Books on portrait miniatures do not come out that often. When word spread that eye miniature collectors Nan and David Skier were publishing Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection, a follow-up book to their 2012 book, The Look of Love: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection, we reached out for a sneak peek at what’s behind their collection, how they’ve cultivated their own eye for these tiny treasures, and what insights the new book shares.
How did you start collecting eye miniatures?
DS: It started a long time ago. I’m an ophthalmologist and we’ve always been interested in antiques: tea caddies, English calling card cases, etc. We were at a medical meeting in Boston in the 1980s and we went to the Cyclorama Antique show. We came to Edith Weber’s booth, which specialized in antique jewelry. Nan has some fabulous antique jewelry, and we were looking around and – I can still remember it – there was this gorgeous ring, surrounded by diamonds and blue enamel, guilloche, which contained the image of a single eye. A young man – it was Barry Weber – came over and asked if he could help us. We asked him about the ring, and he said, ‘that’s an eye miniature or lover’s eye. Do you know anything about them?’ We knew nothing about them, so he went into the story. Not only was the image beautiful and intricate and delicate but it was in wonderful pristine condition; we said, ‘we have to have that.’
What was it about that one that captivated you?
NS: Although David is an ophthalmologist, what really captivated us was its beauty, its significance, its secret story, its age and rarity. That eye ring is now example number one in our book.
What did you learn from him, what advice did he give you?
DS: Barry told us that eye miniatures were a way to exchange a gift with a secret lover. Looking at that single disembodied eye, it was hard – if not impossible – to guess the identity of the sitter. We consulted with Barry often over the years before his death in 2010, but we will never forget the warning he gave us at that first meeting – ‘this ring is made of watercolor painted on ivory, so please do not wash your hands while you are wearing it.’
Are there fakes on the market?
NS: Portrait miniature dealer and our friend Elle Shushan, who edited our new book, Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection, says that 98-99 percent of eye miniatures currently on the market are either fake or fashion, but not actual life portraits of eyes.
How are they faked?
DS: People buy antique miniature surrounds, which are easy to find, and they can cut down a period portrait miniature, or even insert a newly painted eye image.
When were these popular?
NS: These were first popular when George III was King of England. His son, who became King George IV, fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert, a twice widowed commoner and a Catholic. Since they could not legally marry because of her religion, they arranged a secret, morganatic marriage without the blessing of the King. This ‘left-handed’ marriage could not be officially recognized. He and Maria exchanged eye miniatures; the one he gave her is with her family, the one she gave him was buried with him.
Were these a singularly English tradition?
NS: There may have been some French eye miniatures that preceded this, but most are British.
Why is that?
DS: These are so small; most are not signed by the artist. Unless there is an engraving on the back or other identifier, it’s very hard to know where they are from or who the artist might have been. We own more than 130 eye miniatures and we have determined the identities of only five. What is so alluring about them is that they are so mysterious. They were supposed to be anonymous.
Did all miniature painters paint eye miniatures?
NS: No, most miniature portrait painters did not paint eye miniatures. Richard Cosway and George Engleheart were some of the most well-known painters of eye miniatures, largely because they both kept really good records.
DS: What’s interesting about Cosway – and there’s an essay on Cosway in the new book – is that George IV was a notorious gambler and never paid his bills to Cosway.
What was the most important thing you’ve learned over the course of your collecting?
DS: What’s important to learn is the connoisseurship. To read everything you can, to talk to people, to examine what you have and to develop a keen eye so you will understand the pieces as you look at them.
NS: Quality and condition are critical factors for us. We’ve been offered many and we want them in pristine condition.
Has your collecting evolved over time? How?
DS: We’ve always bought the best we could, but it’s evolved. We want things to be right. Eye miniatures come in so many forms – rings, brooches, bracelets, necklaces, boxes, even cufflinks, that we want to have examples of many kinds. As we collect, we want the more special and rare pieces… We want only the really great ones, the ones that will get us someplace. If we see a similar form that’s better than one we already have and it has good provenance, we’ll buy it.
Is your complete collection?
NS: As long as we are alive, it will never be complete. We love looking for these together and are always on the hunt. People who know us will let us know if they see a piece they think we’d like.
Do you always agree on what to buy?
DS: Almost always. Things have to really appeal to or ‘zing’ us. We also have a ‘two-out-of-three’ rule when it comes to buying things. We work with an advisor for the artwork we buy – Elle is our advisor on miniatures; we have another advisor for the American Ashcan School paintings we buy – two of the three of us have to agree it’s worthy.
