John Smart, Portrait of Andrew Majendie, 1766–69

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “John Smart, Portrait of Andrew Majendie, 1766–69,” 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. 4, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1560.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “John Smart, Portrait of Andrew Majendie, 1766–69,” 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. 4, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1560.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Lewis Arnold Majendie (1710–1781) was a British wine merchant who, with his wife, Ann (née Long; ca. 1710–1789), had at least eight children at the British Factory Chaplaincy, Lisbon, including Andrew (1742/43–1782) and William Majendie (1743–1769).¹ An earthquake devastated Majendie’s business and he had to return to London, declaring bankruptcy in 1763.² Nonetheless, his children found financial security on their own accord: his two daughters married famed naval captains Herbert Sawyer and Philemon Pownoll,³ and his two sons pursued careers in the Honourable East India Company (HEIC). Members of the Majendie family also sat for the celebrated miniaturist John Smart.

Smart painted Andrew Majendie in the 1760s, though the specific year is uncertain because water damage has obscured the final digit of Smart’s inscription.⁴ Andrew joined the HEIC as a civil servant in 1766, thus narrowing the likely date of the work to 1766–69, when Andrew was in his mid-twenties.⁵ In 1777, Andrew held the title of Mayor of Madras, a designation that frequently rotated among HEIC employees, many of whom sat for Smart, including Josias Du Pré Porcher and Benjamin Roebuck.⁶ Smart would have painted Andrew in London, prior to both their departures for India.⁷ According to one scholar, Andrew was “one of the [HEIC’s] rich private traders” which would have enabled him to afford the commission, despite his father’s bankruptcy just a few years earlier.⁸

Andrew is depicted with his hair in multiple rows of powdered curls and a large bow tied at back. His painted flesh has little to no pink pigmentation, and the resulting pale complexion heightens his coffee-colored eyes and dark, heavy brow. His bright blue coat is edged with fringe and paired with a matching vest. He wears a black silk ribbon with a picot edge around his neck that suspends a heart-shaped pendant with a diamond or pearl surround. The bottom edge of the jewelry appears to curve to the right, suggesting a “witch’s heart,” or someone “bewitched” by love.⁹ Alternatively, the pendant may be jet, a stone associated with mourning.¹⁰ While we know much about Andrew’s involvement with the HEIC, we know next to nothing about the intricacies of his personal life, including who bewitched him or whom he mourned.

Andrew died in London on March 31, 1782, and his will reveals the identity of this portrait’s companion (Fig. 1, F58-60/130), previously called Portrait of Mrs. William Majendie.¹¹ Andrew wrote, “I give & bequeath to Mrs Sarah Majendie widow of my late brother William the sum of twelve hundred pagodas,” thus identifying Smart’s sitter as Sarah Majendie (née Gardiner, 1743/44–1813).¹² Sarah married William Majendie on March 27, 1767; the ceremony was performed by William’s uncle, the Reverend John James Majendie (1709–1783), Canon of Windsor.¹³ William was appointed Sheriff of Calcutta and Secretary to the Council in 1765¹⁴ but was suspended from HEIC service from 1766 to 1768 for recruiting from Madras, rather than promoting from within, thus dissenting from the Bengal Company.¹⁵ William’s position was reinstated in 1769 after much pleading,¹⁶ but his restored reputation was not enjoyed long; he died after “several stages of slow decay” on October 3, 1769, at age twenty-six.¹⁷ It is possible that Smart painted Andrew’s miniature between October and December of 1769, when the jet pendant the latter wore might have been in mourning for his little brother.

In contrast to Smart’s youthful portrait of Andrew, Sarah appears much older, suggesting a date of around 1780, preceding Smart’s 1785 voyage to India, when she would have been in her late thirties or early forties. He paints the widow in a sketchy manner, employing sgraffito, or scratching, throughout her hair. The technique is an uncommon one for Smart, but its use may be explained by the tiny size of the miniature: it measures only three-quarters of an inch tall.¹⁸ His other miniatures of this scale share the same looseness. Despite a closely cropped composition, Smart found room for an ornate, fur-lined bodice that trims Sarah’s neck and chest. She died at the age of sixty-nine on October 31, 1813.¹⁹ She had no children and did not remarry, so her miniature and her brother-in-law’s could have been gifts to other Majendie family members. In Sarah’s will, she bequeaths a “Miniature Picture of my late husband William Majendie Esquire” to her husband’s cousin.²⁰ William’s picture has not yet been located, but it was presumably another Smart miniature that complemented these portraits of his beloved wife and brother.

