Before the invention of photography in the nineteenth century, there was a steady demand for likenesses that were portable, cheap to produce and which could function as mementos or gifts. For many centuries this need was met by miniature paintings, usually in watercolour on vellum but, in the eighteenth century, the portrait medallion, carved or moulded in a variety of materials, provided a fashionable sculptural alternative. The Scot, James Tassie, developed a form of portrait medallion in glass paste that became highly prized, and we are fortunate to have a significant holding (170 medallions) in our collection.
Tassie was a self-made man from a modest background who, through his ingenuity and creativity, was able to exploit new opportunities to combine art and commerce in eighteenth-century Britain. He trained first as a mason but seems also to have learned modelling and sculpture at the art academy run by the Foulis brothers in Glasgow in the middle of the century. In 1763 Tassie moved to Dublin, then a centre of the jewellery trade, where he teamed up with an eminent physician, Dr Henry Quin, to develop a process for reproducing antique gems using lead glass, or glass paste as it is more commonly known.
Three years later, Tassie established a business in London, rapidly developing a wide range of reproductions of antique gemstones for sale to collectors. Rival manufacturers, including Josiah Wedgwood, frequently used Tassie’s work to embellish their products. The height of his success came in the 1780s with an enormous commission from Catherine the Great to produce over 10,000 copies of classical gemstones in specially designed cabinets and accompanied by a five-volume catalogue.
Reproducing precious stones made Tassie money but it was his portrait medallions that secured his reputation as an artist. These were usually begun with a wax model made from life which was then cast and re-cast through an elaborate process involving various moulds until the final object was formed in what Tassie sometimes described as enamel but which was in essence a form of vitreous paste. The failure rate while firing these medallions in the furnace was very high but, when successful, the resulting object was hard and durable with a very appealing, lustrous surface.
Tassie became highly skilled in modelling his subjects in shallow relief and, given the constraints of the medium, his images can be astonishingly lifelike. His clientele included many of the leading personalities of his century, ranging from naval heroes such as Admiral Keppel to the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith. Tassie’s work was often inspired by the example of classical antiquity. His portrait of the architect Robert Adam (made at his death but showing the sitter as a young man) is illustrated here. The clean, aquiline profile of Tassie’s medallion seems perfectly in tune with the qualities of the sitter’s elegant neoclassical architecture.