John Smart, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1775

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, 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. 4, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1574.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “John Smart, 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. 4, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1574.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This relatively small portrait of an unnamed man is one of nine preparatory sketches donated to the Nelson-Atkins by the Starr Family, with the largest group of seven entering the collection in 1958.¹ During the early phase of John Smart’s career, until about 1775, his miniatures typically measured around 1 1/2 inches high. The size of the present sketch, in addition to the sitter’s close-cropped hairstyle and the cut of his jacket, suggest a date around this time.

The sitter faces right, with his head turned back toward the viewer, and looks out with one deep brown eye, while the other iris seems to have lost its color. This could be due to pigment fade or a medical condition known as aniridia, a rare disorder in which the tissues of the iris are minimal or absent.² Smart was known for his unsparing attention to detail, often capturing sitters’ moles, scars, hyperpigmentation, and even eye conditions, as also seen in his portrayal of General Keith MacAlister’s heterochromia.

It is uncertain whether John Smart consistently created preparatory sketches for each miniature on ivory that he painted; we do know, however, that a substantial number of these sketches were inherited by his son, John James Smart (1805–1870), and later passed to the younger Smart’s daughter, Mary Ann Bose (1856–1934). After her death in 1934, the sketches were divided among three of her children: William Henry Bose (1875–1957), Lilian Dyer (1876–1955), and Mabel Annie Busteed (1878–1967). These collections were subsequently sold at auction through Christie’s, London, in December 1936 (Busteed sale), February 1937 (Bose), and November 1937 (Dyer).³ This miniature, which descended through Dyer, was likely acquired by an intermediary dealer, possibly Thomas Agnew in London, from whom the Starrs regularly purchased miniatures.⁴ Although there is an indecipherable pencil inscription on the verso of this miniature that might once have recorded the identity of this sitter, no finished miniature on ivory of a man bearing a resemblance to the present sitter has yet been discovered.

Notes

1. Seven drawings entered the collection in 1958, one in 1965, and one in 1973. The Starr Foundation (made up of descendants of the Starr Family) helped to bring in two additional drawings by John Smart, including Portrait of Alexander James Dallas in 2023 and Self-Portrait in 2024. For more on the materiality of Smart’s drawings, see the “Technical Note,” by Rachel Freeman in “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1786,” in this catalogue.

2. For more on this condition, see Melanie Hingorani et al., “Aniridia,” European Journal of Human Genetics 20, no. 10 (2012): 1011–17, https://doi.org/10.1038/ejhg.2012.100.

3. Daphne Foskett reproduces the catalogue for these three sales in John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 78–90.

4. See Sketches and Studies for Miniature Portraits by John Smart, the Property of Mrs. Dyer, Great-Granddaughter of the Artist, Christie’s, London, November 26, 1937, lot 1, as “Portrait of Mr. Skrine, in mauve coat; Portrait of Mr. Murray; and Five other Portraits of Gentlemen.”

John Smart (1741–1811), London and Madras, India, by around 1775–1811;

By descent to his son, John James Smart (1805–1870), London, 1811–1870;

By descent to his daughter, Mary Ann Bose (née Smart, 1856–1934), 1870–1934;

By descent to her daughter, Lilian Mary Dyer (née Bose, 1876–1955), 1934–1937;

Purchased from her sale, Sketches and Studies for Miniature Portraits by John Smart . . . the Property of Mrs. Dyer, Great-Granddaughter of the Artist, Christie’s, London, November 26, 1937, lot 1, as one of five Portraits of Gentlemen, by Thomas Agnew, 1937 [1];

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 lot description, “Portrait of Mr. Skrine, in mauve coat; Portrait of Mr. Murray; and Five other Portraits of Gentlemen—(seven).”

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 a Man.

Sketches and Studies for Miniature Portraits by John Smart . . . the Property of Mrs. Dyer, Great-Granddaughter of the Artist (London: Christie’s, November 26, 1937), 3, as one of five Portraits of Gentlemen.

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 Portrait of a Man (sketch).

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 148, p. 52, (repro.), as Unknown Man.