John Smart, Portrait of William Jones, 1766

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “John Smart, Portrait of William Jones, 1766,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1512.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “John Smart, Portrait of William Jones, 1766,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1512.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This miniature depicts William Jones (1743–1766),¹ the young heir to Ramsbury Manor in Wiltshire, England.² His mother, Eleanora Jones, probably commissioned it to mark his coming of age, twenty-one years after he was born on September 29, 1743.³ Following the death of his father, William Jones Esq., in 1754,⁴ the inheritance was held by the crown until the younger Jones reached his age of majority.⁵

Smart presents his sitter as a young gentleman of means. His large, limpid blue eyes and pensive expression lend an introspective air to his appearance. Jones’s wealth and Smart’s talents are on display through fine details such as the white lace at the collar and cuffs and the intricate gold embroidery and buttons setting off a bright green tailored coat. Sadly, Jones died soon after this miniature was painted, making its fragile beauty even more poignant.⁶ He died on April 7, 1766, of unknown causes, the last male heir of his line.⁷

This early work’s incipient naturalism and refinement in style and technique place Smart at a crucial turning point. He was beginning to gain confidence and ambition as an artist, experimenting with a newly sophisticated approach to modeling in the face and coloring of the flesh tones. Still, he cleverly avoided painting Jones’s fingers by depicting him with his hand slipped into his waistcoat, a conceit Smart used only rarely. The portrait’s romanticism and pastoral sky background also indicate that he was still developing his style and looking to his fellow miniaturists, particularly his schoolmate Richard Cosway (1742–1821), who had become a sought-after society painter after beginning his career in 1760, the same year as Smart. While somewhat atypical, this miniature is a remarkable example of Smart’s early talents in miniature painting.

Notes

1. The sitter is not to be confused with Sir William Langham Jones (1738–1791), Jones’s brother-in-law, who married this William Jones’s sister Elizabeth Jones in 1767 and changed his surname to Jones in 1774 in order to inherit his wife’s property. “Marriage of William Langham to Elizabeth Jones,” August 18, 1767, St. George, Hanover Square, London, Westminster Church of England Parish Registers, ref. no: STG/PR/7/4, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London; “Sir William Langham Jones,” Find a Grave, accessed June 27, 2024, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/178644347/william-langham_jones. Langham Jones was painted by Francis Cotes in 1769, revealing a man fuller in face than the Nelson-Atkins sitter, with smaller, darker eyes. Francis Cotes (1726–1770), Sir William Jones (formerly Langham), 1769, oil on canvas, 49 7/16 x 39 3/16 in. (125.5 x 99.5 cm), National Trust, Wimpole Hall, https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/sir-william-jones-formerly-langham-d-1791-171683. Likewise, while nearly the same age as Smart’s sitter, the celebrated Orientalist Sir William Jones (1746–1794) is also a different man, with no connection to Ramsbury Manor.

2. Ramsbury, a Grade I listed building, was commissioned by Sir William Jones (1630–1682) from the architect and polymath Dr. Robert Hooke (1635–1703) in about 1681, after the former purchased the land in about 1676. Stephen Inwood, The Forgotten Genius: The Biography of Robert Hooke, 1635–1703 (San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage, 2005), 288.

3. “Baptismal and birth record,” October 18, 1743, St. James, Westminster, London, FHL film no. 1042308, ref. 2:2J2KLGP, England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975, digitized on ancestry.com.

4. “Will of William Jones of Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire,” PROB 11/806/264, National Archives, Kew.

5. Since the Middle Ages, Britain’s age of majority was twenty-one, more recently reduced to eighteen in 1969. See “Family Law Reform Act 1969,” UK Public General Acts, 1969, accessed September 9, 2024, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1969/46/section/1.

6. The miniature was previously thought to be dated 1764, but recent examination under the microscope reveals that it was inscribed in 1766, the year Jones died. Conversation with objects conservator Stephanie Spence, Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, and Maggie Keenan, June 18, 2024, notes in NAMA curatorial files.

7. William Jones death record, April 7, 1766, Holy Cross Churchyard, Ramsbury, Wiltshire Unitary Authority, Wiltshire, England, UK and Ireland, Find a Grave® Index, 1300s–Current, digitized on ancestry.com; William Jones burial record, April 23, 1766, Ramsbury, Wiltshire, England, FHL film no. 1279421, Select Deaths and Burials, 1538–1991, digitized on ancestry.com.

Unknown owner, by 1953 [1];

Probably sold at Objects of Vertu, Portrait Miniatures, Watches, Snuff Boxes, Etc., Sotheby’s, London, July 23, 1953, lot 106, as William Jones [2];

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 unknown owner was not identified in the sale, listed in the catalogue only as “another property” consigning lots 104–106.

[2] This piece was offered for sale by “another property,” but all of the lots under this heading were withdrawn, according to the price list. The catalogue describes it as “a very fine miniature of William Jones, Esq., by John Smart, signed and dated 1764, depicting William Jones of Ramsbury Manor, half-length, three-quarters sinister, gaze directed to spectator, powdered hair en queue, in white cravat and gold braided green coat, his left hand resting in the unbuttoned coat, against a cloud and sky background, oval, 1 1/2 in. One of Smart’s early period miniatures, when on rare occasions he painted in a cloud and sky background. In this year, Smart also painted the 4th Earl of Chesterfield and a son, both of which are at Welbeck.” This catalogue is located at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Miller Nichols Library and was annotated, probably by the Starrs, with “came up in fa[ll?].” The words “painted in a cloud and sky background” are underlined by the annotator.

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

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 89.

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 William Jones.

Catalogue of Objects of Vertu, Portrait Miniatures, Watches, Snuff Boxes, Etc. (London: Sotheby’s, July 23, 1953), 14, (repro.).

Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), x, pl. IX, (repro.).

Daphne Foskett, “Miniatures by John Smart: The Starr Collection in the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum,” Antiques 90, no. 3 (September 1966): 354, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 89, p. 36, (repro.).