On Exhibit

The highly skilled miniaturist Sarah Goodridge painted Daniel Webster a dozen times during his 40-year political career; that he was considerably more to her than an illustrious subject is suggested by the astonishing little talisman she executed in watercolor on ivory and gave the senator in 1828, a self-portrait whose subject would be manifest only to one who knew that telltale mole. The painting—no bigger than a playing card—descended in Webster’s family and is currently perhaps the most arresting picture in an exhibition of miniatures, “Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures,” that has been organized by the Yale University Art Gallery. The exhibition stays there until December 30 before going on to the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. The show is accompanied by a handsome book of the same title by Robin Jaffee Frank, published by Yale University Press.