Miniatures from the Romantic Era in the Tansey Collection

Now on display at the Bomann Museum in Celle, Germany, the Tansey Collection is one of the world’s largest and most important collections of miniature portraits.

The Romantic Era was a particularly splendid epoch in miniature portraiture. A host of artists created portraits of great sensitivity and remarkable technical perfection. This book brings together one hundred and forty-two masterpieces from the famous Tansey Collection that illustrate the golden age of art that was eventually lost due to the rise of photography during the nineteenth century.

During the Romantic Era, more people than ever collected tiny portraits of their nearest and dearest, which they carried with them, or collected at home, to create a pictorial family album. Examples of these captivating works, most of them by French, German, and Austrian artists, are presented and shown here in outstanding color illustrations, some also with large-format detail views.