Brown, John Henry - portrait of a lady

This miniature portrait is painted by John Henry Brown, but it is impossible to tell whether it is painted over an opalotype base, or is a straight bust portrait painted on milk glass. It is framed in the same way as most of his other miniatures and opalotypes.

As John Henry Brown was noted for his ability to make his painted miniatures look like photographs, the difference in quality between the miniatures and some of the opalotypes is so minimal it is really difficult to differentiate between miniatures on ivory and some of the opalotypes.

The adjacent portraits of a man and a boy seem to be definitely opalotypes, but this one may be a painted portrait based on a CDV photographic portrait. A point in favour of this is that there is some paint loss on her hair and there is no sign of a photographic base in the area thus uncovered. Brown did paint copies of photographs and this collection includes a miniature on ivory of Antoinette Tesseire which was a post mortem portrait copied from a daguerreotype.

This sitter is unknown. 1218