John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1794

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1794,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1602.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1794,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1602.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Due to the similarity of this miniature’s case to that of a portrait of a young girl painted by Smart the previous year, it has been theorized that the sitters may have been father and daughter. On first glance, they appear to have been taken from two separated halves of the same case. However, this miniature’s case is complete, with a hinged copper front cover to protect its delicate interior. Without any other identifying information or provenance connecting these two portraits, it seems more probable that the cases for both artworks were ordered through Smart from the same jeweler or case maker.

What can we otherwise surmise about this portrait of a dignified man, who appears to be in his fourth or fifth decade? An inscribed capital “I” below the artist’s initials and date confirms that the miniature was painted in India. The sitter’s civilian garments suggest that, like nearly all other non-military British men in India, he was probably a civil servant or merchant employed by or affiliated with the Honourable East India Company (HEIC). He is soberly dressed in a puce-colored coat.¹ Smart renders a sprinkling of hair powder in thin, scratchy hatch marks on the shoulders and collar of the coat. The sitter’s grayish-blue eyes are fixed on the viewer; their clear, direct gaze, set off by crow’s feet and undereye creases, suggests an air of insight and intelligence. Never one for flattery, Smart painted a faint gray five o’clock shadow on the sitter’s upper lip and chin, with pink and peach daubs of paint sprinkled across his cheeks, nose, and chin to indicate a somewhat mottled, blotchy complexion, discolored from exposure to the Indian sun and advancing age. His white pleated cravat and waistcoat, with jauntily splayed lapels, suggest some manner of wealth, as they would have been difficult to keep crisp and fresh in India without the assistance of a skilled valet or manservant.

The sitter is posed before a moody, clouded sky background, a style that Smart frequently used in the second half of his decade-long stay in India, not only for the aforementioned portrait of a young girl but also a 1791 portrait of a man, all three in the Nelson-Atkins collection. Smart added touches of soft yellow and pink, with pale blue sky peeking through in scattered areas behind the sitter’s shoulders and above his head. The resulting effect adds some drama to an otherwise rather sober depiction, setting off the sitter’s simple garments and enabling his face and keen eyes to take center stage.

Notes

1. The color puce, named for the French word for “flea” and inspired by the color of flea droppings and the bloodstains their bites left behind, had aristocratic associations among the fashionable French, and later British, elite, despite its rather humble origins. Caroline Weber discusses how flea-inspired fashions were cultivated and spread by Queen Marie Antoinette and her followers in Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (New York: Picador, 2006), 117.

John W. (1905–2000) and 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. 127, 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.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 125, p. 45, (repro.), as Unknown Man.