The Silver Goblet

Lucy May Stanton is best known for her impressionistic portrait miniatures. She lived mostly in Georgia, but she studied art in Paris and was well known in the art centers of New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston. In this portrait, Stanton presents herself in a forthright, no-nonsense pose, displaying her virtuosity in handling watercolor. She followed the traditional technique of roughening the surface of the ivory so that pigment would adhere to it but then tilted her work board to move the flow of the washes. In “puddling,” an innovative wet-on-wet technique, she allowed broad pools of color to shift over the surface and then dry, leaving a rich texture.