John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Mrs. Ramsay, 1789

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Mrs. Ramsay, 1789,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1588.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Mrs. Ramsay, 1789,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1588.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This unknown woman was probably the wife or relative of an Honourable East India Company official living in Madras (modern-day Chennai), where Smart lived during his decade in India, or Calcutta (modern-day Kolkata), which he visited in 1789, the year this portrait was painted. The sitter wears her hair in a style fashionable in the mid-to-late 1780s, with much of it cut short and tightly curled, or frizzled, to form a cloud-like halo around the head, appropriating the texture and volume of natural African hair.¹ A lower section of hair, with its long length preserved, is worn loose down the back of her white dress. A white fichu is draped over her shoulders, its gauzy folds designed for fashion and modesty while keeping its wearer as cool as possible. Nevertheless, Smart has painted the sitter with deeply flushed cheeks and visible blue veins tracing up her temples, a sign both of a ladylike pallor and her sensitivity to the hot Indian climate.

The sitter’s identity is confused by a backing card added inside its case, which has the words “TOP / MONTGOMERY” written in a modern hand, probably intended as instructions for a framer or conservator.² Perplexingly, the Starr collection’s other 1789 miniature by Smart was titled “Portrait of Mrs. Montgomery” when it entered the Starr collection, if not before. Recent research indicates that this Mrs. Montgomery was probably Maria Montgomerie (née Chantry). Further complicating matters, the Starrs identified the subject of one of these two 1789 miniatures as “Mrs. Ramsey” [sic], but neither miniature retained that title after 1965.³ A 1903 sale catalogue records a miniature matching the date and description of both 1789-dated miniatures, but the lot description incorrectly identifies the sitter as the wife of the painter Allan Ramsay (Scottish, 1713–1784).⁴ The sitter is described as “viewed three-quarter . . . [with] full powdered hair . . . in white lawn dress semi-décolleté.” Maria Montgomerie’s comparatively high neckline suggests that Mrs. Ramsay may more likely be the sitter in this miniature.⁵

In addition to being painted the same year, both miniatures depict women in white dresses with similarly styled and powdered hair. It is possible that the similarity in appearance and date caused this miniature’s sitter to be misidentified on the backing card during a previous conservation treatment or re-framing campaign. It is also possible that the miniatures’ backing cards were accidentally swapped at that time. Without a contemporary description or portrait of Maria Montgomerie, or additional clues as to the identity of Mrs. Ramsay, we are unable to confirm either sitter’s identity with certainty and have chosen to retain their current titles until further evidence has proved otherwise.

Notes

1. This is, of course, despite the long history of derogatory language and moralizing directed against African hair textures, which were denigrated by white Europeans as uncivilized and lacking in modesty and labeled with dehumanizing terms like “wool.” One period source, the writer and surgeon Tobias Smollett, made a direct reference to this resemblance, describing a hairstyle as “Frizzled on the forehead, so as exactly to resemble the wooly heads of the Guinea negroes”; Tobias Smollett, “Travels Through France and Italy,” The Complete Works of Tobias Smollett (London: Bell and Daldy, 1804), 704, quoted in Cheyney McKnight, “A Word on African Hair in Eighteenth-Century Europe and the Colonies,” in The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Beauty (Salem, MA: Page Street, 2019), 156. McKnight notes the irony of African hair textures being appropriated despite the fact that such appropriative coiffures were often styled by enslaved people of African descent, particularly in the Americas.

2. According to conversations with Carol Aiken, March 19–23, 2018; notes in NAMA curatorial files.

3. J. W. Starr to Laurence Sickman, October 11, 1965; NAMA curatorial files.

4. Allan Ramsay married twice. However, his first wife, Anne Bayne Ramsay, died in 1743, and his second wife, Margaret Lindsay Ramsay, died in 1782. This portrait is dated 1789, seven years after Margaret Lindsay Ramsay’s death and five years after Ramsay himself died. Stephen Lloyd and Kim Sloan, The Intimate Portrait: Drawings, Miniatures, and Pastels from Ramsey to Lawrence (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2008), 126.

5. Catalogue of Old Sèvres Porcelain, Old English Miniatures, Old French Gold and Enamel Boxes, Watches and Objects of Vertu, Bronzes, and Other Objects of Art (London: Christie, Manson, and Woods, May 15, 1903), 7. The listing reads in full: “Portrait of Mrs. Ramsay, wife of Allan Ramsay, the painter, and sister-in-law of Lady Archibald Campbell, by John Smart—signed J.S., and dated 1789, I. (India). Viewed three-quarter face turned to the right, full powdered hair falling in ringlets on her shoulder, in white lawn dress semi-décolleté—in plain gold rim, and metal-gilt and black lacquer frame.” The unusual “metal-gilt and black lacquer frame” was probably a later addition and detached from the case before entering the Nelson-Atkins collection, if this is indeed the Nelson-Atkins miniature.

Possibly an unknown woman, by 1903;

Possibly purchased from her sale, Old Sèvres Porcelain, Old English Miniatures, Old French Gold and Enamel Boxes, Watches, and Objects of Vertu, Bronzes, and Other Objects of Art, Christie, Manson, and Woods, May 15, 1903, lot 29, as Portrait of Mrs. Ramsay, by Charles John Wertheimer (1842–1911), 1903–1911 [1];

Possibly sold at his posthumous sale, Old French Snuff-Boxes and Objects of Art and Decoration, the Property of the late Charles J. Wertheimer, Esq., Christie, Manson, and Woods, May 8–9, 1912, lot 48, as Portrait of Mrs. Ramsay [2];

John W. (1905–2000) and Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift through the Starr Foundation to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] The lot is described as “Portrait of Mrs. Ramsay, wife of Allan Ramsay, the painter, and sister-in-law of Lady Archibald Campbell, by John Smart—signed J.S., and dated 1789, I. (India). Viewed three-quarter face turned to the right, full powdered hair falling in ringlets on her shoulder, in white lawn dress semi-décolleté—in plain gold rim, and metal-gilt and black lacquer frame.” The buyer is handwritten in the catalogue as “C. Wertheimer,” identifying the purchaser as Charles John Wertheimer, the art dealer and collector. Unfortunately, while the description and identification of the sitter as Mrs. Ramsay are similar, it is difficult to state with certainty whether or not the Nelson-Atkins miniature matches this object.

[2] The lot is described as “A portrait of Mrs. Ramsay, wife of Allan Ramsay, the Painter, by John Smart, 1789 (Indian period)—signed with initials—in gold locket, with diamond border. She is viewed three-quarter face, turned to the left, with powdered curling hair, wearing white dress.” Note that the case description differs in each sale, neither of which matches the miniature’s plain gilt copper alloy bezel. Miniature cases and frames were often and easily exchanged for others. What remains to be determined is whether the Nelson-Atkins miniature was in fact the same portrait of Mrs. Ramsay sold in the above two auctions.

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 Mrs. Ramsay.

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.

Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 72, as Ramsay, Mrs., wife of Allan Ramsay.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 122, p. 43, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.