George Engleheart, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1775

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “George Engleheart, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1775,” 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: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1370.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “George Engleheart, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1775,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1370.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

George Engleheart painted this miniature early in his career, between 1773 and 1780, evidenced by its small size, lack of signature, and soft colors.¹ Placed to the left of center on an ivory support, the sitter stares out in three-quarters profile with ocher eyes and a Grecian nose. His left eye is slightly larger than his right, confusing the direction of his gaze. Blue and orange flesh tones are visible against the pale ground, particularly around the sitter’s colorless lips, which may have faded due to Engleheart’s use of fugitive red pigments.²
The sitter wears a high-quality wig: the wig line is invisible; the tamed frizz holds volume; and only one strand escapes the queue. The wig aligns with 1770s hairstyles, despite its slightly crimped texture that foreshadows hairstyles of the 1780s.³ Side curls cover the top of the sitter’s ears; their shape, along with Engleheart’s skillful rendering, gives them a floating appearance.

The sitter is fashionably dressed in a well-tailored dark blue jacket, with a light dusting of white hair powder along the collar. Engleheart expertly depicts the accordion-like folds on the sitter’s frilled shirt and highlights the layers and tied stock with passages of opaque white, a technique he employed throughout his miniature practice.⁴ The left breast of the sitter’s waistcoat curves in the shape of an S to reveal an interior seam.

While the sitter’s identity remains unknown, his attire, particularly the quality of his wig, indicates a prominent middle-aged man who could afford the four-guinea commission to sit for one of the most up-and-coming miniature painters of the day.⁵ Although Engleheart was only twenty-five in 1775, his facility is impressive, leading him to receive his first commissions to paint King George III the following year.⁶

Notes

1. Daphne Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures: A History (London: Methuen and Company, 1963), 122.

2. George Williamson and Henry Engleheart, George Engleheart 1750–1829: Miniature Painter to George III (London: George Bell and Sons, 1902), 61. The faded pigments may also reveal the painting’s underlayer, noticeable in the blue on either side of the sitter’s mouth and around the contours of his double chin.

3. Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715–1789 (Teaneck, NJ: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 160.

4. Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 141. For a comparable image of painted frills, see George Engleheart, Portrait Miniature of John Dyer Collier, ca. 1785, watercolor on ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.76-1910, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82027/portrait-miniature-of-john-dyer-portrait-miniature-engleheart-george/.

5. Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 38. Engleheart charged between three and four guineas for a miniature portrait in 1775. By 1780, his rate increased to between eight and ten guineas per miniature.

6. Williamson and Engleheart, George Engleheart, 23, 38. The king appears in Engleheart’s fee book three times in 1776. In 1777, Engleheart charged the king ten guineas for a miniature.

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.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 79, p. 29, (repro.), as Unknown Man.