The Delicate Precision of a Miniature Master In the quiet, refined circles of eighteenth-century England, few art forms captured the intimacy of human connection quite like the portrait miniature. Among the most gifted practitioners of this delicate medium was Samuel Collins, an artist whose brief but brilliant career left an indelible mark on the history of British portraiture. Born in Bristol around 1735 to a clergyman, Collins’s path to the easel was far from conventional. Originally trained in the rigorous, logical world of law as an attorney, he eventually abandoned the pursuit of legal…