What does the new book discuss that the first one did not?
NS: We’ve learned a great deal in the past nine years which we have incorporated in the new volume, adding to essays, adjusting descriptions and providing recently discovered information.
There are four new essays. Graham Boettcher, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, has written a wonderful piece about the artists painting eyes in the Twentieth and Twenty-First centuries, including such oddities as the ceiling in Blenheim Palace, where Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough commissioned her eyes and the Duke’s to be painted. Additionally, Graham’s essay profiles the artists painting eyes today.
Elle Shushan has delineated the much-asked question “Fake or Fashion,” illustrating why one piece may be considered fashion and another was made to deceive. In another essay Elle examines the rare and wonderful “flower eyes” of which only six are known, with one in our collection.
We are pleased to have Dr Stephen Lloyd, the acknowledged expert on Richard Cosway, R.A., to explain and illustrate the most notorious of eye portraits – those painted by Cosway for the Prince of Wales and Mrs Fitzherbert.
What has been your most recent eye miniature acquisition?
DS: Elle gave us as a gift a portrait miniature in which the sitter was wearing an eye miniature. It’s the only one she’s ever seen, the only one we’ve ever seen. That’s the most recent addition to our collection.
Do you collect portrait miniatures?
DS: We only have a few, which relate in some way to our eye miniature collection.
Do your children and grandchildren appreciate your collection? Do they share your interest?
NS: We’ve explained the value and rarity to our children so they can make an informed decision as to what they do with the collection when it becomes theirs. We’re doing this – collecting, creating the books and putting on the exhibitions – for our own pleasure and enjoyment
The first book was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Birmingham Museum of Art. Do you have plans to have another exhibition in conjunction with this new book?
DS: Not right now. We’ve been very, very careful during the pandemic. The eye miniatures are very fragile so conditions for exhibiting them have to be very specific. For “The Look of Love,” exhibition, which originated at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Ala., and traveled to the Georgia Museum of Art, Winterthur and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the collection was lighted by recessed fiber optic light cables and each exhibition case was sealed and climate controlled.
NS: All of the eye miniatures in the “Look of Love” exhibition were also shown on iPads, which allowed the visitors to enlarge, flip and rotate the objects, and to see them open and closed. At the time, this technology was revolutionary and really brought the objects to life.
DS: We are amazed at how wide our audience has been. We get frequent requests to use images of the eyes. A Norwegian rock ‘n’ roll band put some of our eyes on the cover of their album. If it’s a legitimate and reputable request, we consider it.
Q&A: Nan & David Skier. By Madelia Hickman Ring. Antiques and the Arts Weekly, September 14, 2021.
From the moment the Prince of Wales (later, King George IV of England) laid eyes on Maria Firtzherbert at the London opera in 1784, he knew it was love. But Fitzherbert, a Catholic, twice-widowed commoner, knew that British law would never allow their union. She fled to France to escape the future king’s ardor, but Fitzherbert’s absence only inflamed the prince more. In his passion, he sent Fitzherbert a miniature portrait of one of his eyes. She reciprocated with her own eye miniature, and one month later, the two were married in a secret ceremony. The scandalous tale of love at first sight set off a craze for eye miniatures across England that would stretch for nearly four decades.
A new book, Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection (D Giles Limited, 2021) edited by Elle Shushan, features a richly illustrated cache of over 130 of these bejeweled, hand-painted treasures. Eye miniatures are typically made of painstakingly detailed watercolors on polished pieces of ivory, and surrounded by carved gems, enameled metals, and human hair. These exquisite, enigmatic objects are frequently unsigned, making the majority unattributable to a single artist, and because they depict only a single eye and sometimes a stray lock of hair or eyebrow, the sitter’s identity is also often obscured. Of course, this mystery was part of the eye miniature’s allure — as it was for the king and his commoner — but it is also perhaps for these reasons that scholars have largely ignored eye miniatures until recent years.
Eye-themed adornments have been around since at least the Etruscan and Roman times, but the Georgian and Victorian version was likely inspired by a mid-18th century “French folly,” as the English politician and art historian Horace Walpole grumbled in 1785. Most lovers’ eyes were worn as jewelry, especially on brooches, lockets, and pendants worn close to the heart. Others decorated small functional boxes and etuis used to hold toothpicks, false beauty marks, and other trinkets. Most eye miniatures were exchanged between lovers, though they were also given to close friends and family members. Others were produced as memorial tokens after a loved one’s death. In this case, the eye is often surrounded by clouds to symbolize the subject’s ascent from earth.
