Curls and Frills

This charming silhouette from the 1780s shows a young girl in a frill-edged dress fastened at the front with ribbon, her long hair falling in loose curls down her back. The silhouette has been neatly painted on plaster by the hand of J. Thomason. It is housed behind convex glass in a period pressed brass frame with corner rosettes and a piecrust edging. Although it lacks the artist’s trade label, the impression of it is still legible as a mirror image on the reverse side of the plaster base within the frame.

Thomason worked mainly in Dublin where he was advertising ‘Most Striking Likenesses in Miniature Profile’ and in the north of England where he was boldly advertising in 1796 for ‘all persons who never could procure a good likeness before, to one more trial’ when the artist promised ‘the fullest satisfaction, or will take nothing for his trouble’.