Golden Ringlets

This is a delightful portrait of a little golden-haired girl pictured in a garden landscape with a basket of colourful flowers. The portrait is signed on the reverse ‘Mrs J Fairfield / pt. 1850’ and is set within a decorative gilt metal mount with faded pink velvet. This is held within a magnificent daguerreotype folding case decorated on both sides with a border of flowers and birds with a central scene showing Cupid grasping the antlers of a wounded stag. Apart from the fading to the velvet lining, both the miniature and the case are in excellent condition.

London-born Anne Fairfield (ca. 1804-1883) was the wife of James Fairfield, a Liverpool watchmaker. Anne painted miniatures during the 1850s and 1860s but, despite her talent, did not exhibit her work.