John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Jane Huck-Saunders, ca. 1777

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Jane Huck-Saunders, ca. 1777,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1542.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Jane Huck-Saunders, ca. 1777,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1542.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

A faint pencil inscription on the verso reads “[?] niece of Admiral Sir Charles Saunders.” Saunders (ca. 1715–1775) was a distinguished British Royal Navy officer who played a pivotal role in the Seven Years’ War, notably commanding the naval forces that supported James Wolfe in the capture of Quebec in 1759. Saunders had two brothers, George and Ambrose, and a sister, Ann, who married Peter Kinsey.¹ Ann and Peter Kinsey’s daughter, Jane (b. 1753),² became the niece and heiress of Admiral Saunders, who died in 1775. On her marriage to Richard Huck (1720–1785), an English physician, on March 11, 1777, she and her new husband assumed the name Saunders as well as the family’s coat of arms as per the conditions of her uncle’s will.³

It is plausible that this drawing represents Jane Huck-Saunders around the time of her wedding at the Parish Church of St. Pancras in Spring Garden Chapel on March 11, 1777.⁴ Smart captures the sitter in three-quarters view, with her fashionable upswept hair and a confident gaze directed toward the viewer. Her penetrating brown eyes, upright posture, and poised demeanor suggest a woman of self-assurance, possibly reflecting the significant change in her social standing following her inheritance and marriage.

It is uncertain whether John Smart consistently created preparatory sketches for each miniature on ivory that he painted;⁵ 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).⁶ This preparatory sketch likely followed a similar path and was in one of these three sales; however, due to the unknown identity of the sitter, its provenance remains uncertain. No finished miniature on ivory featuring a woman resembling the present sitter has been identified to date.

Notes

1. Charles Mosley, ed., Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, 107th ed. (Wilmington, DE: Burke’s Peerage [Genealogical Books]), 2003), 2:2663.

2. See baptismal record for Jane Kinsey, daughter of Peter and Anne Kinsey, baptized March 11, 1753, St. Bride Fleet Street, City of London, in London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1538–1812, ref: P69/Bri/A/007/Ms06541/001, digitized on ancestry.com.

3. In Charles Saunders’s will, he “settled the bulk of his estate on a favourite niece, Jane Kinsey, on condition that she and her husband assume the Saunders name and coat of arms. To her also went the pictures which had hung in the dining room of the town house, a portrait of Anson and two paintings of the attacks by the fire-ships and fire-stages on the fleet before Quebec.” William H. Whiteley, “SAUNDERS, Sir CHARLES,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003), https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/saunders_charles_4E.html. See also “Saunders, Richard Huck,” Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder, 1897), 50:329. For the Huck-Saunders marriage, see the marriage record for March 11, 1777, in Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754–1935, St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster, London, in England, Marriages, 1538–1973, digitized on ancestry.com: “Richard Huck Dr of Physic of this parish and Jane Kinsey of the Parish of St Pancras were married in Spring Garden Chapel in this parish by special license of the Archbishop of Canterbury this 11th day of March 1777.”

4. They had two daughters, Anne Huck-Saunders and Jane Huck-Saunders Fane, the latter of whom became a patroness of the arts to the poets John Keats and Lord Byron. For more on the lives of the daughters of Richard Huck and Jane Huck-Saunders, see Rusty Bitterman and Margaret McCallum, Lady Landlords of Prince Edward Island: Imperial Dreams and the Defence of Property (Toronto: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008).

5. 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.

6. 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.

Probably John Smart (1741–1811), London, by around 1783–1811;

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

Probably by descent to his daughter, Mary Ann Bose (née Smart, 1856–1934), Edinburgh, 1870–1934 [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] A substantial number of Smart’s 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). This preparatory sketch likely followed a similar path and was in one of these three sales; however, due to the unknown identity of the sitter, its provenance remains uncertain.

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 Woman, Possibly Jane Huck-Saunders.

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 Lady (sketch).

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 149, p. 52, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.