John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1767

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1767,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1520.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1767,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1520.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Notwithstanding this unknown man’s rather languid expression, his deep-blue jacket emblazoned with floral, gold embroidery is anything but staid. This type of lavish ornamentation was frequently found in menswear of the period, and professional embroiders provided not only gold, silver, and silk embroidery but also colored spangles and, on the grandest occasions, precious stones.¹ The floral motif appears again in the sitter’s lace jabot, which Smart renders in thick daubs of opaque white pigment.

This unknown sitter has gray eyes and pale lips, which probably were once more pink and have faded over time. While early, this work effectively moves away from Smart’s masklike faces of the early 1760s and ushers in a period of increased solidity of form and character. There is structure under the cheekbones, and the sitter appears as real flesh and blood, unlike a sitter from just one year before, whose face appears more cartoonish (Portrait of a Man, Possibly Joseph or John Brennen, Recorder of Cork). Here, the sitter’s face is awash with a light peach glow across his cheeks, which would give way to ruddier complexions later in Smart’s career.²

Smart’s rendering of this sitter marks a transitional moment in his artistic development, showcasing his growing ability to capture both the opulence of period fashion and the nuanced reality of his subjects’ appearances.

Notes

1. In France, the dauphin (heir apparent to the throne) wore a coat embroidered with diamonds for his wedding in 1770, and the comte de Provence’s coat included opals in the border. Aileen Riberio, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe 1715–1789 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 74n45.

2. Cory Korkow astutely makes this point regarding a portrait from the 1760s. See Cory Korkow and Jon L. Seydl, British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013), 143.

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.

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

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 93, 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.

Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 134, no. 84, (repro.), as An Unknown Man.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 93, p. 37 (repro.), as Unknown Man.