Unknown, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1710

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Unknown, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1710,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.2238.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Unknown, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1710,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.2238.

This miniature of an unknown man in court dress was previously attributed to the Swiss painter Jean Etienne Liotard (1702–1789). However, the artistic style of the painting and the clothing of this sitter date the miniature to the time of Liotard’s childhood, long before he became a professional painter. It also does not resemble known works by Liotard, who rarely painted in miniature and preferred ivory to vellum.¹

More convincingly, Bernd Pappe has suggested that this miniature was probably painted in northern Germany around 1710–20.² Unfortunately, very few German miniaturists working in or near Berlin signed their names to their works at this time. The application of the paint and handling of the background bear some resemblance to works of this period in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin that were produced in Prussia.³ The sitter may have been a member of one of the principal German courts, perhaps that of Frederick William I of Prussia. While he is richly attired in jewel-toned velvet and lace and wears the long, curled peruke of a courtier, he does not have any specific decorations that could identify him.

Nevertheless, there is no question that this is an early eighteenth-century European miniature. Magnification shows how the skilled artist applied watercolor and gouache in a stippling motion, following a technique favored in this period.⁴ Its inexpensive gilt metal case is not original and probably dates to the late nineteenth century. It curiously shares its design with the case of another miniature by an artist in the circle of Jean Daniel Welper (ca. 1729–1789), also in the Nelson-Atkins collection. While it is unknown how either miniature entered the Starrs’ collection, they likely did so as a pair, having passed through the hands of the same collector or dealer around the turn of the twentieth century.

Notes

1. This attribution was questioned by both Bernd Pappe and the authors of the Liotard catalogue raisonné. We are grateful to Pappe, who shared his observations on the miniature’s attribution and date during a visit to the Nelson-Atkins, July 24–26, 2023. Notes in NAMA curatorial files. Marcel Rœthlisberger and Renée Loche, Liotard: Catalogue, Sources et Correspondance (Doornspijk, The Netherlands: Davaco, 2008), 1:691, as Homme.

2. Pappe, 2023, notes in NAMA curatorial files.

3. For example, Markgraf Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden-Baden, gen. Türkenlouis, ca. 1700, watercolor on paper, 2 8/16 x 2 1/16 in. (6.5 x 5.2 cm), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, https://recherche.smb.museum/detail/868267/markgraf-ludwig-wilhelm-von-baden-baden-gen--türkenlouis. Pappe brought this collection to our attention.

4. Conservator Carol Aiken, conversations with the author, March 18–22, 2018. Notes in NAMA curatorial files.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 251, as Unknown Man.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 265.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 251, p. 82, (repro.), as Unknown Man.

Marcel Rœthlisberger and Renée Loche, Liotard: Catalogue, Sources et Correspondance (Doornspijk, The Netherlands: Davaco, 2008), 1:691, as Homme.