//MINIATURES

Over the course of the 18th century, portraiture began to upset the traditional hierarchy of genres and turned to techniques less costly than easel painting, such as miniatures or pastels.

Some thirty miniatures from the 18th and 19th centuries, mainly representing figures important to local history, have joined the museum’s holdings thanks to gifts and bequests.

This section focuses on the period of the highest achievements using this technique of painting on ivory, a type of work which required considerable precision and dexterity to produce stunning results on a surface so limited in size. Furthermore, these works also provide a valuable sociological contribution, as essential objects in the lives of the new social classes resulting from the French Revolution and their quest for recognition. These small effigies, designed for discrete and personal contemplation by their owners, easy to handle and transport, progressively disappeared with the advent of photography.

Two Colmar natives are particularly well represented in this grouping, Michel Hertrich (1811–1880) and Jean-Jacques Karpff, known as Casimir (1770–1829), the second of whom travelled to Paris in 1790 to work in the atelier of David, enjoying thereafter a reputation that extended considerably beyond the borders of Alsace.