Portrait of Sandford Peacocke
1801
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1801
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Portrait of Sandford Peacocke is a 1801 unspecified by William Wood, a British Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This is a small, round portrait of a young man with powdered hair and a high white collar. His face is smooth, his gaze steady. William Wood painted tiny portraits like this one—called miniatures—using a magnifying glass. He built faces with tiny dots and dashes instead of smooth brushstrokes, giving his subjects a quiet spark. Most of his sitters were London gentlemen, but we don’t know who Sandford Peacocke was or why he mattered. To see how Wood’s dots compare to smoother miniatures, look up the technique called sfumato.
William Wood worked primarily in London and exhibited over 100 miniatures at the Royal Academy, where he began his training at the age of 16. His portraits of men in particular are regarded as highly refined and remarkably sensitive psychological studies. While Wood is known to have copied miniatures by Richard Cosway (1742–1821), George Engleheart (1752–1829), and John Smart (1741–1811), his distinctive style can be observed in the network of small dots and dashes of paint that follow the contours of a sitter’s face. In addition to portrait miniatures, Wood executed a number of eye…
Sandford Peacocke was married in 1801 and by 1802 was serving in the British military in Jamaica. It may have been for these occasions that the miniature was painted.
Read the full account in the museum source.
