Ebenezer Mack

The Miniature Portrait of Gentleman in Blue Overcoat shares a number of noticeable characteristics attributable to Ebenezer Mack (1755-1826), including the elongated head, facial shadowing, and almond-shaped eyes with pupils of differing sizes. In American Miniatures: 1730-1830, Harry B. Wehle explains that the “almond-eye” mannerism was characteristic of Philadelphia painters and miniaturists in the mid-to-late eighteenth century.¹ This quality aligns with Mack’s biography, as records exist of Mack’s advertisements as a miniature painter in the city from 1785-1789.²

^The contrast between the opaquely painted clothing and translucent skin, which allows the luminosity of the ivory to emerge through the pale wash, marks another hallmark of the artist’s miniature oeuvre. These characteristics, as well as Mack's proclivity to paint monochromatic backgrounds that fade in hue as they progress inward to frame the sitter, are evidenced in examples of his miniatures held in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Jasper Ely Cropsey, ca. 1794) and The Smithsonian American Art Museum (T. Stanford, ca. 1795).

¹ Harry B. Wehle, American Miniatures: 1730-1830 (Garden City: Garden City Publishing Company, 1937), p. 17.

² Carrie Rebora Barratt and Lori Zabar, American Portrait Miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010), p. 62.