Penelope Carwardine: An Extraordinary 18th-Century Miniaturist and the Woman in Deep Mourning
There is something so intriguing about this little portrait. The woman is dressed almost entirely in black, with a bonnet framing her face and a closely wrapped neckcloth concealing her throat and shoulders. There is no jewellery, no fashionable décolletage, no elaborate arrangement of lace or coloured silk. Almost nothing remains visible except her face.
And what a wonderfully compelling face it is. She looks like someone one would very much like to have met.
But who was she? Whom was she mourning? Was she a widow? And what can we learn from the fact that her portrait was painted by another woman, Penelope Carwardine, one of the relatively few female artists working professionally in eighteenth-century England?
A Portrait of Mourning
What makes this miniature so remarkable is the completeness of the sitter's mourning costume.
Portraits of Georgian women wearing black shawls, neckcloths or fashionable hats are familiar enough. During the 1760s, black accessories were widely worn with coloured silk gowns, lace and jewellery.
But Carwardine's sitter presents something quite different.
Here, black is not an accessory. It dominates the entire composition.
The bonnet, high neckline and closely wrapped neckcloth leave almost nothing visible except the woman's face. Portraits of eighteenth-century women in such severe, all-encompassing mourning dress, particularly with the head, throat and shoulders so completely covered, are not often encountered. It is an unusual and arresting image.
And the severity of the clothing makes Carwardine's achievement all the more impressive. Rather than overwhelming the sitter, the black costume concentrates our attention upon her face. There is a remarkable sense of individuality in the portrait despite the almost complete absence of decorative detail.
Penelope Carwardine: What Did It Mean for a Woman to Paint Another Woman?
Penelope Carwardine (1729–1804), whose signature establishes her authorship of this miniature, was a professional portrait painter in Georgian London. But what did it mean for a woman to earn her living by painting portraits in the middle of the eighteenth century? And might a woman artist have brought something particular to the portrayal of another woman, especially one dressed in such severe mourning?
We should be careful not to imagine that women necessarily painted women differently from their male contemporaries. Nevertheless, the encounter is intriguing. Here is a sitter who has relinquished almost every conventional attribute of feminine display, painted by an artist who herself occupied an unusual position in Georgian society.
Carwardine had not necessarily set out to become a professional artist. She came from a Herefordshire family whose fortunes had declined. Her father, John Carwardine of Thinghills Court, encountered serious financial difficulties, and Penelope's ability to paint became a means of supporting the family.
There is something particularly interesting about this transformation. Painting was considered an agreeable accomplishment for a genteel young woman, but earning money from it was another matter. The very skill that might once have demonstrated a daughter's refinement became a practical means of financial independence.
Her mother, Anne Bullock, was also associated with miniature painting, and Penelope's earliest dated work is recorded in 1753. By the early 1760s she was established in London, painting portraits for paying customers.
And she was successful.
In 1763, Thomas Mortimer published The Universal Director, a directory of London's trades and professions. Of the twenty-four miniature painters listed, only two were women. Carwardine was one of them.
Twenty-four miniature painters, and just two women. It is a striking reminder of how unusual her professional position was.
Her clientele included the aristocracy. Among her surviving works is a portrait of Alicia Maria, Countess of Egremont, dated 1757 and preserved at Kenwood.
But we should not imagine her working in some secluded feminine world, painting only ladies and children.
On 15 March 1763, James Boswell visited Carwardine while the Earl of Eglinton was sitting to her for a miniature. Boswell described her as a “very good-looking, agreeable woman.”
The remark is characteristically Boswellian, but what interests me rather more is the scene itself: an aristocratic gentleman sitting for his portrait, a woman artist conducting her professional business, and Boswell arriving to observe them.
It places Carwardine firmly within the fashionable artistic society of Georgian London.
And it raises another question. What sort of women commissioned her portraits?
Were they aristocratic sitters, prosperous members of the expanding middle classes, or women whose circumstances resembled her own? We know that she attracted distinguished patrons, but the identity of our woman in mourning remains a mystery.
A New Kind of Portrait: The Modest School
There is something else about Carwardine's portrait that deserves attention. Its remarkable restraint was not entirely accidental. She belonged to a generation of miniature painters whose work was moving away from the elaborate conventions of earlier portraiture towards a more direct observation of individual character.
Art historians have sometimes grouped these artists under the rather curious name of the Modest School.
It was not a formal school, and Katherine Coombs has cautioned against treating its painters as though they shared a single style. But the term is useful in describing a particular quality of mid-eighteenth-century miniature painting.
Artists such as Samuel Collins, Luke Sullivan and Samuel Finney worked on a small, intimate scale, frequently producing portraits intended to be worn as jewellery. Their paintings could possess an extraordinary directness, without the elaborate settings, costumes and gestures that often dominated larger portraits.
The question is whether Carwardine's woman in mourning represents an especially compelling expression of this tendency.
The sitter's clothing certainly leaves little room for fashionable display. Yet the portrait is anything but impersonal. Her features have been carefully observed, and her expression possesses a quiet individuality that is difficult to forget.
It is tempting to imagine that Carwardine's own experience as a professional woman might have sharpened her interest in the character of her sitters. We cannot demonstrate that, of course. But we can recognise the extraordinary sensitivity with which she has painted this particular face.
Carwardine was also a talented draughtswoman. Her chalk drawing Portrait of a Lady Looking in a Mirror,
formerly in the Cyril Fry collection, shows that her artistic interests extended beyond the miniature. She was not simply producing small likenesses as fashionable ornaments; she was an accomplished artist working in several forms.
And what happened to her career?
In 1763, the very year in which Boswell visited her studio, Carwardine married James Butler, an organist. Her recorded professional activity subsequently appears to diminish, although she continued to exhibit at the Society of Artists in the early 1770s.
Was marriage responsible? Did her circumstances change sufficiently that she no longer needed to paint professionally? Or has much of her later work simply disappeared from the historical record?
We cannot answer these questions with certainty. But they remind us how easily the careers of women artists could become obscured, particularly when their names and circumstances changed through marriage.
What survives is enough to establish Carwardine as a serious and successful painter. And in this miniature we have something especially interesting: a woman who earned her living through the careful observation of other people, portraying another woman at a moment when the conventions of mourning had stripped away almost every outward sign of fashionable femininity.
The result is one of the most arresting little portraits I have encountered.
References and Research Note
Primary sources: Thomas Mortimer, The Universal Director (1763); James Boswell, London Journal, 15 March 1763; Grub-street Journal, 12 February 1730; London Chronicle, 25–27 March 1760.
Published scholarship: Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures; Daphne Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures: A History and A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters; Katherine Coombs, The Portrait Miniature in England.
Mourning dress: The Art of Mourning, discussion of mourning stages and French regulations of 1765; contemporary English court mourning instructions following George II's death in 1760; Rictor Norton, Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Reports: A Sourcebook, “Funerals and Mourning Customs.”
Research note: The miniature is signed by Penelope Carwardine. Its identification as a mourning portrait rests upon the sitter's costume and its correspondence with contemporary mourning conventions. The severity of the dress suggests deep mourning, although the precise stage cannot be established. The sitter's identity, the person she mourned and the identity of the bracelet's original wearer remain unknown.
Comments