Courtesy Philip Mould Ltd., London

John Smart’s "Portrait of Mrs. Russell," 1781, a watercolor on ivory in a gold locket frame. The piece was included in Mould’s “Secret Faces" exhibition of portrait miniatures this past June.

Samuel Cooper Richard Cosway John Ramage John Smart Christie’s Inadvertently Sold Stolen Artworks

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“When close to 20 years ago i established a company to specialize in British portraiture, we studiously avoided miniatures,” writes the London dealer Philip Mould in the catalogue for his recent “Secret Faces” exhibition. “To be entirely frank,” he continues, “they scared me a bit; this arcane art seemed to belong more to the world of objets de vertu, more at home in the cases of jewelers . . . than an art-dealing salon.”

Mould is no longer spooked by the diminutive craft. In fact, “Secret Faces,” held this past May 28 through June 14 in his refined Dover Street space, featured 47 British portrait miniatures from the 16th through the mid- 18th century. These highly detailed palm-size likenesses, rendered mainly in watercolor on vellum or ivory and often set in jeweled frames, were cherished as tokens of affection or remembrance. They fell out of fashion with the advent of photography. But today, says Emma Rutherford, a former Bonhams specialist who now consults for Mould, “in the way that the art market tends to be cyclical, miniatures are being reappraised as an important art form.”

Rutherford singles out a June 2007 sale at Sotheby’s London at which the celebrated portraitist Samuel Cooper’s depiction of the famous 17th-century general Oliver Cromwell went for £535,200 ($1.1 million), against an estimate of £100,000 to £150,000 ($199–299,000). The winning bid, placed on behalf of the public art gallery Compton Verney, in Warwickshire, England, fell just shy of the record of $1.2 million paid in 2001 at Christie’s New York for a miniature of George Washington by the Irish-born artist John Ramage.

That $1 million benchmark may have inspired Mould to shed his “smallist prejudice,” as he dubs it, but high points aside, he was also likely moved by the overall rise in recent decades in auction prices for miniatures—typically in the four- to five-figure range. Sums like that have piqued the interest of Sotheby’s, which a few years ago switched miniatures from its English and European silver and vertu sales to its British drawings and watercolors auctions. “They deserve to be seen by people who collect paintings and works on paper, as well as vertu,” says the Sotheby’s specialist Mark Griffith Jones. Christie’s London hosts two biannual sales of portrait miniatures and gold boxes, and Bonhams London holds four sales devoted to miniatures.

According to Griffith Jones, “16th- and 17th-century works have shot up in value over the past 20 years—as have the major names of the 18th century,” such as Richard Cosway and John Smart.

In the private realm, miniatures have maintained a lower profile. For decades, David Lavender, the top London dealer in the field, who also specializes in jewels and objets d’art, has had little competition at the market’s high end. His clients are a devoted tribe with idiosyncratic tastes, he explains: “A lot of collectors are interested in late 18th- and early 19th-century military officers, while others like portraits of children or pretty ladies.”

But niche connoisseurs like these are not necessarily the clients Mould has courted in the past. “Miniatures tend to fall into the stamp-collecting category,” says Bendor Grosvenor, Mould’s codirector. “We thought we would apply to them the same approach we take to fine English paintings, which is very research based.”

According to Grosvenor, “Secret Faces” cost the gallery about £2 million ($4 million) in insurance fees, plus “tens of thousands of pounds” to cover everything from the lenders’ lunch money to the richly researched catalogue. All the objects were loans from private collections and public institutions, such as London’s National Portrait Gallery, and none were for sale during the show. “The benefit for us was in marketing,” says Grosvenor.

Because of the interest the show generated, several private lenders subsequently decided to part with their works, which were sold through the gallery for prices ranging from £10,000 to £100,000 ($19,000–192,000). Mould has started building a modest inventory of miniatures, including an 18th-century image of George IV by Richard Cosway priced at £48,000 ($92,000). The Cosway was among the works that the gallery brought to London’s Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair, which opened just as “Secret Faces” was ending.