id: 120829 accession number: 1941.554 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1941.554 updated: Portrait of a Woman in Blue, c. 1700. Peter Cross (British, c. 1645–1724). Watercolor on vellum in original ivory frame; framed: 9.2 x 7.3 cm (3 5/8 x 2 7/8 in.); sight: 8.2 x 6.4 cm (3 1/4 x 2 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Edward B. Greene Collection 1941.554 title: Portrait of a Woman in Blue title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: c. 1700 creation date earliest: 1695 creation date latest: 1705 current location: creditline: The Edward B. Greene Collection copyright: --- culture: England, early 18th Century technique: watercolor on vellum in original ivory frame department: European Painting and Sculpture collection: P - British before 1800 type: Portrait Miniature find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Peter Cross (British, c. 1645–1724) - artist --- measurements: Framed: 9.2 x 7.3 cm (3 5/8 x 2 7/8 in.); Sight: 8.2 x 6.4 cm (3 1/4 x 2 1/2 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: signed right: PC [monogram] translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Four Centuries of Miniature Painting opening date: 1950-01-18T05:00:00 Four Centuries of Miniature Painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (January 18-March 19, 1950). title: Intimate Images: Portrait Miniatures from Europe and America opening date: 1993-03-26T04:00:00 Intimate Images: Portrait Miniatures from Europe and America. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 26-October 17, 1993). title: Disembodied: Portrait Minatures and their Contemporary Relatives opening date: 2013-11-10T00:00:00 Disembodied: Portrait Minatures and their Contemporary Relatives. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (November 10, 2013-February 16, 2014). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, England (1889). * Main Gallery Rotation (Gallery 202), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 22, 2008 - January 5, 2009). --- PROVENANCE Possibly Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Early of Shaftesbury (1801-1885), Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset, England date: By 1875 footnotes: citations: Sir Francis Cook, 1st Baronet (1817-1901), Richmond, England and Sintra, Portugal, by inheritance to his son, Wyndham Francis Cook date: By 1889-1901 footnotes: citations: Wyndham Francis Cook (1860-1905), London, England, by inheritance to his wife Frederica Evelyn Stillwell Cook date: 1901-1905 footnotes: citations: Frederica Evelyn Stillwell Cook (née Freeland, died 1925), London, England, by inheritance to her son, Humphrey Wyndam Cook date: 1905-1925 footnotes: citations: Humphrey Wyndham Cook (1893–1978), London, England date: 1925 footnotes: citations: (Sale: Christie's London, July 9, 1925, lot 319) date: July 9, 1925 footnotes: citations: (Leo Schidhof (1886-1966), Paris, France, sold to Edward B. Greene) date: 1925-1928 footnotes: citations: Edward B. Greene (1878-1957), Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art date: 1928-1941 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1941- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: This miniature is in its original ivory frame, stained a mottled brown to imitate tortoise shell. digital description: wall description: Living in London, the youngest of seven children, Peter Cross was probably apprenticed to a limner following the death of his wealthy father. His first miniatures date from around 1661, and he remained active until his death, ushering the medium into the eighteenth century; the greatest British miniaturists working during his lifetime, all had died or ceased to work by 1700. Although ivory had been adopted as a support for British miniature painting a decade before his death, Cross exclusively used the older medium of vellum adhered to card. The artist was also an avid collector, assembling an impressive group of miniatures that included at least twelve works by his neighbor Samuel Cooper. This collection was sold in 1722 at Cross’s house in Covent Garden.
Cross’s style is distinguished by a fi ne stippling of colors that combine to create soft, voluminous hair and pale flesh tones. His later works tend to leave the prepared white ground of the vellum bare—coincidentally, a strategy that was adopted by artists painting miniatures on ivory to exploit the support’s translucence. The details of his early instruction are still obscure, but some scholars have postulated that Cooper trained Cross, whereas others note a greater resemblance to the style of Hoskins, and still others detect a similarity to French stippling and suggest that he may have been trained
overseas.
The artist depicted the unknown sitter almost full face before a plain gray background with her head turned slightly to the right. She dons a white gown trimmed with ruffles at the neckline and a bright blue mantle over her right shoulder. Her powdered hair is swept up and loosely covered either by the blue mantle or a scarf of the same color. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Burlington Fine Arts Club, and John Lumsden Propert. Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures. London: Printed for the Burlington fine arts club, 1889. page number: no. 27, pl. XIII url: Propert, J. Lumsden. “The English School of Miniature Art.” The Magazine of Art 14 (1891). page number: p. 173 url: Williamson, George Charles, and Howard Coppuck Levis. Portrait Miniatures: From the Time of Holbein 1531 to That of Sir William Ross 1860: a Handbook for Collectors. London: G. Bell, 1897. page number: Reproduced: opp. p. 44 url: COOK, Wyndham Francis. Catalogue of the Art Collection ... 8, Cadogan Square [Residence of W.F. Cook], Etc. (Vol. 1. [By B. Rackham, H.P. Mitchell and Others. With a Preface by W.F. Cook.]-Vol. 2. Catalogue of the Antiquities, Greek, Etruscan and Roman, in the Collection of the Late Wyndham Francis Cook, Esqre. By Cecil H. Smith and C. Amy Hutton. [With Plates.]). Metchim & Son: [London], 1904. page number: p. 150, no. 678. Vol. 1 url: Christie, Manson & Woods. Important Collection of Objects of Art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. [London]: [Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.], 1925. page number: lot 319 url: Cleveland Museum of Art. Portrait Miniatures; The Edward B. Greene Collection. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1951. page number: Mentioned: p. 26, no. 10; reproduced: pl. V, no. 10 url: https://archive.org/details/PortraitMiniatures/page/n51 Reynolds, Graham. English Portrait Miniatures. Cambridge, MA : Cambridge University Press, 1988. page number: Mentioned: p. 84-86 url: Korkow, Cory, and Dario Robleto. Disembodied: Portrait Miniatures and Their Contemporary Relatives. 2013. page number: Mentioned: p.86 url: Korkow, Cory, and Jon L. Seydl. British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art. 2013. page number: Cat. no. 20, pp. 108-111 url: Burlington Fine Arts Club, and John Lumsden Propert. Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures. London: Printed for the Burlington fine arts club, 1889. page number: Mentioned: case: XXVIII, no. 27, Reproduced: pl. XIII url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1941.554/1941.554_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1941.554/1941.554_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1941.554/1941.554_full.tif