Portrait of General Sir Charles Grey, later 1st Earl Grey (1794): Art, History and Details

Portrait of General Sir Charles Grey, later 1st Earl Grey (1794) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henry Bone (British, 1755–1834).

The work and its context

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

Unlike fragile portrait miniatures painted in watercolor on vellum or ivory, which are prone to cracking, fading, and flaking, enamels are resilient, impervious to the effects of light, and retain their striking original colors over time. Partly for this reason enamel was considered ideal for reproducing famous paintings and treasured portraits in a reduced and luminous form. The complicated and labor-intensive process of enameling required the artist to fire numerous layers of colored metal oxide at different temperatures. This process made it difficult to produce a faithful portrait likeness, though masters of the medium were able create portraits of remarkable subtlety imbued with the sitter's personality. Henry Bone ushered in an enamel renaissance during the late 1700s with his miniatures, which include sensitive and elegant works like this portrait of General Sir Charles Grey, after a portrait by his contemporary Thomas Lawrence. An innovator of new techniques, Bone retained the brilliance and purity of colors in layered glass enamel while achieving fine, naturalistic details by using overglazes for the faces.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of General Sir Charles Grey, later 1st Earl Grey
• Date: 1794
• Creator attribution: Henry Bone (British, 1755–1834)
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Portrait Miniature
• Technique: enamel in a gilt metal frame
• Dimensions: Framed: 9.6 x 8 cm (3 3/4 x 3 1/8 in.); Sight: 8.9 x 7.3 cm (3 1/2 x 2 7/8 in.)
• Collection: P - British before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1949.550

A detail from the museum

Henry Bone was a master enameler from Cornwall who began his training in a porcelain factory.

Collection credit

The Edward B. Greene Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Royal Academy of Arts annual exhibition. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1795: The Twenty-Seventh. London: Printed by Jospeh Cooper, 1795.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Edward Belden Greene. Portrait Miniatures ; The Edward B. Greene Collection. 1951.
• Lawrence, Thomas, and Kenneth Garlick. Sir Thomas Lawrence: A Complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings. Oxford: Published with the assistance of the Getty Grant Program [by] Phaidon, 1989.

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.