The fashion for eye miniatures – a lover’s eye – started in England in the 1780s. They were deeply personal and sentimental, charged with love and eroticism. This eye miniature reflects another story, one that is about love, must just as much about grief. Ann Fryer, who was the model for this eye, died young, just 19 years old. Stylistically, this is reminiscent of Richard Cosway’s work. He painted the first eye miniatures, the eye of Mrs Fitzherbert, for her lover and her morganatic husband, the Prince of Wales, later King George IV of the United Kingdom.