John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1773

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1773,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1534.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1773,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1534.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This unidentified gentleman wears a wine-colored coat with three silver buttons and a tightly wrapped white cravat. John Smart documents the most minute details, including the individual crocheted loops suspended from the coat’s buttons, the tiny mole or wart on the sitter’s left cheek, and the wisps of his powdered wig. The wig is situated high on the man’s head, its white border blending seamlessly into his pale, spotless forehead. Delicate white lines of painted hair also frame the left side of his face, beside his eye and lips. Smart uses a green-gray background here, as seen in his portraits from the 1770s. This color subtly repeats in the sitter’s eyes.

Smart was appointed director of the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1771, thus introducing him to a broader clientele, one that reflected his professional ascent. While the present sitter remains unidentified, he apparently reflects Smart’s upward move in society.¹ The portrait is secured in a gilt copper alloy case with a border of blue glass.² Unique hairwork adorns the case back: nine alternating-color braids are arranged in a diagonal that, altogether, creates a textured ombré pattern of blonde and brown plaits that makes this miniature all the more intriguing.

Notes

1. Smart also painted Charles Stewart, 7th Earl of Traquair, in 1773. A preparatory drawing of Charles Stewart is in the Nelson-Atkins collection.

2. There appears to be damage on the final digit of the date, so it is possible that the 3 has, at some point, been retouched.

Elsie Gertrude Kehoe (1888–1967), Cliffe Dene, Saltdean, Sussex, England, by June 15, 1950;

Purchased from her sale, Objects of Vertu, Fine Watches, Etc., Sotheby, London, June 15, 1950, lot 172, as A Man, by A. B. Turner, 1950 [1];

With S. J. Phillips, London, by April 1959 [2];

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1965;

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

Notes

[1] The lot description states, “A small miniature of a man, by John Smart, signed, head and shoulders three-quarters dexter, powdered hair en queue, white cravat, reddy-brown coat, oval, 1 1/2 in. [See Frontispiece].” According to an attached price list, A. B. Turner bought lot 172 for £52.

[2] The miniature is advertised by the dealer in The Connoisseur, April 1959, XXXIII.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 99, 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 Man.

Catalogue of Objects of Vertu, Fine Watches, Etc. (London: Sotheby, June 15, 1950), lot 172, as A Man.

Connoisseur 143, no. 576 (April 1959): XXXIII (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 99, p. 38, (repro.), as Unknown Man.