Notes

1. British Factory Chaplaincies were associations of British merchants in foreign ports. Lynne Booker, “The English Factory at Lisbon,” Portugal Resident, April 11, 2022, https://www.portugalresident.com/the-english-factory-at-lisbon. Andrew was baptized on April 5, 1743, but was likely born earlier, since his other siblings’ baptisms were registered around the same time and place. “Andrew Majendie,” Portugal, Baptisms, 1570–1910, FHL film no. 477648, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. William was baptized on April 2, 1744, at the British Factory Chaplaincy in Lisbon; “William Majendie,” Portugal, Baptisms, 1570–1910, FHL film no. 477648, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. He was born in 1743 according to his memorial, which states his age at the time of his death as twenty-six; see n. 17.

2. Called the Great Lisbon earthquake, it occurred on November 1, 1755, with a subsequent tsunami and spreading fire. It killed more than ten thousand people in Lisbon. Booker, “The English Factory at Lisbon”; “Bankrupts, from the London Gazette,” Coventry Standard, July 18, 1763, 3.

3. In the early 1760s, Captain Sawyer and Captain Pownoll courted Lewis’s daughters, Anne and Jane, but Lewis rejected their marriage proposals due to their lack of funds. Coincidentally, Sawyer and Pownoll would soon capture the Spanish ship Hermione, whose entire contents were valued at ₤519,705, or ₤98 million today. The captains’ share of prize money amounted to more than ₤12 million today, one of the largest individual sums obtained during this period. Needless to say, Lewis soon after approved of his daughters’ marriages. See Tom Wareham, “Pownoll, Philemon,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/64864; cost conversions from Gregory Clark, “The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series),” MeasuringWorth, 2017, accessed May 7, 2024, https://measuringworth.com/datasets/ukearncpi.

4. His identity originates from the miniature’s frame, which was reportedly once inscribed “Andrew Majendie D. 1782.” This is according to Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), 40, no. 109. The case inscription has since been lost.

5. While Andrew Majendie’s titles have varied depending on the source, he was most likely a civil servant or writer in 1766, a junior merchant in India in 1774, Victual for the Troops and Clerk of the Treasury in 1776, Mayor of Madras in 1777, and lent money to the Nawab of Arcot in 1779, before his return to London in the 1780s.

6. Henry Davison Love, “List of Mayors of Madraspatnam,” Indian Records Series: Vestiges of Old Madras: 1640–1800 (London: John Murray, 1913), 3:554. In 1774, he “applied for a spot of ‘ground and tank’ situated on the south side of the road leading to George Smith’s.” Moola Atchi Reddy, East India Company and Urban Environment in Colonial South India: Madras, 1746–1803 (London: Routledge, 2022), 83.

7. “1766: Andrew Majendie (at home),” A List of the Company’s Civil Servants, at their Settlements in the East-Indies, the Island St. Helena, and China (London: East India Company, 1782), 38. Smart was in India by 1785, and Andrew was probably in India by 1774, when he applied for a plot of land there; see n. 6.

8. Reddy, East India Company, 102.

9. Peter Lee, Sarong Kebaya: Peranakan Fashion in an Interconnected World, 1500–1950 (Singapore: Asian Civilizations Museum, 2014), 210.

10. Ginny Redington Dawes with Olivia Collings, Georgian Jewellery, 1714–1830 (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2007), 166. Thank you to Aimee Marcereau DeGalan for making this suggestion, as well as suggesting that he may have been mourning the death of his brother, William.

11. Sir William Musgrave, Obituary Prior to 1800 (London: Harleian Society, 1900), 4:130; Andrew Majendie to the court of the East India Company, January 10, 1780, British Library, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/15202db0-1c2e-482e-b999-6496969fbb0a.

12. Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, series PROB 11, class PROB 11, piece 1092, National Archives, Kew.

13. “Sarah Gardiner,” England, Marriages, 1538–1973, FHL film no. 375019, 942 B4HA V. 49, 942 B4HA V. 50, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com; Church of England parish registers, ref. P69/STE2/A/004/MS08322/001, London Metropolitan Archives. The witness listed is L. A. Majendie, or Lewis Arnold Majendie, his father.

14. Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, “The Office of Sheriff of Calcutta,” Bengal: Past and Present 24, nos. 47–48 (January–December 1922): 152; William Bolts, Considerations on India Affairs; Particularly Respecting the Present State of Bengal and its Dependencies (London: J. Almon, 1772), 22.

15. A letter to the Court of Directors, dated January 31, 1766, declares, “Mr Majendie, acting in a public Station, as Secretary to the Governor and Council, was ‘more especially culpable than any other junior Servant, in aiding, abetting, countenancing, or any way assisting directly or indirectly, Measures’ that had ‘a tendency to promote faction, to create discontent or to shew disrespect to that Government’” and thus, “he should be immediately dismissed from his office and suspended from the service of the Company.” Debendra Nath Banerjee, Early Administrative System of the East India Company in Bengal (London: Longmans, Green, 1943), 1:208.

