Samuel Collins, Portrait of a Man, 1759

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Samuel Collins, Portrait of a Man, 1759,” 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. 2, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1312.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Samuel Collins, Portrait of a Man, 1759,” 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. 2, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1312.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Described by the eighteenth-century sculptor Joseph Nollekens (1737–1823) as a man of “gay and expensive habits,” the portrait miniaturist Samuel Collins—along with the affluent patron portrayed in this diminutive work—was likely drawn to the town of Bath, England, not just for its healing waters but also for the city’s growing fashionable reputation.¹ Founded by the Romans in the first century as a thermal spa, by the mid-to-late 1700s Bath had emerged as a magnet for the fashionable set seeking refinement and indulgence. Renowned for its elegant Georgian architecture, bustling social halls, and mineral springs, the city offered opulent spas, luxurious accommodations, extravagant finery, and social allure. Holidaying in Bath, rather than solely visiting for medical purposes, held symbolic value, publicly advertising one’s leisure and affluence.²

To be embraced within the exclusive circle of “the ton,” as the most fashionable set was called, one had to engage in a plethora of social activities: subscribing to balls, concerts, pleasure gardens, and charities, and appearing on public walks, as well as at assemblies and entertainments. One also needed to look the part to be fully accepted.³ Although Bath had been known as a center of the woolen industry in the middle ages, by the mid-1700s, silk satins and damasks from France, Italy, and London’s own Spitalfields were the fabrics of choice among the most fashionable visitors to Bath.⁴ Pictured in an exquisite three-piece gray silk jacket with elaborate silver froggings on his high-styled frock coat, a lace jabot, and a sky-blue waistcoat brocaded in silk and metal thread, the unknown man in this miniature was no stranger to sartorial indulgence. With his fleshy dimpled chin and rounded features, he likely over-imbibed in food and drink as well as sumptuous clothing.

Collins used real shell silver to convey the opulent embroidery of the sitter’s costume and showcase his ability to render fine detail. While some of the shell silver has tarnished, one can imagine how it may have looked when it caught the light. Collins also employs the technique of scratching or scraping away areas in the fine hairs at the sitter’s temples, his side curls, and the crown of his head, creating lighter-textured highlights, whereas he renders shadows in gray-blue hatched lines, seen at the sitter’s lower left and behind his right shoulder. These techniques exacted a lasting influence on Collins’s pupils, most notably Ozias Humphry (1742–1810), who succeeded him in Bath in 1762 after Collins fled his creditors.

Capturing the essence of Bath’s social fabric and the lavish lifestyle of its inhabitants, Collins’s miniature is a testament to the intertwining worlds of art, fashion, and societal mores in the mid-eighteenth century.

Notes

1. J. T. Smith, Nollekens and His Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1828), 2:357.

2. Trevor Fawcett, “Eighteenth-Century Shops and the Luxury Trade,” in Bath Commercialis’d: Shops, Trades, and Market at the 18th-Century Spa (London: Ruton, 2002), 50.

3. Fawcett, “Eighteenth-Century Shops and the Luxury Trade,” 50.

4. For more on the history of Bath as a center of woolen production, see H. L. Gray, “The Production and Exportation of English Woolers in the Fourteenth Century,” English Historical Review 39, no. 153 (1924): 13–35. See also Miles Lambert, “The Consumption of Spitalfields Silks in 18th-Century England: Examples in Collections Outside London,” in 18th-Century Silks: The Industries of England and Northern Europe (Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung Riggisberg, 2000), 65–66.

With an unknown owner, by 1958 [1];

Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, English Portrait Miniatures, Fine Gold Boxes, Watches, and Objects of Vertu, Sotheby’s, London, November 3, 1958, lot 33, as Miniature of a Man, by Hammond, 1958 [2];

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.

Notes

[1] According to the 1958 sales catalogue, “Various Properties” sold lots 25–51.

[2] According to the lot description, “Samuel Collins. An interesting Miniature of a Man by Samuel Collins, signed in full and dated 1750, with shoulders turned slightly sinister, gaze directed at spectator, wearing a dove-grey coat with silver braid, his hair en queue, against a grey background, 1 3/8 in. This documentary miniature confirms the fact that Collins was a very good miniaturist, and also helps to differentiate between his work and that of Samuel Cotes.” A price list attached to the sales catalogue lists “Hammond” as the buyer.

An annotated sales catalogue is located at University of Missouri-Kansas City, Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr. The annotations include a slash next to this lot number.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 46, as Unknown Man.

Catalogue of English Portrait Miniatures, Fine Gold Boxes, Watches, and Objects of Vertu (London: Sotheby’s, November 3, 1958), 9, as Miniature of a Man.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 46, p. 20, (repro.), as Unknown Man.