“Portrait miniatures are like passport photos: They’re small, portable and realistic,” said Emma Rutherford, the head of portrait miniatures at Bonhams, a London auction house. “Their accuracy is what ...

If you ask Alan Derbyshire how he came to specialise in the conservation of portrait miniatures, he says it was “being in the right place at the right time”. He joined London’s Victoria and Albert ...

Intimate portraits painted on a tiny scale first appeared in Europe’s courts in the 16th century. Unlike the grand likenesses displayed in castle halls for all to see, these palm-sized portraits were ...

Miniature portraits, from one inch in diameter up to tennis ball sized, started getting popular among Europeans in the sixteenth century. If a husband was going traveling, both spouses would keep an ...

Queen Elizabeth l, Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Walter Raleigh were the celebrated figures of their age, but what did they really look like? In the years before photography and film, the only way people ...

He may have fought in some 60 battles during a long and distinguished military career, earning himself the nickname 'Iron Duke', but a little-known portrait miniature of the 1st Duke of Wellington has ...

The intimate charm of their small size and the delicat complexity of their gold cases, which sometimes house a lock of hair decoratively plaited, make portrait miniatures appealing. The sport in ...

PORTRAIT MINIATURES WERE a tradition started in the 16th century and continued well into the 19th century to capture the likeness of beloved family members, and are highly collectible today. These ...

Shahzia Sikander, “Portrait of the Artist” (2016), a suite of four etchings, with accompanying collaborative text with Ayad Akhtar. Paper size: 68.5 x 53 cm; image size: 56 x 43 cm. National Portrait ...

A fascinating niche in antique collectibles is what we call miniature portraits on ivory. Don't let the word "ivory" confuse you because that factor is not discernable. If you have seen very small ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...