Jeepers Creepers, Take Care of Your Peepers

In observance of Save Your Vision Week, look our way for unusual depictions of eyes from the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection.

They say that the eyes are the windows of the soul. These two souls certainly are lookers! Small paintings like these, known as miniatures, were popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries before the invention of photography.

Miniature paintings were often portraits, created with many thin coats of watercolor applied to small pieces of ivory. People would commission the portraits of themselves or loved ones to act as a record or to mark an important event. Miniatures served as tokens of affection, functioning much like today's family photographs. They were usually set in a piece of jewelry or kept for personal, private viewing.

Miniatures like these eyes suggest that the relationship of the owner and sitter may have been of an intimate or secret nature. Casual viewers would not likely identify the sitter from just an eye. Yet such a portrait would be cherished by a lover or close friend.

Pictured top: Unidentified artist, n.d., Eye, about 1900, watercolor on ivory, 11/16 x 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Henry D. Hill.

Pictured bottom: Unidentified artist, n.d., Eye of a Lady, about 1800, watercolor on ivory, 13/16 x 15/16 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.