c.1790-1800 Sentimental Pendant of Child

c. 1790-1800 Georgian sentimental pendant with a glass-covered portrait miniature of a child in a blue-sashed gown, in a gold setting embellished with red guilloche enamel and foiled black-dot paste. The marquise navette shape was very popular during the last decades of the 18th century. While jewels set with portrait miniature were made for both mourning and sentimental occasions, the present pendant is almost certainly non-mourning and sentimental, due to the absence of a mourning inscription, as well as the use of red guilloche enamel (a color often paired with sentimental jewels, conveying devotion and affection). Three late 18th c jewels with red guilloche enamel, all sentimental, are in the Victoria and Albert Museum (M.84-1969, 2196&A-1899). Another, a foiled paste and red guilloche navette like the present pendant, is illustrated on p. 217 of “A History of Jewels” by J. Anderson Black.

The present portrait miniature’s subject can be identified only as a genderless child due to common Georgian practice of dressing both boys and girls in a white skirted gown. Referred to as a petticoat or skirted ‘short clothes’, these gender-neutral gowns became popular following the Enlightenment as a response to new theories of child-rearing, which emphasized good hygiene and comfort. 18th century parents were encouraged to dress children in ‘breathable’ linen and cotton, which were lightweight and more easily washable. Both boys and girls were clothed in white frocks with a blue or pink sash around the waist (the sash color not indicative of gender). Boys would be dressed in menswear once they were ‘breeched’ at age seven, while many girls continued dressing in sashed gowns into their teenage years. For examples of Georgian-era portraits of children in blue-sashed white frocks, see Master John Heathcote by Thomas Gainsborough (c. 1771/1772), Master Richard Meyler by George Romney (c.1795), and John Ruskin by James Northcote (c.1822).