But it wasn’t just the eye itself that carried meaning in these small portraits. An essay by art historian Graham C. Boettcher explains the messages conveyed by the miniatures’ accompanying diamonds, coral, and other gemstones. Pearls, for example, symbolized purity but also tears, and often framed the portraits of the deceased, while garnets represented friendship. Another essay by Shusan details the ways that eye miniature artists utilized the language of flowers, or floriography, in their work. For example, a miniature thought to be the eye of Mary Sarah Fox surrounded by foxgloves may be a play on the sitter’s last name, but could also connect the sitter to the energy, magic, and cunning that the flower was then considered to represent. In addition to eyes, some miniatures also featured locks of the sitter’s hair, another fragment of a beloved body to be captured and cherished by the miniature’s owner forever.
Although the king later abandoned Fitzherbert for a more legitimate marriage, he requested to be buried with her eye miniature placed directly over his heart upon his death. In this way, he took a piece of his lover — and her watchful gaze — with him to the grave. Lover’s Eyes illuminates this and other romances connected to eye miniatures, shining a light on these small but powerful portraits.
The 18th-century English Craze for One-Eyed Portraits. By Lauren Moya Ford. Hyperallergic, September 19, 2021.
In 1785,
when Maria Anne Fitzherbert opened a love letter from her admirer, Prince
George of Wales, she wasn’t expecting to find an eye, gazing intently back at
her.
The British prince was lovesick—and desperate. He’d fallen hard for Fitzherbert, but their courtship had been disastrous: Royal laws forbade a Catholic widow like his beloved from becoming a monarch. To make matters worse, the upstanding Fitzherbert had fled the country after the prince’s first proposal, in an attempt to avoid controversy.
But the prince was determined, and on November 3rd, he penned a passionate letter begging again for her hand in marriage. This was no ordinary proposal, though—it also contained a rare, spellbinding gift. “I send you a parcel,” George wrote in the letter’s postscript, “and I send you at the same time an Eye.”
Indeed, the package contained a very small, potent painting of George’s own right eye, floating uncannily against a monochromatic background. No other facial features anchored it, save a barely-there eyebrow. All focus was on the composition’s core, where a dark iris gazed ardently from behind a soft, love-drunk lid.
No records document how Fitzherbert responded to the eye itself, but “it must have bolstered the prince’s marriage proposal,” as scholar Hanneke Grootenboer pointed out in her 2012 book Treasuring the Gaze: Intimate Vision in Late Eighteenth-Century Eye Miniatures. Soon after his letter, the star-crossed lovers wed in a covert ceremony. To cement the union, another disembodied eye was painted—this time in Fitzherbert’s likeness, nestled into a locket for the prince to treasure. No matter where his royal duties took him, George could open the jewel and receive his bride’s amorous gaze.
The Prince of Wales and Fitzherbert weren’t the only ones exchanging eyes in 18th-century England. Eye miniatures, also known as lover’s eyes, cropped up across Britain around 1785 and were en vogue for shorter than half a century. As with the royal couple, most were commissioned as gifts expressing devotion between loved ones. Some, too, were painted in memory of the deceased. All were intimate and exceedingly precious: eyes painted on bits of ivory no bigger than a pinky nail, then set inside ruby-garlanded brooches, pearl-encrusted rings, or ornate golden charms meant to be tucked into pockets, or pinned close to the heart.
The British prince was lovesick—and desperate. He’d fallen hard for Fitzherbert, but their courtship had been disastrous: Royal laws forbade a Catholic widow like his beloved from becoming a monarch. To make matters worse, the upstanding Fitzherbert had fled the country after the prince’s first proposal, in an attempt to avoid controversy.
But the prince was determined, and on November 3rd, he penned a passionate letter begging again for her hand in marriage. This was no ordinary proposal, though—it also contained a rare, spellbinding gift. “I send you a parcel,” George wrote in the letter’s postscript, “and I send you at the same time an Eye.”
Indeed, the package contained a very small, potent painting of George’s own right eye, floating uncannily against a monochromatic background. No other facial features anchored it, save a barely-there eyebrow. All focus was on the composition’s core, where a dark iris gazed ardently from behind a soft, love-drunk lid.
