John Smart, Portrait of a Member of the Frankland Family, Probably Henry Cromwell Frankland, 1760

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “John Smart, Portrait of a Member of the Frankland Family, Probably Henry Cromwell Frankland, 1760,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1506.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “John Smart, Portrait of a Member of the Frankland Family, Probably Henry Cromwell Frankland, 1760,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1506.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This portrait of a young man is the earliest work by John Smart in the Starr collection, dating to 1760, the first year of Smart’s career as a miniaturist. It shows Smart as a raw new talent, clearly in the first phase of his practice, exemplified by his mask-faced sitters depicted in a flat, pale style with minimal modeling. And yet there are clear echoes of Smart’s mature style and technique in the painstaking, albeit hesitant depiction of the sitter’s costume, and the artist’s manner of carefully delineating each curl of hair with watercolor in a range of light to deep gray. Smart had already begun inscribing works with his characteristically precise, meticulous signature, signing his initials above the portrait’s date.

The sitter was identified as a member of the prominent Frankland family in a 1958 auction catalogue, in which this miniature was sold alongside portraits of Admiral Henry Cromwell Frankland and Frankland’s future daughter-in-law, Mary Gill.¹ This miniature probably also depicts Henry Cromwell Frankland (1741–1814),² who was about nineteen years old when this portrait was painted. Born in March 1741,³ Henry Cromwell, as he was named at birth, was the illegitimate son of English dilettante and diplomat Sir Charles Henry Frankland by his American mistress Agnes Surriage or another woman.⁴ A direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell,⁵ Frankland was raised at his father’s estate outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where his father had been serving as Collector of the Port of Boston. In 1755, his father was appointed consul general for Portugal. They spent several years in Europe and England before the younger Frankland was commissioned as a lieutenant in the navy in 1761.⁶ This portrait, dated 1760, was probably painted in London while Frankland was preparing to enlist, perhaps to provide a keepsake for his father to remember him by.

Frankland wears his hair in fashionable gray-powdered side curls. He is wearing a costly formal outfit: a pink Van Dyck suit in the style of seventeenth-century ancestral portraits, complete with a white lace falling band collar carefully painted by Smart. This aristocratic style may reflect a deliberate effort to assert Frankland’s birthright in a society that feared and despised illegitimacy. Smart used yellow and brown pigment to replicate the gold bullion embroidery on the buttonholes and sleeves; this suggests that, early in Smart’s career, shell gold was probably too expensive an addition to his paintbox.

After serving as captain and commanding officer of the HMS Victory 100 in the Second Battle of Ushant (1781) and captaining the HMS Royal George, Frankland retired from active duty. He was subsequently promoted to Rear-Admiral of the Blue in 1801 and, with a succession of promotions, to Vice-Admiral of the Red in 1810. He settled in Chichester,⁷ England, and married Mary Ventham on January 2, 1779.⁸ This miniature was probably passed down as a family heirloom by their son, James Henry Frankland (1784–1859), before it entered the Nelson-Atkins collection in 1965.⁹

Notes

1. When the miniature was sold at auction by Christie’s, London, on April 15, 1958, it was described as “Portrait of a Young Man, probably a member of the Frankland family.” The lot was sold as “Property of a Gentleman” along with a miniature of Admiral Henry Frankland by James Nixon and miniatures by an unknown artist of Mary Gill and her brother John Gill of Eashing Park, Surrey, which would become the home of Henry Cromwell Frankland’s son James Henry Frankland (1785–1859) and his wife, Mary Gill, after their marriage on December 13, 1810, at Saint Marylebone. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P89/MRY1/182, London Metropolitan Archives, digitized on ancestry.com. These four miniatures were passed down through James Henry Frankland’s descendants before being sold at Christie’s, London, April 15, 1958, lots 70–73.

2. He spent much of his life as Henry Cromwell and did not officially take on the surname of Frankland until 1806, when his inheritance from his uncle, William Frankland, including the estate of Muntham Court in Sussex, required him to change his surname from Cromwell to Frankland. For the sake of simplicity, the name Frankland is utilized throughout. Stella Palmer, “Dame Agnes Frankland, 1726–1783, and Some Chichester Contemporaries,” Chichester Papers 45 (1964): 13–14.

