Collections record Beta

Portrait Miniature - Mrs. Lydia Moore

2016-38-11 a,b

Watercolor on ivory portrait miniature of Mrs. Lydia Moore by Anson Dickinson. Bust portrait of a young woman in a white dress with brown hair and light blue eyes. Facing front right and painted in slight profile against a background of dark blue and grey. Oval portrait set in copper or brass locket under convex glass, with loop at top. Back of the lock has a hair reverse containing Mrs. Moore's hair tied in a small braid. Unrelated printed ad used as filling material at rear of hair reserve. B - Outer case for locket. Oval album case of red leather with white silk lining and two hook clasps. Written in ink on silk lining, "Mrs. Lydia Moore."

Part of a lot of Dickinson miniatures of the Moore Family purchased from Marika's in Boston in the 1960s. Originally purchased in Troy, NY. Exhibited at Danforth Museum Symposium in Framingham, MA in 1985 and at the Worcester Art Museum in Winter/Spring of 1991, but attributed to E. G. Malbone.

Born in Milton, a village in the town of Litchfield, Anson Dickinson began advertising himself as a miniature painter in 1802. He traveled to New York in 1804, where he was painted by Edward Greene Malbone, the leading American miniaturist of his day. Dickinson painted over 1,500 miniatures over the course of fifty years, traveling as far as Canada and South Carolina to paint. He kept a studio in New York for a period, and returned frequently to Litchfield where he painted prominent residents and students of the Female Academy and Law School.

• Dickinson, Anson, 1779-1852

c.1807

Overall Height 5.5", Width 3.5"

• silk
• leather
• watercolor
• ivory
• glass
• brass