John Smart, Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic, 1788

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “John Smart, Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic, 1788,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1582.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “John Smart, Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic, 1788,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1582.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This striking miniature depicts Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, the 9th Nawab of Arcot, who commissioned at least twelve portrait miniatures from John Smart. The Carnatic (modern-day Tamil Nadu) was a Mughal province in southern India. Its capital, Arcot, was sixty-five miles from Fort St. George, the Honourable East India Company’s (HEIC) main base in Madras and Smart’s residence in India. As King George III’s closest royal ally in India, the nawab straddled an uncomfortable line by maintaining his relationship with the British while fiercely protecting his own interests.

Numerous wars led to the nawab becoming deeply indebted to the HEIC and ultimately forcing him to surrender most of his territory to the British, effectively becoming their titled pensioner. Even so, he managed to maintain a remarkably long rule lasting nearly half a century, from 1749 until his death in 1795, a testament to his shrewd and tenacious statecraft.¹

Smart worked continuously for Muhammad Ali throughout his decade in India.² Rather than asking the nawab to sit for each of the ten or more renditions of his portrait, Smart probably used a single preparatory drawing, now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, as the prototype for the entire series.³ It may date to around 1787, the date of Smart’s first known miniature of the nawab.⁴ While there is some variation in size among the portraits, they are remarkably similar in format, with the miniatures on ivory all painted on oval supports and depicting Muhammad Ali in three-quarters view. These miniatures can be categorized in two styles through the nawab’s attire. The first, which includes the Nelson-Atkins miniature, depicts him in elaborately embroidered gold and white courtly garments, his full majesty on display. The second style is more austere, with the nawab all in white, with sheer, pale garments still richly embroidered with white threads. Notwithstanding their variations in size, which enabled bust-length views as well as one cropped to his upper chest, these works should all be regarded as part of one closely related series.⁵

Despite the opulence of the nawab’s court, in the Nelson-Atkins miniature, Smart used not shell gold but instead yellow and brown pigments to replicate the rich and elaborate gold embroidery on the ruler’s garments. Muhammad Ali may have been unwilling or unable to pay for shell gold, but this choice also reflects Smart’s thriftiness, as well as his ambition in showing off his mimetic abilities. Still, Smart’s self-assurance did not prevent him from adjusting a composition in progress. At some point during the creation of this miniature, Smart moved the nawab’s pearl-studded belt closer to the center of his chest.⁶

Despite his financial difficulties, Muhammad Ali was committed to cultural patronage.⁷ His support of British-affiliated portraitists like John Smart, Johann Zoffany (German, 1733–1810), Tilly Kettle (English, 1734–ca. 1786), and George Willison (Scottish, 1741–1797) reveals a targeted strategy of commissioning portraits of himself to distribute as diplomatic gifts, echoing British practices while subverting them through his refusal to pay artists, including Smart, for their work.⁸ Indeed, scholars now widely attest that the nawab used strategic nonpayment and manipulation of his creditors as a form of agency against the British colonial regime.⁹ This led to one of the biggest political scandals of late eighteenth-century Britain. Muhammad Ali deliberately borrowed vast sums from HEIC civil servants and at least six Ministers of Parliament, playing them against each other and enabling him to influence London politics in his favor.¹⁰ While Smart was never paid for his portraits of Muhammad Ali, they remain a testament to his consummate skill at depicting the power and brilliance of an Indian ruler whose legacy continued long after the end of his reign.¹¹

Notes

1. Faced with a similar situation, the nawabs in Bengal, for example, only ruled until 1765. David Washbrook, “Muhammad Ali Khan Walahjah (ca. 1717–1795),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 39:652.

2. Smart stated the length of his tenure in an April 1801 affidavit; India Office, Home Miscellaneous Series (OIOC) H/322, f. 469.

3. John Smart, Nawab Wallajah, 1780s, portrait miniature on paper, 3 2/8 x 2 1/2 in. (8.3 x 6.3 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1109664/nawab-wallajah-miniature-john-smart.

4. John Smart, Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan (also known as Muhammad Ali Wallajah or Nawab Wallajah), Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic, 1787, watercolor on ivory, 1 5/8 x 1 3/16 in. (4.2 x 2.9 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82063/portrait-of-muhammad-ali-khan-portrait-miniature-smart-john.

