A gold and agate snuff box, English, circa 1740,

The Genevois painter and art critic André Rouquet (1701-1758) worked in different cultural centres, such as Geneva, Paris and London, like many miniature painters at the time. Rouquet was one of the first artists who made use of the improvement in the chemistry of pigments in the mid 18^th century, when opaque white enamel paint was first developed. This meant that that the enamel painter was no longer bound to using a white ground for the lightest area in the portrait miniature, but highlights could instead be rendered in fine pointillé now (see Haydn Williams, Enamels of the World, The Khalili Collections, London, 2009, p. 270). An oval portrait miniature painted on copper, representing William Hogarth, circa 1740/45, belongs to the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London (NPG 5717).