Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

In the last quarter of the 18th century, the production of portrait miniatures declined only to immediately become a collector's item. Museums, private collectors and art dealers began to appreciate these portraits for their artistic quality and technical sophistication, but also as evidence of the fading culture of the 18th-century aristocracy and 19th-century bourgeoisie. In 1865, the Victoria & Albert Museum organized the first exhibition of miniatures from its collections; twelve years later, the work of Heinrich Füger (1751-1818) was featured in the Retrospective Exhibition marking the opening of the new Academy of Arts building in Vienna; in 1889, the Burlington Club in London held another exhibition of miniatures. Beginning in 1895, the newly formed Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers in London devoted regular exhibitions to this art form. In 1906, the Museum of Applied Arts in Brno organized an exhibition that included over two hundred miniature portrait silhouettes. That same year, the Miniaturenasstellung in Vienna showcased more than three thousand artworks. A year later, in Prague, the actress Hana Kvapilová (1860-1907) and the women's section of the North Bohemian National Union organized an amateur exhibition of porcelain and miniatures - a "sweet heritage," as the critic K. B. Mádl put it. Finally, at the turn of 1911 and 1912, the Mánes Association of Fine Arts devoted its 38th exhibition, Old Portraits in Bohemia (1780-1860), to historical portraits, including portrait miniatures. The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague responded to this growing interest by increasing its collection of miniatures, largely due to the efforts of František Xaver Jiřík (1867-1947), who was the curator and later the director of the museum. In 1913, the museum hosted Jiřík’s lecture entitled O miniaturní podobizně v Čechách v 1. pol. XIX. stol. (On Portrait Miniatures in Bohemia in the First Half of the 19th Century), alongside the exhibition of miniatures and small portraits, in which Jiřík aimed to draw on the themes from the previous international and Austrian exhibitions of this kind. According to his own words in the introduction to the catalogue, Jiřík saw the exhibition as an illustrative accompaniment to his lecture.  

The aim of the exhibition was to bring together all the material from the museum's collections and systematically map the portrait miniatures created in Bohemia. In order to accomplish this heroic task, Jiřík decided to arrange the artifacts in chronological order, outlining the emergence, peak, and decline of Bohemian miniature art. To provide a context for the exhibited works, the exhibition also included the works of foreign artists working in Bohemia and related portrait disciplines, such as silhouettes and early photography. Such a wide range was possible thanks to loans from other museum collections (SVPU, Náprstek Museum, North Bohemian Museum in Liberec) and, above all, from private collections. Among the private lenders, to whom the museum appealed through newspaper articles in Čas, České slovo and Venkov, were mainly Prague citizens, civil servants and directors of secondary and grammar schools. Several items came from Prince František Prince Thun-Hohenstein (1847-1916), the governor of the Kingdom of Bohemia; Ladislav Lábek (1882-1970), the founder of the Ethnographic Museum of Pilsen; and Metoděj Jan Zavoral (1862-1942), the superior of the Royal Canon of the Premonstratensians at Strahov. The list of lenders is printed in the meticulously prepared catalogue, which also includes a list of artists. For the purposes of the exhibition, the artists’ dates of birth and death were revised by art historians Karel Guth (1883–1943) and Zdeněk Wirth (1878–1961), among others.

The catalogue itself is divided into six sections: miniatures with identified authorship (cat. no. 1-254), miniatures by anonymous artists (cat. no. 255-409), silhouettes (cat. no. 410-485), daguerreotypes (cat. no. 486-501), early photographs (cat. no. 502-522), and etchings and lithographs (cat. no. 523-529). This systematic division, with the works also arranged alphabetically according to the author's name, is very clear, but hardly practical if the aim of the exhibition was to follow the chronological and stylistic development of the Bohemian portrait miniature, as mentioned in the introductory text to the catalogue. It is more likely that the catalogue served as a structured list of exhibits, whose actual placement in the exhibition was different and followed the chronological line emphasized by Jiřík. The concept of the exhibition is perhaps reflected in Jiřík’s book Miniatura a drobná podobizna v době empirové a probuzenské v Čechách (Miniatures and Small Portraits in the Empire and National Revival Periods), which, as Jiřík states in the preface, is directly related to the Prague exhibition. The book was supposed to be published the following year (1914), but due to the war it was postponed until 1930. After the introduction, which outlines the development of the European portrait miniature, the book – presumably in line with the exhibition – consists of the following chapters: The Precursors, The Empire Period 1800-1815 (subchapters The Successors of Rococo, The Pioneers, The Prague School), The National Revival Period 1815-1848 (subchapters Transition 1815-1830, Peak 1830-1814, Epigones 1840-1848), Studies and Portrait Drawings 1848-1860, and an Appendix devoted to silhouettes, painted portraits on porcelain and early photographs. Each subchapter lists miniaturists whose works illustrate the stylistic development traced by Jiřík.  

