John Smart, Portrait of Sarah Majendie, ca. 1780

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “John Smart, Portrait of Sarah Majendie, ca. 1780,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1561.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “John Smart, Portrait of Sarah Majendie, ca. 1780,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1561.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Read more about this object at the associated catalogue entry.

Probably commissioned by the sitter, Sarah Majendie (née Gardiner, 1743/44–1813), London, by around 1785–1813 [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 Sarah 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 Mrs. William Majendie.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 110, p. 40, (repro.), as Mrs. William Majendie.