Portrait of a Gentleman

The gentleman in this miniature embodies the nineteenth-century middle class. The elaborate cravats and collars of the first few decades in the nineteenth century gave way to this “uniform” of a bourgeois gentleman, groomed and sitting stiffly for his portrait. The leaf-patterned frame suggests that this miniature was painted for the man’s wife or sweetheart, and if so, the sitter would have wanted to present himself as a suitable “catch.”