The best represented artists in the exhibition were Alexander Clarot (1796-1842), a graduate of the Viennese Academy who had been working in Prague since 1836; Josef Zumsande (1806-1865), a graduate of both the Prague and Viennese Academies and, in the words of F. X. Jiřík, successor of A. Clarot in Prague; Taddeo Mayer (1814-1856), whose works F. X. Jiřík considered as the peak of Czech portrait miniature painting; and Jan Zachariáš Quast (1814-1891), a leading representative of small portrait painting on porcelain. The exhibition also featured the works of Jindřich Schödl (1777-1838), one of the first specialized miniaturists to emerge from the Prague Academy; Jan Kroupa (1794-1875), also a student of Josef Bergler and an established portraitist of the Prague bourgeoisie; Václav Mysliveček (1812-1882), another graduate of the Prague Academy; and František Maschek (1797-1862), who spent time in Paris and London and brought a wave of inspiration from Western European miniature painting to the Prague milieu. The practice of miniaturists migrating through European centres and spa resorts was represented by Bedřich Lieder (1780-1859), originally from Potsdam, and Ferdinand Lütgendorff (1785-1858) from Würzburg, both of whom worked in Prague for some time. The works of specialized miniaturists were complemented with small portrait paintings by Josef Bergler, Antonín Machek, and Josef Mánes. Some of the works were self-portraits of the miniaturists; among the sitters were civil servants, merchants, military dignitaries, aristocrats, townspeople, a winemaker and a collector of the water toll at Prague's Výtoň.

In keeping with the traditional miniature technique, painting on ivory was predominant in the exhibition, closely followed by watercolour on paper. Other techniques included oil painting on canvas, metal sheet or paper, and painting on porcelain. Most of the artefacts were presented in their original frames, often accompanied by original magnifying glasses. This was of particular value to scholars and researchers. Etchings and lithographs, which had their own section in the catalogue, fit the theme of the exhibition because of their small size and, as the critic K. B. Mádl noted, their intimate character. Since the Austro-Hungarian authorities strictly limited the number of reproductions, lithographic portraits were rare objects that the sitters gave to their closest friends and relatives. The inclusion of daguerreotypes and early photographs was also a logical choice, as the emergence of this revolutionary photographic technique coincided with the miniature boom of the 1840s. Photography elicited varied responses among miniaturists; some chose to change their specialization, while others retrained as colourists for black-and-white images. The medium of photography, which has been cited as the main reason for the rapid decline of miniatures, symbolically closed the exhibition. However, the inclusion of photographic material in an art exhibition was not common in 1913. Photography (unlike the earlier daguerreotypes) had not yet attained the status of art (as K. B. Mádl's report on the exhibition makes clear), and thus the Exhibition of Miniatures and Small Portraits was significant for future photographic exhibitions at the Museum of Decorative Arts [Wittlich 2022]. The exhibition also included another specific type of portraiture – silhouettes. With their semi-mechanical and relatively inexpensive method of production, they were a precursor to the fully mechanized medium of photography, but at the same time they retained an aura of antiquity and artistic refinement. With an approximately one hundred silhouettes in the exhibition, Jiřík managed to succinctly characterize domestic silhouette art from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. He highlighted the leading artists of the time (Jan Berka, Vojtěch Benedikt Juhn, Ivan Schimmel Lohelius, Vavřinec Klinger) and gave an overview of traditional techniques (painting, cutting), with a special emphasis on verre églomisé, the visually arresting method of using gold foil on glass. Silhouettes were also extensively treated in K. B. Mádl's report on the exhibition, published as an appendix to Národní listy on March 2, 1913, under the title Drobné podobizny (Small Portraits). Mádl ends his largely neutral review with a dry statement, “The miniature, which mirrors the whole society of Rococo, Empire and the Vormärz periods, and the new absolutism, died and was never resurrected. It passed from family to collectors and became a historical phenomenon.” The 1913 exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague did not revive artists’ interest in making miniatures – this was not its aim – but it laid foundations to further research into miniature portraits. The results of Czech miniature scholarship include Karel Holešovský’s book Portrétní miniatura (Portrait Miniature, 1976), the National Gallery’s exhibition Portrait Miniatures of the 17th-19th Century (1996), the publication Malované miniaturní portréty (Painted Miniature Portraits, 2005) by Lubomír Sršeň and Olga Trmalová, and, more recently, Vzestupy a pády portrétní miniatury (The Rise and Fall of Portrait Miniatures, 2022) by Janka Hradilová et al., and Kopie a falzifikáty v portrétní miniatuře (Copies and Forgeries in Portrait Miniatures, 2022) by David Hradil et al. The Prague exhibition of miniatures was quite popular with the professional public; it was visited by the Circle for Art History Studies and the Club for Old Prague, and was the subject of a number of newspaper reports and reviews, three of which were written by Karel Boromejský Mádl (1859-1932), a professor at the Prague School of Arts and Crafts.

