Portrait of a Man (1795): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Man (1795) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is George Engleheart (British, 1752–1829).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Executed around 1795, this work exhibits strong yet restrained tones. The background is painted in muted gray-browns, not the bright blue cloudy sky for which George Engleheart became known. The sitter’s position is somewhat awkward, with his shoulders nearly squared with the picture plane but his head in a three-quarter view. He wears a gray coat with fabric-covered buttons and the high collar fashionable in the 1790s. His hair is carefully delineated with dark gray brushstrokes applied over a pale gray ground. The sitter’s powdered hair is worn long, and his dark, deep-set eyes cast shadows that lend drama to the portrait. This proto-romantic sensibility is characteristic of the artist’s work between 1780 and 1795, as is its relatively modest size. Painted on ivory measuring 6.9 centimeters high, it is the smaller format of Engleheart miniatures before the turn of the century, after which the format expanded, as seen in the museum’s other two works by the artist. The portrait is unsigned, which is typical for his works of this period. The simple gold frame is original. The work was in the collection of Sir Harry Waechter, Bart., the British businessman and philanthropist, until his 1929 death at his home in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Man
• Date: 1795
• Creator attribution: George Engleheart (British, 1752–1829)
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Portrait Miniature
• Technique: watercolor on ivory in an original gold frame
• Dimensions: Framed: 7.6 x 6.2 cm (3 x 2 7/16 in.); Sight: 7 x 5.7 cm (2 3/4 x 2 1/4 in.)
• Collection: P - British before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1943.640

A detail from the museum

Engleheart charged 10 to 12 guineas for his miniature portraits; such a fee would have been within the means of aristocratic and upper-middle-class patrons.

Collection credit

The Edward B. Greene Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Portrait Miniatures: The Edward B. Greene Collection. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1951.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Alan Chong. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.
• Korkow, Cory, and Dario Robleto. Disembodied: Portrait Miniatures and Their Contemporary Relatives. 2013.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.