16. A January 12, 1768, letter from the Court’s General letter to the HEIC’s President and Council of Bengal states, “We have, in consideration of his [Majendie’s] fully acknowledging his imprudent Behaviour and making the strongest Professions of Fidelity and Obedience in every part of his future Conduct,” adding that “Lord Clive speaks well of him [Majendie] in all other respects.” Cited in Banerjee, Early Administrative System, 210–11. A February 2, 1769, letter from the president and council to the court replies, “As we have every reason to be convinced of the sincerity of his professions we restored him to the service . . . we have appointed him in Council at Patna in the Room of Mr Francis Hare.” Cited in Banerjee, Early Administrative System, 211. See also William Majendie to the East India Company, December 24, 1766, British Library: Asian and African Studies, London, ref. IOR/E/1/48, ff 672-680; William Majendie to the court of the East India Company, October 14, 1767, British Library: Asian and African Studies, London, ref. IOR/E/1/49 ff. 203-204v, f. 270.

17. For the date of death, see “William Majendie,” Find a Grave, edited by E. G. on September 3, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/259218054/william-majendie. His memorial is inscribed, “Sacred / to the memory of William Majendie Esqr., / who, after passing through several stages of slow decay, / with true Christian fortitude: / departed this life / at Patna / October the 3rd MDCCLXIX / aged 26 / being at that time in the service of the Hon’ble East India Company / and second in Council at that Settlement: / a man who to every amiable disposition, joined nice honor / and strict integrity; and was possessed of such abilities / as might adorn any station of life. / His lamenting friends, deeming his death a publick [sic] loss, / caused this memorial to be erected, as a tribute due to uncommon merit: / and as a testimony of the high regard / they bore him.” Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, “Christian Tombs at Bankipore and Patna,” Bengal: Past and Present 9, no. 17 (July–September 1914): 30.

18. According to conservator Carol Aiken, 2019; notes in NAMA curatorial files.

19. “In Memory of Sarah Majendie Widow of William Majendie, Esqre. Late Senior Merchant of the Honourable East India Company’s Civil Service at Bengal. Died 31st October 1813 Aged 69 Years,” Miscellanea Genealogica Et Heraldica, ed. W. Bruce Bannerman (London: Mitchell Hughes and Clarke, 1910), 3:86.

20. The miniature was given to Lewis Majendie (1756–1833) of Castle Henningtham; “Will of Sarah Majendie, Widow of Saint Luke Chelsea, Middlesex,” February 8, 1814, PROB 11/1552/147, National Archives, Kew. She continues, “Also I give and bequeath the sum of one thousand two hundred Pagodas left me by my late Brother in Law Andrew Majendie Esquire who died sometime in or about the month of March one thousand seven hundred and eighty two.” Interestingly, she also writes, “I give and bequeath to the said Mary Marsh my Ring with two hearts one a diamond the other an Amethyst,” which is reminiscent of the heart-shaped jewel that Andrew Majendie wears in his portrait by Smart.

Probably commissioned by the sitter, Andrew Majendie (1742/43–1782), London and Madras, India, by 1769–1782;

Probably inherited by his sister-in-law, Sarah Majendie (née Gardiner, 1743/44–1813), London, 1782–1813 [1];

Probably inherited by her husband’s cousin, Lewis Majendie (1756-1833), Hedingham Castle, Essex, 1813-1833 [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] Andrew Majendie’s and Sarah Majendie’s portrait miniatures entered the Nelson-Atkins collection together, which suggests that Sarah acquired Andrew’s after his death.

[2] According to Sarah’s will, “I give and bequeath to Lewis Majendie of Castle Henningham in the County of Essex Esquire the Miniature Picture of my late husband William Majendie Esquire also I give and bequeath the sum of one thousand two hundred Pagodas left me by my late Brother in Law Andrew Majendie Esquire who died sometime in or about the month of March one thousand seven hundred and eighty two.” “Will of Sarah Majendie, Widow of Saint Luke Chelsea, Middlesex,” February 8, 1814, The National Archives, Kew, PROB 11/1552/147. William Majendie’s portrait miniature has not yet been located.

The portrait may have passed to one of Lewis’s two sons after his death: Ashurst (1784–1867) or Henry Lewis (1795–1863).

John Smart: Virtuoso in Miniature, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 21, 2024–January 4, 2026, no cat., as Portrait of Andrew Majendie.

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, as Andrew Mejendie [sic].

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 109, p. 40, (repro.), as Andrew Majendie.