The Quiet Precision of the Miniature In the small, intimate spaces of eighteenth-century portraiture, Thomas Day found his place. Born in Devonshire around 1732, his hands were trained to work on a scale that requires a steady breath and a focused eye. He moved to London to study under Ozias Humphry and Daniel Dodd, learning the delicate mechanics of capturing a likeness on surfaces that could barely hold a heavy brushstroke. His work often moved between the tiny, polished surfaces of ivory and the softer textures of pastels and charcoal. There is a specific way he handled watercolor on ivo…
A chart of Thomas Day's corpus mapped not by date but by subject. Spokes are what they painted; rings are when; and the threads between stars reveal the patrons and places that secretly connect them.
Each arm of the atlas gathers works by what they depict: portraits, sacred scenes, mythologies, and the scientific studies. Click a spoke to swing that cluster to the top.
Distance from the center marks time. The innermost ring is the earliest period; the outermost, the final years. Style matures as you move outward.
Coloured lines link works bound by the same patron, commission, or theme. Trace a context to watch related clusters light up across subjects.