Friday, June 15, 2018

Portrait Miniatures Painted on Ivory (Women)

Bernard Lens the younger
Portrait miniature of unknown woman
before 1740
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Bernard Lens the younger
Portrait miniature of unknown woman
before 1740
pigment on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gervase Spencer
Portrait miniature of unknown woman
1749
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Little

aren't we all lifelike?
Those are the thuds of thunder
at the back of our bones
aren't we all moonlike?
Those are the buds of thunder
by our glassified gravestones
aren't we all ready
for those last moonlike promises?
aren't we all being a little talkative as yet?
for those buds of thunder
at the back of our moonlike bones

George Engleheart
Miss Anna Seton
ca. 1770
pigment on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

James Scouler
Unknown woman as a Sybil
1772
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

James Scouler
Unknown woman as the goddess Diana
1773
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Samuel Shelley
Miss Anne Newman, aged 11
1781
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Pursuit Upon Happiness

Oh mad pursuit upon happiness
And when the day is ended – and there is none
Thy dreams are on fire in the searching sunsets
That have burned upon the sands of thine own kinds of times
Thy youth was full of glass charms, of daydreams
Upon cases, One's heart is overflowing of fair faith
One's midday cactus bloom in under the scorching sun
One's midday pursuit after happiness, and what elderly years
Are last few leaves are on fire in the scorching sunsets
Although unhappily before thy trek is done

Richard Crosse
 Mrs Siddons
1783
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Nathaniel Pilmer
Mrs William Vallance of Sittingbourne
1788
pigment on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

François Dumont
Mlle. Anne Françoise Hippolyte Mars on stage
ca. 1798
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Dark Angel

Tomorrow night I walked to a dark black star
That I can have uncovered the face of the moon

Today and tonight I walked to a seventh noon star in heaven
That I opened the face of heaven, that I counted the dark chimes

I walked along the pathway of a black butterfly
I entered the forest of dark bewilderment

Either the other half of the black star that blinds the moon
Was lifted to the moon on either wing of the noon butterfly

That is a dark angel during the spool of black thread
That unwinds the moon that pulls the wheels of time

Samuel John Stump
Portrait miniature of unknown woman
ca. 1800-1825
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Maxime Gauci
Princess Charlotte
1810
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Emma Leanora Kendrick
Lady Caroline Lamb
ca. 1815-20
watercolor on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Christina Robertson
Miniature Self-portrait
ca. 1822
pigment on ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

– poems are from A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: the Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (Brooklyn : The Song Cave, 2013)