Field, John (McKechnie Section 4)

See Section Two for main entry

Here we are concerned with the few silhouettes which Field is known to have painted in black on plaster after 1830, when he was working at his own addresses at 11 and (later) 2 Strand, London, and using his own trade labels. These silhouettes are probably some of the latest to have been painted on plaster. It should be borne in mind, for purposes of identifying profiles of men which are possibly by Field, that shirt-frills were out of fashion by the 1830s, and that men now wore plain stocks. Field appears to have produced fewer cabinet-size silhouettes of women during the 1830s (except for jewellery pieces). I have seen no bronzed work painted on plaster by Field dating from the 1830s and 1840s, but, since Field was such a master, both of bronzing and of painting on plaster, examples doubtless exist.