Miniature of Mabel Morrison

Charles Lepec|Plácido Zuloaga

1866 · Enamel on copper; Damascened iron frame inlaid with gold and silver; silk velvet. · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

This portrait miniature, superbly executed in enamel, is a lovely example of a type very popular amongst middle- and moneyed-classes of Europe and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. The sitter’s husband, English collector Alfred Morrison, was a champion of the artist, Lepec, and twenty years’ later commissioned a second enamel portrait of his wife (who seems hardly to have aged), also in The Met’s collection (2010.33). Morrison acquired an astonishingly large exhibition piece, an Italianate enameled vase and stand, also made by Lepec for display at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle, also in The Met’s collection (2004.452).

Artist

Charles Lepec|Plácido Zuloaga

Date

1866

Medium

Enamel on copper; Damascened iron frame inlaid with gold and silver; silk velvet.

Culture

French, Paris

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Gift of Olivier Hurstel and Martin Levy, 2018