowed her cleavage to shimmer through enticingly. Apparently the artist did not complete the miniature. The lace trimming on the right sleeve remains unfinished. In addition, the distinctly visible horizontal brush strokes of the background certainly had still to be polished in a further working step.

B. P.