Anežka Mikulcová

Works Cited

Max von Boehn, Miniaturen und Silhouetten. Ein Kapitel aus Kulturgeschichte und Kunst, München 1917

František Xaver Jiřík, Miniatura a drobná podobizna v době empírové a probuzenské v Čechách, Praha 1930

Karel Holešovský, Portrétní miniatura, Praha 1976

Harry Blättel, International dictionary miniature painters, porcelain painters, silhouettists, München 1992

Lubomír Sršeň – Olga Trmalová, Malované miniaturní portréty. Sbírka oddělení starších českých dějin Národního muzea, Praha 2005

Janka Hradilová (et al.), Vzestupy a pády portrétní miniatury, Praha 2022

Ludmila Ourodová-Hronková – Olga Trmalová, Portrétní miniatury ve sbírkách Národního památkového ústavu, uzemní památkové správy v Českých Budějovicích, České Budějovice 2022

Filip Wittlich, Od výstav ke sbírce. Výstavy Uměleckoprůmyslového musea v Praze v letech 1905–1939 a vznik fotografické sbírky, Staletá Praha XXXVIII, 2022, no. 1, pp. 48–75

Anonymous author, Umělecko-průmyslové museum, Čas XXVII, 1913, no. 33, 3. 2., p. 3

Anonymous author, Umělecko-průmyslové museum, České slovo VII, 1913, no. 29, 4. 2., p. 3

Anonymous author, Přednášky, Národní listy LIII, 1913, no. 46, 16. 2., p. 4

Anonymous author, Výstava miniatur, České slovo VII, 1913, no. 43, 20. 2., p. 9

Anonymous author, Vycházky, Národní listy LIII, 1913, no. 53, 23. 2., p. 5

Anonymous author, Klub "Za Starou Prahu", České slovo VII, 1913, no. 46, 23. 2., p. 10

Anonymous author, Výstava miniatur, Čas XXVII, 1913, no. 55, 25. 2., p. 5

Anonymous author, Výstava miniatur, Národní listy LIII, 1913, no. 60, 2. 3., p. 5

Anonymous author, Vycházky, Národní listy LIII, 1913, no. 70, 12. 3., p. 4

Anonymous author, Výstava miniatur, Venkov VIII,1913, no. 29, 4. 2., p. 8; no. 46, 23. 2., p. 10

Anonymous author, Miniatur-Ausstellung im Kunstgewerblichen Museum, Bohemia LXXXIII, 1913, no. 43, 13. 2., p. 12

Anonymous author, Retrospektiva a přítomnost, Máj XI, 1913, no. 28, pp. 339–340

František Xaver Jiřík, Životopisné příspěvky, Ročenka Kruhu pro pěstování dějin umění za rok 1916, pp. 47–54