Lace, Pearls & Frills

The wonderful costume detail in this silhouette is typical of Mrs Beetham’s meticulous work. The lady wears a dress with a laced and buttoned bodice and a stiffly frilled neckline with a posy of flowers on the corsage. Her hair is curled on top with ringlets falling onto her shoulder and a long chignon at the back tied with a ribbon bow. She has double hooped earrings and a pearl necklace that compliments the rope of pearls in her hair. The profile dates to the 1780s.

Reverse painted on convex glass and backed with plaster within a handsome verre églomisé border, the silhouette is housed in the original turned pearwood frame. There is a small area of paint loss to her lower arm and slight delamination to the paintwork on her face. The verre églomisé border was likely painted by Mrs Beetham’s husband, Edward, as he had travelled to Murano around this time to study glass painting.

Isabella Beetham began cutting silhouettes out of necessity to support her young family and was fortunate to be taught painting during the early 1780s by John Smart, the acclaimed miniaturist. Her husband meantime was a dabbler: he tried acting on stage, he designed a theatre safety curtain, he took in lodgers, he built and sold new-fangled washing machines, he offered insurance cover and so on.