5. In addition to the Nelson-Atkins miniature and the two works at the Victoria and Albert Museum (see ns. 3 and 4), these include Half-Length Portrait of a Man, 1787, watercolor on ivory (4.8 x 3.8 cm), sold at Bleichert, Berlin, December 9–10, 1931, lot 490; Portrait of Muhammad ’Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1789, watercolor on ivory, 1 x 3/4 in. (2.6 x 1.9 cm), sold at Sotheby’s, London, July 3, 2013, lot 159, https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/old-master-british-drawings-l13040/lot.159.html; Muhammad Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, ca. 1790, watercolor on ivory, private collection, on loan to the Holburne Museum, Bath, https://collections.holburne.org/object-l2017-1-40; Portrait of Muhammad ’Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1791, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 x 2 1/4 in. (7.3 x 5.7 cm), sold at Sotheby’s, London, April 16, 2008, lot 50, https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2008/important-miniatures-from-a-private-collection-l08172/lot.50.html; Muhammad Ali, Nawab Wallajah of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1792, watercolor on ivory, published in Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and his Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 61; Muhammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot, 1792, watercolor on ivory, 1 5/8 in. high (4.2 cm), sold at Sotheby’s, London, May 1, 1958, lot 63; Muhammad Ali Khan Wallahah, Nawab of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1795, watercolor on ivory, private collection, on loan to the Holburne Museum, Bath, https://collections.holburne.org/object-l2017-1-41; Muhammad Ali, Nawab Wallajah of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1797, watercolor on ivory, published in Foskett, John Smart: The Man and his Miniatures, 61; and Muhammad Ali, Nawab Wallajah of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, ca. 1798, watercolor on ivory, published in Foskett, John Smart: The Man and his Miniatures, 61.

6. Conversation with NAMA conservator Stephanie Spence, August 26, 2024. Notes in NAMA curatorial files.

7. Among other architectural contributions, the Nawab of Arcot commissioned the British financier and engineer Paul Benfield to build Chepauk Palace, one of the first buildings designed in the Indo-Saracenic style in India, to be his official residence. He had originally wanted to construct it within the boundaries of Fort St. George in Madras, to be as close as possible, but the British would not allow it. On the palace, see Shanti Jayewardene-Pillai, Imperial Conversations: Indo-Britons and the Architecture of South India (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2007), 204–14.

8. The portraitist George Willison wrote in frustration to Warren Hastings, governor of Madras, “For a portrait of the nawab . . . I have ever since been soliciting the payment of this picture that was sent you and having now the space of four years been assured with repeated promises of the nawab . . . but I find myself as distant from my reward as I was the first day and I am afraid it will be my hard fate to submit to the necessity of putting up with the loss . . . even after repeated intentions that I have given him of the necessity that he had put me under of applying to you and repeated requests on his part that I would not do so, as he would pay me himself. You will easily see how unwilling I was to trouble you with this demand.” Quoted in Natasha Eaton, “Between Mimesis and Alterity: Art Gift and Diplomacy in Colonial India,” in Romantic Representations of British India, ed. Michael J. Franklin (Routledge: Abingdon, 2005), 98.

9. Natasha Eaton has discussed these strategies at length. See n. 8, above, and Natasha Eaton, “The Art of Colonial Despotism: Portraits, Politics, and Empire in South India, 1750–1795,” Cultural Critique 70 (2008): 63–93. These tactics are also discussed in Washbrook, “Muhammad Ali Khan Walahjah.”

10. Their desire for repayment led to their support of his policies, exposed in the Arcot debt scandal as an innate conflict of interest. On the scandal, see Nicholas B. Dirks, Autobiography of an Archive: A Scholar’s Passage to India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 199–210.

11. Muhammad Ali’s descendants now hold the title “Prince of Arcot” and still reside in Madras (modern-day Chennai).

By descent to Sir Peter Fleming Frederick Leicester, 8th Bart. (1863–1945), Tabley House, Cheshire, by 1945 [1];

Purchased from his posthumous sale, Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Coins, and Medals, Christie, Manson, and Woods, London, May 24, 1948, lot 45, as Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan Walajah, Nawab of the Carnatic by Hans E. Backer, London, 1948 [2];

Carol Hubert Francis Samuelson, Esq. (1899–1984), Greenacre, Exeter, Devon, by 1960 [3];

Purchased from his sale, A Fine Collection of English and Continental Miniatures of the 17th, 18th, and Early 19th Centuries, Christie, Manson, and Woods, London, February 9, 1960, lot 168, as Muhammad Ali Khan, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of John W. (1905–2000) and Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1960–1971 [4];

Their gift to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1971.

Notes

[1] At the 1948 sale, Sir Peter Leicester sold lots 40–45. Most of these lots had some ties to India, including two other miniatures by Smart depicting an “Indian Potentate” (lot 43) and a “Young Indian” (lot 44), a miniature by C. C. Rosenberg of a Bengal Army major (lot 40), and a miniature of a gentleman painted by Diana Hill in India in 1787 (lot 42). According to the Fitzwilliam Museum, which purchased lot 44, now titled An Indian Prince, that miniature—and presumably the Nelson-Atkins portrait as well—was inherited by descent in the Leicester family, perhaps through Sir Peter Leicester’s great-uncle, John Leicester (1762–1827), a noted patron and supporter of British artists. “An Indian Prince: PD.16-1948,” The Fitzwilliam Museum, https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/image/media-218900. It is also possible that the Indian miniatures descended in the family through Leicester’s grandfather Sir Charles Leicester (1766–1815)’s first wife, Lady Mary Egerton (1768–1792), whose sister-in-law Rebecca Du Pré (1780–1870, later Dame Rebecca Grey Egerton) was the daughter of Josias du Pré (1720–1780), a governor of Madras.

