Serenity

This neatly painted portrait shows a serene young lady in a décolleté dress, her chestnut brown curls secured with a narrow bandeau. It is painted using soft colours to create intimacy, a technique associated with Robertson’s best work.

The portrait is set in a decorative gilt metal mount with a hanging ring.

The son of a Dublin jeweller, Charles Robertson (1760-1821) was trained from an early age to create hair designs, possibly for portrait miniatures painted by his elder brother Walter. Clearly a precocious child, he was only fifteen when he exhibited his first miniature painting. Apart from a few years spent in London, Robertson worked in the city of his birth where he also organised an annual fine art exhibition.