3. There is no known record of Cromwell’s exact date of birth in either England or Massachusetts, due to his illegitimacy. Furthermore, England’s adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752 meant that those born before 1752 had two birthdays, one according to the earlier (Julian) calendar and another to the new (Gregorian) calendar. This has confused matters not only for later historians and genealogists but also for the people of the time. Charles Henry Frankland recorded two variations of his son’s age in his personal diary, making a seemingly hesitant note on August 25, 1756 (four years after the change in calendars): “Harry Cromwell was 17=March,” suggesting that he was seventeen in March 1756. Two months later, on October 23, 1756, Frankland wrote more confidently, “Harry Cromwell is 16 years of age next February.” F. Marshall Bauer proposes that “Frankland . . . was struggling to conform ages to dates” due to the change in calendars. According to the second, more confidently inscribed record, Bauer writes, “Henry was born, by Frankland’s calculations, in [February] 1740 Julian and [March] 1741 Gregorian”; F. Marshall Bauer, Marblehead’s Pygmalion: Finding the Real Agnes Surriage (Charleston: The History Press, 2010), 68–70.

4. The rag-to-riches tale of Agnes Surriage (1726–1783), a tavern maid from Marblehead, Massachusetts, who captivated and later married an English nobleman, Sir Charles Henry Frankland (1716–1768), inspired several literary works, including Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man’s Portrait of a Woman, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Crouch (1910), and the 1862 ballad by Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Agnes.” See Bauer, Marblehead’s Pygmalion, for the full history of Agnes Surriage and the Franklands.

5. The Franklands were descended from Cromwell through his daughter Frances. The 5th Duke of Bucchleuch purchased one of Samuel Cooper’s two celebrated portraits of Oliver Cromwell from Henry Cromwell Frankland via the dealer Colnaghi; J. J. Foster, Chats on Old Miniatures (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1908), 294.

6. Cy Harrison, “Henry Cromwell (c. 1739–1814),” Three Decks: Warships in the Age of Sail, accessed June 23, 2024, https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_crewman&id=296.

7. He remained close with his father’s widow—Agnes, Lady Frankland— who may have been his mother. Lady Frankland also lived in Chichester. Bauer, Marblehead’s Pygmalion, 83.

8. They married at St. Peter the Less in Chichester. Sussex Parish Registers, ref. par. 45/1/1/2, West Sussex Record Office, Brighton.

9. James Henry’s name is recorded as James Henry Cromwell in his baptismal record, dated October 7, 1784; Sussex Parish Registers, ref. par. 45/1/1/3, West Sussex Record Office, Brighton. See n. 2 on the Frankland/Cromwell surname change in 1806. This self-contained group of miniatures, which included portraits of James Henry’s father, wife, and brother-in-law, was probably passed down by his descendants until they were sold together in 1958.

Probably commissioned by Sir Charles Henry Frankland (1716–1768), 1760;

Probably by descent to an unknown man, by April 15, 1958 [1];

Purchased from his sale, Fine 18th Century Miniatures, Christie’s, London, April 15, 1958, lot 73, Portrait of a Young Man, Probably a Member of the Frankland Family, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of John W. (1905–2000) and Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1958–1965 [2];

Their gift to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1965.

Notes

[1] In the Christie’s April 15, 1958 sale, “A Gentleman” sold lots 70–73. All lots depict Henry Cromwell Frankland and members of his extended family. Due to this familial relationship, the seller may have been a descendant of the Frankland family.

[2] With thanks to Bailey McCulloch for tracking down this sale and its corresponding newspaper coverage. The miniature is described in the sales catalogue as “Portrait of a young man, probably a member of the Frankland family, by John Smart and signed with initials and dated 1760, nearly full face, wearing pink coat with gold frogging and lace collar and with powdered and dressed hair—oval—1 3/8 in. high—plain gold bracelet frame. See Illustration facing page 17.” Archival research has shown that Leggatt Brothers served as purchasing agents for the Starrs. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, NAMA curatorial files.

John Smart—Miniaturist: 1741/2–1811, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 9, 1965–January 2, 1966, no cat., as Young Gentleman.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 85, as Unknown Man.

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 Member of the Frankland Family, Probably Henry Cromwell Frankland.

Fine 18th Century Miniatures (London: Christie’s, April 15, 1958), 18, as Portrait of a Young Man, Probably a Member of the Frankland Family.

Sale Room Correspondent, “Miniature Fetches 200gns,” The Times (London), April 16, 1958, 15.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 91, p. 37, (repro.), as Unknown Man.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 149, (repro.), as Portrait of a Man.