No records document how Fitzherbert responded to the eye itself, but “it must have bolstered the prince’s marriage proposal,” as scholar Hanneke Grootenboer pointed out in her 2012 book Treasuring the Gaze: Intimate Vision in Late Eighteenth-Century Eye Miniatures. Soon after his letter, the star-crossed lovers wed in a covert ceremony. To cement the union, another disembodied eye was painted—this time in Fitzherbert’s likeness, nestled into a locket for the prince to treasure. No matter where his royal duties took him, George could open the jewel and receive his bride’s amorous gaze.
The Prince of Wales and Fitzherbert weren’t the only ones exchanging eyes in 18th-century England. Eye miniatures, also known as lover’s eyes, cropped up across Britain around 1785 and were en vogue for shorter than half a century. As with the royal couple, most were commissioned as gifts expressing devotion between loved ones. Some, too, were painted in memory of the deceased. All were intimate and exceedingly precious: eyes painted on bits of ivory no bigger than a pinky nail, then set inside ruby-garlanded brooches, pearl-encrusted rings, or ornate golden charms meant to be tucked into pockets, or pinned close to the heart.
As
objects, lover’s eyes are mesmerizing—and bizarre. Part-portrait, part-jewel,
they resist easy categorization. They’re also steeped in mystery: In most
cases, both the subject whose eye was depicted and the artist who painted it
are unknown. What’s more, until the early 2000s, little had been written about
the objects’ history and significance, though they have been part of the collections
of museums like the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Big questions loomed: What sparked
their popularity? Why had they faded so quickly from use? And why portray a
single eye, as opposed to a whole portrait?
Grootenboer, an art historian specializing in portraiture and the art-historical gaze, has made it something of mission to fill in these blanks. Some answers, she knew, resided in late 18th-century British culture. It was a time before photography, when “people were desperate to give each other not just images of themselves, but part of themselves,” she told Artsy. Before the advent of lover’s eyes, miniature portraits depicting a loved one’s entire visage had also become popular. (Often, they came with a lock or braid of hair affixed behind the tiny canvas.) Their purpose was adoration. By looking upon the little likeness, which was typically small enough to cradle in one’s hand, the recipient could “evoke someone’s face,” Grootenboer said. The paintings acted as tiny proxies to be kissed, pressed to bosoms, and talked to when the subject was out of reach.
But lover’s eyes were different. Instead of standing in for the whole person, they depicted just a minute feature. What’s more, they embodied a specific action: the gaze. “It is the look of someone that the [lover’s eye] is a carrier of,” Grootenboer explained. “It is the look that someone wants to imagine, and wants to feel as resting upon themselves.”
Grootenboer, an art historian specializing in portraiture and the art-historical gaze, has made it something of mission to fill in these blanks. Some answers, she knew, resided in late 18th-century British culture. It was a time before photography, when “people were desperate to give each other not just images of themselves, but part of themselves,” she told Artsy. Before the advent of lover’s eyes, miniature portraits depicting a loved one’s entire visage had also become popular. (Often, they came with a lock or braid of hair affixed behind the tiny canvas.) Their purpose was adoration. By looking upon the little likeness, which was typically small enough to cradle in one’s hand, the recipient could “evoke someone’s face,” Grootenboer said. The paintings acted as tiny proxies to be kissed, pressed to bosoms, and talked to when the subject was out of reach.
But lover’s eyes were different. Instead of standing in for the whole person, they depicted just a minute feature. What’s more, they embodied a specific action: the gaze. “It is the look of someone that the [lover’s eye] is a carrier of,” Grootenboer explained. “It is the look that someone wants to imagine, and wants to feel as resting upon themselves.”
The act of looking, and its importance in late 18th-century British society, is central to deciphering the mysteries of eye miniatures. At the time, British culture “was infatuated with with seeing and being seen,” Grootenboer explained. Because social codes limited public interaction between people of the opposite sex, looks could more easily be exchanged than words. (These limitations also triggered the more illicit phenomena of peeping or keyhole-spying.)
In the process, looking became both significant and codified; in other words, different types of glances conveyed different emotions and messages.
Eye miniatures materialized in this environment, where even the subtlest glance could convey lust, love, surveillance, or a heady mix of all three. It’s no wonder, then, that an expression of devotion would come bearing a gazing eye.
Each miniature feels precious and exceedingly intimate, though their moods oscillate from adoring, longing, and lusty to penetrating and eerily watchful. One looks bashfully from the center of a circular pin, resembling a peephole, as if hinting at his or her more lascivious desires, while another gazes, heavy-lidded and adoring, through a sparkling wreath of gems. Others express darker, more melancholy messages: From one ornate golden setting, a man stares controllingly, brow arched, as if attempting to dissuade infidelity; he is watching the woman who carried this jewel, even in his absence. A pearl-rimmed eye secreting two diamond tears, on the other hand, likely represented a deceased loved one; through it, the subject’s glance remained immortal, even in death.
