John Wood Dodge

 (1807-1893)

John Wood Dodge: and the portrait miniature – Raymond D. White

Dodge was born into a middle-class family in New York City on November 4, 1807. (2) At about the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to a sign painter in whose shop his work included painting tinned cans. Dodge, his fellow workers, and his family quickly recognized that he had considerable artistic ability and encouraged him to develop his talent. Dodge seems to have taught himself, first by copying borrowed paintings and then, during the winter of 1826-1827, by drawing from casts and statuary in the collection of the National Academy of Design in New York City.

He quickly found portrait miniatures on ivory to be his metier, and his progress in the field was remarkable. By 1828 he was painting reasonably competent portraits; in 1829 he first exhibited at the National Academy of Design; and in 1832 he was elected an associate of the academy. In the early 1830s William Dunlap wrote that Dodge “stands among the prominent professors of the art [of painting portrait miniatures] in New York.”

Portrait miniatures were not made to be hung on a wall, to be gawked at by the merely curious, as were large portraits. In virtually every case the miniature was painted to be given as a bond between the subject and the recipient. Dodge began to work in the midst of a major change in the technique, and, some feel, in the meaning of portrait miniatures. In the mid-eighteenth century these paintings were small, and the emphasis was on delicate coloring and flattering likenesses. As the century ended, the miniature grew larger (generally 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches high), coloration became bolder, backgrounds tended to be darker, and likenesses became more realistic.