Self-Portrait

The Artist: If the suggestion discussed below is correct, the artist was John Faed, R.S.A. (1820–1902), who was self-taught and as a very young man in Galloway worked primarily as a miniaturist. He settled in Edinburgh in 1840 and exhibited miniatures and paintings at the Royal Scottish Academy between 1841 and 1895. From 1864 to 1880 he lived primarily in London, where he had begun to exhibit paintings at the Royal Academy in 1861. His brother James Faed (1821–1911) painted some miniatures, but this work is not his. Both are better known as painters in large.

The Miniature: This miniature is in a gold locket frame set as a brooch with a hinged cover; the glazed back reveals locks of dark brown and fair hair bound with gold wire and with seed pearls on white glass; the inside of the lid (which has been separated) is engraved The English Artist / Fane / by himself.

The only recorded miniaturist with the name Fane exhibited once, at the Royal Academy, in 1776. Since this miniature was painted about 1850 it cannot be by him. The quality of this work is so high that without the inscription on the locket it might well have been ascribed to Sir William Charles Ross (1794–1860), the leading Victorian miniaturist. Hermione Waterfield, anticipated by Hope Mathewson and Mrs. Henry W. Howell Jr., Librarian of the Frick Art Reference Library in 1954, has made the ingenious suggestion that it may be by John Faed, who exhibited miniatures at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1841–43, 1846, 1847, and 1853 (see Mary McKerrow, The Faeds—A Biography, Edinburgh, 1982). The few miniatures known to be by this artist are indeed reminiscent of the style of Sir William Ross, and the attribution has a real chance of being correct if we may assume that the engraver of the inscription on the locket misheard Faed as Fane. A miniature portrait of Thomas Allen by John Faed is framed in a somewhat similar manner in a gold locket with a shutting lid (Daphne Foskett, Collecting Miniatures, Woodbridge, England, 1979, p. 218, pl. 51B).

[2016; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]

Mrs. John LaPorte Given (until 1945)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Four Centuries of Miniature Painting," January 19–March 19, 1950, unnumbered cat. (p. 10).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 236.

Mrs. Henry W. Howell Jr. Letter to Mrs. Albert TenEyck Gardner. December 31, 1954, states that she and Hope Mathewson have noticed that the sitter resembles known portraits of the Scottish artist Thomas Faed (1826–1900) and suggests that this work could be either a portrait of him by his brother John, known to have painted miniatures, or a self-portrait by John.

Leo R. Schidlof. The Miniature in Europe in the 16th, 17th, 18, and 19th Centuries. Graz, Austria, 1964, vol. 1, p. 246; vol. 3, pl. 204, fig. 388, dates it about 1840 based on the technique and costume, noting that it cannot therefore be by the artist named Fane who exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776, but suggesting that it could be by a descendant of him.

Daphne Foskett. A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters. New York, 1972, vol. 1, p. 267; vol. 2, pl. 109, no. 291.

Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 14, 180–81, no. 236, colorpl. 236 and ill. p. 181, date it about 1850 and tentatively attribute it to John Faed; relate the style to that of Sir William Ross and note that the quality of the work is very high.

Stephen Lloyd. Letter to Katharine Baetjer. May 5, 1997, writes that it "could well be by John Faed, but may represent either himself, or Tom Faed, or another sitter".

David Devereux. Letter to Katharine Baetjer. June 18, 1997, does not believe it is a self-portrait by John Faed.