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Portrait of a Gentleman
From the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
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.”
Smithsonian American Art Museum’s own descriptionSubjects
Credit linePortrait of a Gentleman. ca. 1850. Unidentified. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. C. H. Roper. CC0.
