Hargraves (McKechnie Section 4)

Recorded by Jackson (Dictionary), with the date 1813. The only silhouette by Hargraves which I have seen bears this date; it is the illustrated bronzed profile (in my collection) of Hannah More (1745-1833), the author of ethical books and tracts, poems and stories. Born at Stapleton, near Bristol, she bought a house at Cowslip Green, near Wrington, Bristol, in 1785, and eventually died at Clifton, Bristol. In 1813 her book Christian Morals was published.

There seem to be no grounds for identifying the artist with any of the members of the family of the Liverpool miniature painter Thomas Hargreaves, recorded by Foskett; the spelling of Hargraves's name in the inscription (carefully incised and pencilled over) below the bust-line of the illustrated silhouette, 'Hargraves/1813', is quite clear.

The silhouette of Hannah More is unusual. the portrait itself measuring barely 1 1/2 in. in height. The artist has used gold paint with varying density on all parts of the profile except the sitter's face, which is painted in pale ochre-brown body colour. Some artists, when adopting this technique, used yellow paint to achieve an effect of gold highlighting, but Hargraves seems to have achieved this result by painting out the parts of lowest highlighting with thinned ochre-brown base colour. The bust-line follows a convexity/concavity line, but near the arm truncation there is a deep line of ground colour, which gives an almost three-dimensional effect. The work is competent, and the whole effect neat and attractive. The frame (of oval turned wood), like the profile, is small, measuring 4 1/4 x 3 3/4 in.

It is not known if Hargraves also painted in black. Jackson states that his work is 'painted on plaster, gilding added'; since she does not mention the pale ochre-brown base colour, she may be referring not to the silhouette of Hannah More, but to another example (painted in black).

III. 1253