American Art Collaborative

Charles Fraser was a painter of miniatures, portraits in oils and landscapes. He spent most of his life in his native city of Charleston depicting its leading citizens. This portrait shows a woman in a white bonnet wearing a black dress and a blue shawl. She is named as Mrs. Elizabeth Belin. The sitter does not appear in Fraser's account book, but it dates from a year not included in that volume, it was however included in the 1857 solo exhibition of Fraser's work as catalogue no. 173 (Mrs. E. Belin). She was perhaps the wife or relative of Allard Belin, who is listed in the preceeding record in the same catalog (no. 172). The miniature is in a case which recalls the cases made for daguerreotype photographs, although in fact these were adapted from traveling cases for miniatures.