Miniature Porcelain Painting of a Victorian Lady With Feather Hat. A common image from the period, often reimagined in different colors and slightly different poses, but capturing the style and fashion of women of the era. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Overall Size: 6 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 in. 

Paradoxically, while interest in classical portrait painting on canvas declined in the 19th Century, production of portraits on porcelain rose. The Industrial Revolution, the rise of capitalism and a middle class with more disposable income, and the changing role of women in society and the demand for equality and respect all contributed to this shift. Production of painting in general on plates, cups and saucers, vases, urns, pitchers, and plaques boomed during the late 1800s and early 1900s, with portraiture reaching its zenith between roughly 1870 and 1915, reflecting the Victorian Era and European tastes in general immediately before World War I. Most of the porcelain painters copied their portraits from earlier well known oil on canvas works by such famous artists as Rembrandt van Rijn, Thomas Gainsborough, Baron Francois Gerard, Anthony van Dyck, and Angelica Kauffmann. Favorite subjects included famous men (Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln, Kings of France and England and so forth) and women (Josephine, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great of Russia, and royalty of other nations). Beautiful, if not quite as famous or infamous, women were a favorite subject of porcelain painters and their customers, and many of these porcelain paintings were copied from specialists like Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, Joseph Karl Stieler, and Angelo Asti. Today, the desire for porcelain portraiture has changed somewhat, with older pieces in mint condition fetching large sums at auction by stalwart collectors, but the style itself has fallen out of vogue with the general populace, and thus is considered a niche market, with a handful of places in Europe still producing new paintings on porcelain (both as fine art and as functional or decorative plates and other objects) to this day.

Commensurate with age.