[2] The lot is described as “Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan Walajah, Nawab of the Carnatic, three-quarter face to the left, with white beard, white dress with gold stars, gold jacket and gold-banded white turban, by John Smart—signed with initials and dated 1788 I—in oval gold frame.” H. E. Backer seems to be the name Backer used professionally, but his full name is Hans Edmund Backer, and he was a London and Rome-based art dealer. Backer sometimes bid for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. His name comes up in Starr correspondence (See letter of October 11, 1955, University of Missouri-Kansas City archives, Box 22, Folder 9).

[3] Identified in his 1960 sale as C. H. Samuelson, Samuelson’s collection of portrait miniatures was sold at auction the year after the death of his first wife Doris (née Templer, 1898–1959). He married Marjorie Hilda Donisthorpe (b. 1912) in 1961. In 1972, Samuelson donated Doris’s large collection of historic lace and fans to the Royal Albert Museum and Memorial, Exeter, England. Due to the timing of the 1960 Christie’s sale, it is possible that Doris Samuelson was actually the primary collector of portrait miniatures, but this is unsubstantiated as yet. “Samuelson Donation,” By Royal Appointment: Devon Lace Timeline, 2020, https://rammcollections.org.uk/collections-stories/by-royal-appointment-devons-lacemakers/.

[4] The lot is illustrated and described as “Muhammad Ali Khan, by John Smart, signed with initials and dated 1788 I, three quarter face to the right, gaze directed at the artist, wearing gold coat with pearl border—oval, 2 in. high—in engraved gold frame.” Archival research indicates that the Starrs purchased many miniatures from Leggatt Brothers, either directly or with Leggatt acting as their purchasing agent. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

John Smart, Nawab Wallajah, 1780s, portrait miniature on paper, 3 2/8 x 2 1/2 in. (8.3 x 6.3 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 104-1888.

John Smart, Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan (also known as Muhammad Ali Wallajah or Nawab Wallajah), Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic, 1787, watercolor on ivory, 1 5/8 x 1 3/16 in. (4.2 x 2.9 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.13-1930.

John Smart, Half-Length Portrait of a Man, 1787, watercolor on ivory (4.8 x 3.8 cm), sold at Bleichert, Berlin, December 9–10, 1931, lot 490.

John Smart, Portrait of Muhammad ’Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1789, watercolor on ivory, 1 x 3/4 in. (2.6 x 1.9 cm), sold at Sotheby’s, London, July 3, 2013, lot 159.

John Smart, Muhammad Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, ca. 1790, watercolor on ivory, private collection, on loan to the Holburne Museum, Bath, L2017.1.40.

John Smart, Portrait of Muhammad ’Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1791, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 x 2 1/4 in. (7.3 x 5.7 cm), sold at Sotheby’s, London, April 16, 2008, lot 50.

John Smart, Muhammad Ali, Nawab Wallajah of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1792, watercolor on ivory, published in Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and his Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 61.

John Smart, Muhammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot, 1792, watercolor on ivory, 1 5/8 in. high (4.2 cm), sold at Sotheby’s, London, May 1, 1958, lot 63.

John Smart, Muhammad Ali Khan Wallahah, Nawab of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1795, watercolor on ivory, mounted in a gold ring, private collection, on loan to the Holburne Museum, Bath, L2017.1.41.

John Smart, Muhammad Ali, Nawab Wallajah of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, 1797, watercolor on ivory, published in Foskett, John Smart: The Man and his Miniatures, 61.

John Smart, Muhammad Ali, Nawab Wallajah of Arcot and Prince of the Carnatic, ca. 1798, watercolor on ivory, published in Foskett, John Smart: The Man and his Miniatures, 61.

John Smart—Miniaturist: 1741/2–1811, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 9, 1965–January 2, 1966, no cat., no. 25, as Mohammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot.

Heads of State and Some Friends, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 4–February 6, 1983, no. 54, as Mohammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot (India).

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 Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic.

Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Coins, and Medals (London: Christie, Manson, and Woods, May 24, 1948), lot 45, as Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan Walajah, Nawab of the Carnatic.

A Fine Collection of English and Continental Miniatures of the 17th, 18th, and Early 19th Centuries (London: Christie, Manson, and Woods, February 9, 1960), lot 168, as Muhammad Ali Khan.

Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), xii, 61, pl. XVII, (repro.), as Muhammad Ali, Nawab of Arcot.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 119, pp. 31, 34, 42, (repro.), as Mohammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 149, (repro.), as Mohammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot.

Roger B. Ward and Ross Taggart, Heads of State and Some Friends, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 26, pl. 5, (repro.), as Mohammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot (India).

Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), xv, 133, (repro.), as The Nawab of Arcot.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York City: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 175, (repro.), as Mohammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 84, (repro.), as Portrait of Mohammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot.

Blythe Sobol, “An Outsized Passion for Miniatures: The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,” in Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions, Techniques, and Collections (Petersberg, Germany: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2023), 241, (repro.), Portrait of Mohammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot.