Je t’aimerai toute ma vie!

Portrait miniatures were often commissioned as love tokens to be exchanged between lovers. Reminiscent of the work of French miniaturist Jean Baptiste Isabey, this romantic portrait shows a young blue-eyed lady in a pale blue and white dress trimmed with pearls, her auburn curls partly covered with a veiled head dress topped with ostrich feathers.

The portrait is indistinctly signed along the lower right edge and is set in a gold and tortoiseshell effect hinged locket frame with a fausse-montre hanger, the front surmounted with monogrammed initials FB. Inside is a glazed panel of finely plaited hair across which is laid the touching sentiment ‘Je t’aimerai toute ma vie’ — I will love you all my life. What a romantic gift that would have been!