Family Portraits

It is rare nowadays to find a set of family portraits that have been preserved together, especially when the family name and details have not been recorded. But this family group of mother, father and their three grown-up children have beaten the odds most likely helped by having been held in a private collection of silhouettes since 1915. Hopefully they will continue to stay together as a family group for the foreseeable.

The profiles are painted on plaster by the masterful John Miers of the Strand who preferred the simplicity and elegance of a black profile without embellishment. Dating to around 1800, the three ladies are similarly styled, their dresses with frilled necklines and their hair curled and upswept whilst father and son are barely indistinguishable from each other. The profiles are set in their original frames with verre églomisé surrounds, each frame backed with the artist’s trade label no. 11 which was in use between 1791 and 1809. One frame (that of the mother) has some loss to the inner raised border between 3 and 5 o’clock. A couple of them are slightly loose within their frame but are still secure enough to hang safely.