Miss Tamplin
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Miss Tamplin” now? Collection: Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Not on view at present. Checked September 25, 2026.
London, United Kingdom
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
In the late 18th century a new sister art and rival to miniature portraits appeared. Since about 1700 miniaturists had worked on ivory, and before that on vellum (animal skin). Up to the late 18th century, watercolour was used mainly by topographic artists, who applied it on paper to tint their drawings. But as watercolour painting developed as an art in its own right, miniaturists saw that working on paper was easier, and so quicker and cheaper. They could thus attract new patrons. Many now widened their repertoire and developed types of watercolour portraits on paper or card. They produced elegant graphite drawings, either tinted lightly with a watercolour wash or with the sitter's head painted minutely in watercolour. But unlike the more expensive vellum or ivory, paper can quickly discolour and degrade.
Read on
This portrait also borrows from another fashionable rival to miniature painting, the profile. Silhouettes, or ‘profiles’ as they were known then, became popular in the 1770s. At that time the archaeological discoveries of Roman sites at Herculaneum and Pompeii encouraged a taste for Neo-classicism. ‘Profiles’ became even more fashionable after about 1775, when Johann Kaspar Lavater published his hugely popular Essays on Physiognomy. He claimed that one could detect a person’s character by concentrating on his or her main features. These would reveal both virtues and vices. Lavater illustrated the book with numerous simple black profiles.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Details
- Accession number
- P.12-1927
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