In part, it’s the intimate nature of eye miniatures that Grootenboer credits with the mystery surrounding them. The gaze communicated by each painted eye, and therefore the object itself, “was only important to the lover or to the person that was intimate with the portrayed,” explained Grootenboer. As their subjects and owners left this world, the significance of each jewel faded, too.
What’s more, by 1830, the trend itself petered out. Photography had emerged, promptly snuffing out any interest in miniature portraiture “because it offered a real portrait,” Grootenboer said. From then on, production of lover’s eyes all but stopped, and the names of their subjects, owners, and the love stories that inspired them were largely forgotten.
Yet even without their context, lover’s eyes retain their piercing gazes, their ability to hypnotize. “We feel this gaze resting upon us. We feel this connection with this subject that you have never met. You have the feeling that you know this person a little bit,” explained Grootenboer.
“In that way, they articulate the essence of portraiture: the act of looking at you, the ability of a painting to hold you in its grip.”
The Mysterious History of Lover’s Eye Jewelry. By Alexxa Gotthardt. Artsy, January 4, 2019.
What would have been sexier for early 19th-century British nobles than having a passionate affair? Flirting with their lover right in front of everyone. How? By wearing one of the most intimate parts of their beloved—the eyes—all over their body.
Eye miniatures, also known as lover’s eyes, were a subgenre of jewelry that became the height of fashion in the Georgian era. For centuries, tiny personal portraits of one’s beloved had been common adornments, but depictions of that person’s eyes alone were something pretty new. Although eye miniatures were first spotted around the time of the French Revolution, they became very popular across the Channel around the same time, due to one particular royal trendsetter.
That fashion-forward fellow was the Prince of Wales, the future George IV and eldest son of King George III of American Revolution fame. In contrast to the moral rectitude of his famously faithful father, George Jr. collected true loves like other men did horses. His most infamous affair started in the early 1780s, when the prince fell head-over-heels for married Catholic Maria Fitzherbert.
The 1701 Act of Settlement forbade British royals, especially the future head of the Church of England, from wedding Catholics. Despite her eminent unsuitability, George wooed Maria with endless affection, a faked suicide attempt, and quite a few gifts. He also commissioned British miniaturist Richard Cosway to paint a portrait of his eye, which the prince mailed to her, along with a marriage proposal.
Maria eventually made her lover a portrait of her own eyes. The two were wed soon after, which was illegal; George III eventually forced them apart and made his son marry a German princess. Although the match with Maria was ill-fated, the Prince of Wales started an imitable fashion for eye miniatures, also known as “lover’s eyes.” Only about a thousand of these exist today. All were produced between the 1780s and 1830s, in America, Western Europe, and Russia.
Affluent individuals would wear these trinkets on every appendage, from finger rings to brooches and pendants. These lovers’ gifts, often set on plaques of ivory, were discreet. Presumably, only the wearer and the portrait subject would know the identity of the beloved being depicted, keeping the experience intimate. And the places people would wear them—on the wrist, near the heart—created a “tactile connection between the owner’s body that mirrored the emotional closeness between subject and wearer,” as art historian Jennifer Horn noted in The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America.
It can be difficult for modern art historians to identify the subject of small portraits. After all, you can only see eyes, eyebrows, and maybe a bit of hair.
If you were particularly close to a relative, you might even get a lover’s eye made of a beloved family member. One 18th-century example featured a brown eye beneath some clouds; the gaze in question belonged to Margaret Wardlaw, who died at the age of nine.
Other pieces were surrounded by pearls, symbols of tears and indicating that the subject passed away. One such example appears in the collection of Dr. David Skier and his wife, Nan. In 2012, they loaned their collection of lover’s eyes—numbering over 100, among the largest worldwide—to the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. Although this exhibit has since closed, you can still get your fill of lover’s eyes around the northeast United States, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
19th-Century ‘Lover’s Eye’ Jewelry Was the Perfect Accessory for Secret Affairs. By Carly Silver. Atlas Obscura, September 15, 2017.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, wealthy British and European lovers exchanged "eye miniatures" -- love tokens so clandestine that even now, in the majority of cases, it is impossible to identify their recipients or the people they depict.
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