 | Artist Eliza Goodridge created this 1832 image of Julia Porter Dwight, the great-niece of Yale President Timothy Dwight. It is watercolor on ivory, and was a recent gift of Leonard Hill '69 B.A. |
"Portable Portraits" of youngsters created at a time when the American family was becoming increasingly child-centered are now on view in the Trumbull Gallery at the Yale University Art Gallery.
"American Miniatures of Children, 17701950" features 24 works selected from the museum's permanent collection of approximately 250 American miniatures. The new exhibit is one of many thematic displays from that collection that the museum will sponsor.
"We are fortunate to have an outstanding collection of American miniatures at Yale," says Amy Kurtz Lansing, graduate research assistant in the department of American paintings and sculpture, and organizer of the display.
"Our already fine collection was greatly enhanced by recent gifts and promised bequests at the time of the exhibition 'Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures' in 2000, and we are grateful to have examples of these in this selection," she notes.
During the time that the miniature was popular in America, from the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries, family relationships grew increasingly important and children were newly cherished, explains Lansing.
Many of the portraits on exhibit -- such as Eliza Goodridge's circa 1832 image of Julia Porter Dwight, the great-niece of Yale President Timothy Dwight -- are intended to capture and retain for the parents a tender or playful moment in a child's rapidly changing life. The period was, however, one in which mortality rates, particularly of young children, were high, says Lansing, and several of the images are posthumous portraits or mourning allegories.
Visitors will be brought to the mid-20th century with two portraits, in the traditional miniature medium of watercolor on ivory, by Glenora Richards of her son Tim -- first as a baby, in 1943, then as a boy in 1950.
"American Miniatures of Children, 17701950" will be on view through fall 2004.
The Yale University Art Gallery, located at 1111 Chapel St., is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Thursdays), and Sunday, 1-6 p.m. Admission is free for individuals; groups should call (203) 432-8459 for information about fees and to make a reservation. There is an entrance for people using wheelchairs at 201 York St., with an unmetered parking space nearby. For information on access, call (203) 432-0606. For general information, call (203) 432-0600 or visit the gallery's website at www.yale.edu/artgallery.
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