Tumbling Curls

During the late eighteenth century, miniature painting was a lucrative business so it’s not surprising that bitter rivalries arose between competing artists. Such must have been the case when, in October 1779, Charles Robertson resorted to advertising in Saunders News-Letter in Dublin to reassure his friends and the public that, despite “some evil-minded persons” having reported “with an intention to injure” that he was dead, he was indeed “living and in good health”, ready and willing to take on commissions.

One of those commissions was this striking portrait of a lady with tumbling auburn curls. She has chosen to wear a dress generously trimmed with lace in a soft blue that matches the colour of her eyes.

The portrait resides with a narrow gilt metal mount within a gold frame with a seed pearl surround, the reverse glazed to show a lock of pale hair laid on cream silk.

The son of a Dublin jeweller, Robertson was trained from an early age to create hair designs, possibly for portrait miniatures painted by his elder brother Walter. Clearly a precocious child, he was only fifteen when he exhibited his first miniature painting. Apart from a few years spent in London, Robertson worked in the city of his birth where he also organised an annual fine art exhibition.

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