‘Though lost to sight to memory ever dear,’ reads an inscription that runs around the frame of a pocket-sized portrait of Lady Grace Anna Newenham by Horace Hone. Lady Grace was the wife of Sir Edward Newenham, MP for Dublin, who was mired in debt in the early 1780s and probably commissioned the picture before travelling to America to find work. It demonstrates the emotional significance of portrait miniatures at a time when business trips abroad lasted months, not days. Though these tiny pictures had great currency in the UK and France for more than three centuries – as diplomatic gifts, for instance – this exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art underlines the more emotional part they often played in people’s lives (22 August–15 February 2026). Drawn from the museum’s collection, the works on display range from the 17th to the 20th century and include ‘eye miniatures’ – paintings of eyes in close-up that lovers exchanged as gifts.
Find out more from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s website.
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