John Smart, Portrait of a Girl, Probably Frances Taylor, 1793

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “John Smart, Portrait of a Girl, Probably Frances Taylor, 1793,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1600.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “John Smart, Portrait of a Girl, Probably Frances Taylor, 1793,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1600.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

John W. and Martha Jane Phillips Starr particularly cherished their eighteenth-century miniature portraits of children. This miniature of a girl must have held pride of place in their collection. She is probably Frances Taylor (b. 1781), the daughter of James Taylor, a high-ranking Honourable East India Company (HEIC) official. A smaller copy of the Nelson-Atkins miniature by Smart, with an inscription identifying the sitter as a member of the Taylor family, enabled researchers at the London dealer Philip Mould to connect the portraits to two brothers, James and George Taylor, who both worked for the HEIC.¹ George Taylor, a legal clerk for the company and register at the mayor’s court in 1795, did not arrive in Madras (now Chennai) until 1787, six years before this miniature was painted. There are no known records of him having a wife or children. In contrast, James Taylor arrived in India in 1764, working his way up in the HEIC from writer to senior merchant by 1790. He first married Anne Phillips on February 28, 1769, in Fort St. George, at Madras.² Their daughter, Frances, was baptized there on December 26, 1781, making her about twelve years old when this portrait was painted.³

In 1792, James Taylor was on the council in charge of Fort St. George, along with John Holland. Taylor and Holland were caught offering unapproved loans to the Nawab of Arcot and suspended by Charles Cornwallis.⁴ If Taylor returned to England after this incident, however, it seems he was not away long, as he married Frances Marie Williams on July 25, 1799, at Fort St. George, Madras.⁵ A 1787 portrait of James Taylor by Smart was exhibited by the Reverend Montague Taylor, the son of Taylor and his second wife, along with an 1804 miniature of Mrs. Taylor by Smart and other family portraits, at an 1865 exhibition at the South Kensington Museum.⁶ The Nelson-Atkins miniature of the young Frances Taylor, James’s daughter with Anne, is unfortunately absent from this list, and no other trace of her has been found.

Frances Taylor and her mother, Anne Phillips, may have died prematurely in India, as did many British colonists. Smart depicts Frances with flushed cheeks, like many of his British sitters in India, but bright-eyed and with a sweet, serious gaze. She wears her long, dark hair in loose waves down her back, in the style of young unmarried girls. Her gown follows a fashion called a chemise à la reine, popularized in the 1780s by Marie Antoinette. The white lawn or voile fabric, appropriately sheer for the hot climate, is pleated across the front and cinched at the waist with a wide blue sash. A voluminous white frill of lace adorns the neckline in plump ruffles. Frances is poised between childhood and, all too soon, the expectations of womanhood, and this moment in her life is preserved along with her memory in the Nelson-Atkins portrait, charmingly delineated by Smart’s hand.

Notes

1. John Smart, Portrait Miniature of a Young Girl from the Taylor Family, ca. 1793–1796, watercolor on ivory, 1 1/16 in. (2.7 cm) high, previously with Philip Mould, London, accessed August 24, 2024, https://historicalportraits.com/artists/36-john-smart/works/3671-john-smart-portrait-miniature-of-a-young-girl-from-the-1796. According to Philip Mould, the miniature is dated 1796, but later in the same entry, they state, more probably, “The Kansas [sic] miniature is dated 1793 therefore we know that Smart first painted this young girl towards the end of his time in India, and produced this more portable likeness either at the same time or not long after.”

2. India, Select Marriages, 1792–1948, FHL film no. 463296, digitized on Ancestry.com. See also F. E. P., ed., Marriages at Fort St. George, Madras (Exter: William Pollard, 1907), 32.

3. India, Select Births and Baptisms, 17862–1947, FHL film no. 463296, digitized on Ancestry.com. Ancestry also records the baptisms of her brothers George, on November 28, 1770, and James, on November 4, 1774, also at Fort St. George, Madras.

4. Syed Hasan, ed., Fort William-India House Correspondence (Delhi: National Archives of India, 1976), 16:294.

5. “Marriages at Fort St. George, Madras,” The Genealogist 21 (1905): 102. In this record, her name is recorded as “Fanny Marie Williams.” That this James Taylor was the same man is supported by his obituary, which identifies him as “formerly Member of Council of Madras,” describing his wife as a “daughter of Andrew Williams.” “Obituary,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 38 (October 1852): 439. Another source states, “James Taylor, a civil servant of 1764, married Ann [sic] Phillips in 1769.” Henry Davison Love, Vestiges of Old Madras (London: John Murray, 1913) 3:188n3.

6. John Smart, Portrait of James Taylor, 1787, watercolor on ivory, 2 1/4 x 1 5/8 in. (5.7 x 4.2 cm), sold at Sotheby’s, London, May 1, 2013, lot 129, https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/property-from-the-collection-of-sir-gawaine-and-lady-baillie-l13310/lot.129.html; Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures on Loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1865 (London: Whittingham and Wilkins, 1865), 40.

Unknown woman, by 1958 [1];

Purchased from her sale, Fine Portrait Miniatures, Gold Boxes, and Objects of Vertu, Sotheby’s, London, May 1, 1958, lot 79, as A Young Girl, 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 Sotheby’s May 1, 1958, sale, “A Lady” sold lots 64–80.

[2] The sale catalogue describes lot 79 as “an attractive miniature of a Young Girl, by John Smart, with his Indian signature and the date 1793, three quarters profile to dexter, with long dark hair falling down her back, wearing a low-cut white dress with a frill around the neck and a pale blue sash, cloud and sky background, 3 in.”

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. This catalogue is located at University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Miller Nichols Library and was annotated, probably by the Starrs, with “Leggatt 540 16[?illegible]” written in pencil, indicating the purchaser and sale price, and with the date of the miniature circled. 1793 was most likely a year that the Starrs were trying to fill in their search for a signed and dated Smart for each year of his career.

John Smart, A Young Girl from the Taylor Family, ca. 1793–1796, watercolor on ivory, 1 1/16 in. (2.7 cm), previously with Philip Mould, London.

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 Girl.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 126, as Unknown Young Girl.

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 Girl, Probably Frances Taylor.

Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures, Gold Boxes, and Objects of Vertu (London: Sotheby’s, May 1, 1958), 15, (repro.), as A Young Girl.

“Advertisement: Sotheby and Co.,” Burlington Magazine 100, no. 661 (April 1958): v, (repro.), as A Miniature of a young girl.

Daphne Foskett, “Fresh Light on John Smart,” Apollo 77 (June 1963): 472-74, (repro.), erroneously as Miss Travers.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 126, p. 44, (repro.), as Unknown Young Girl.

Emma Rutherford and Lawrence Hendra, John Smart: A Genius Magnified (London: Philip Mould, 2014), 76, (repro.).