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Portrait of a Gentleman
ca. 1850
- Medium
- watercolor on ivory
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- sight 2 3/4 x 2 in. (7.0 x 5.1 cm)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Catherine Walden Myer Fund
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
This miniature shows the forceful, confident figure of a nineteenth-century businessman. During the 1850s, such men wore dark clothes to indicate their professionalism and sobriety. This sitter’s low collar and smaller necktie mark the shift from earlier high collars and elaborate cravats that identified men of wealth and leisure.
