John Smart, Portrait of James Fittler, October 20, 1805

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “John Smart, Portrait of James Fittler, October 20, 1805,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1628.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “John Smart, Portrait of James Fittler, October 20, 1805,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1628.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Details surrounding James Fittler’s (1756–1835) early life are scarce, but a record of admission to the Royal Academy (RA) Schools reveals an October 1756 birthdate.¹ His parents remain unknown, but new genealogical research shows that Fittler married Elizabeth Johnson on July 6, 1781, in St. Pancras, London.² They had two daughters, including Mary Ann, who later married Fittler’s collaborator and fellow engraver, Joseph John Skelton (1783–1871).³ After first entering the RA Schools in 1778, Fittler became an associate engraver in 1800.⁴ He frequently produced maritime scenes and was appointed Marine Engraver to King George III around 1787.⁵

Fittler’s friendship with John Smart probably began through their mutual association with the RA or through the publisher and miniaturist Robert Bowyer (1758–1834).⁶ Bowyer and Fittler worked together on the 1791–95 publication Bowyer’s Bible.⁷ Their close circle of artist friends, which also included painter Robert Smirke (1753–1845) and sculptor Joseph Nollekens (1737–1823), supported each other in their careers as well as in their personal lives. This is best exemplified by Bowyer’s guardianship of Smart’s children while Smart was in India and his probable training of Smart’s son John Smart Junior (1777–1809) in miniature painting.⁸

After Smart Junior’s 1809 death, Fittler proved his will, testifying that, “he knew and was well acquainted with John Smart the Younger . . . deceased and with his manners and character of handwriting.”⁹ The deep connection between Fittler and the Smart family is further illustrated in Smart Senior’s handwritten inscription on this portrait’s verso, where he notes the date of October 20 and states: “I present to him / as a mark of my esteem and regard” (Fig. 1). Given Fittler’s birthdate, this drawing was probably a birthday gift rather than a commission. Smart exhibited the miniature at the RA the following year, a sign of his pride in its craftsmanship and a token of his esteem for an admired friend.¹⁰

The drawing depicts Fittler with short, powdered, and tousled hair that extends into tightly curled sideburns. Smart’s palette is limited, aside from pink flesh tones and a hint of blue in the eyes.¹¹ His inclusion of a landscape background is rare but not unprecedented; this motif occasionally appears in his drawings of friends and family, perhaps due to their larger scale.¹² Rows of trees are included on the left and right, with a house and hill added to the right side. Fittler mentions an estate in Twickenham in his will, so it is possible that Smart has depicted this property.¹³

Despite Fittler’s artistic success, he faced financial difficulties later in life, selling a large group of his prints, books, and copper plates at Sotheby’s in 1825.¹⁴ He died in relative obscurity ten years later, on December 2, 1835.¹⁵ According to engraver Abraham Raimbach (1776–1843), Fittler was “an artist of respectable talent, great industry, and considerable reputation,” who died “in impoverished circumstances at Turnham Green, where he had lived in retirement for the latter part of his life, surviving both fortune and popularity.”¹⁶

Notes

1. According to his December 1835 burial record, Fittler died at the age of seventy-nine. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. Dl/Dro/Bt/007/023, London Metropolitan Archives. See also n. 2. Fittler’s year of birth has previously been listed as 1758.

2. Their marriage license states, “James Fittler . . . aged twenty four years,” which reaffirms an October 1756 birthdate. London and Surrey, England, Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1597–1921: 1781, London Metropolitan Archives, digitized on ancestrylibrary.com.

3. Their other daughter, Ann Frances (b. after 1788), married Robert Hughes on January 12, 1809. In a census record, Joseph Skelton’s profession is listed as “Portrait & Historical Engraver,” and Mary Ann’s (1784/85–after 1851) is listed directly below as “Portrait D^o^” or “Ditto,” which suggests she pursued the same profession. 1851 England Census, class HO107, piece 1478, folio 370, p. 11, GSU roll 87801, National Archives, Kew. Fittler also worked with Joseph’s brother, William Skelton (1763–1848); see James Fittler and William Skelton, Portrait of Sir John Cheke, 1821, engraving and etching on paper, 8 1/2 x 5 7/8 in. (21.5 x 15 cm), British Museum, London, 1868,0822.2303, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1868-0822-2303.

4. According to the “Register of Admission of Students: Page 35-F,” Royal Academy of Arts Archive, London, ref. RAA/KEE/1/1/1/35, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/archive/page-35-f, his age is listed as “22 years next October.”

5. Many of his prints are at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, including James Fittler, To the Right Honble [sic] Lord Viscount Nelson This Plate Representing the Battle of the Nile, January 1803, engraving on paper, 23 15/16 x 32 in. (60.8 x 81.2 cm), PAI6217, https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-156157. The earliest mention of Fittler’s title is in a 1787 newspaper: “Proposals for Printing by Subscription an History of the Town and County of the Town of Newcastle Upon Tyne,” Newcastle Courant, July 7, 1787, 1. According to Nicholas Tracy, “James Fittler’s appointment as Marine Engraver to the King has no more substantial documentation, but his claim to the honorific is supported by the fact that he furnished an engraving of the battle for an ‘Imperial’ print recording Dance’s triumph and knighthood.” Nicholas Tracy, Britannia’s Palette: The Arts of Naval Victory (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 163.

6. Smart began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1797; The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, The Twenty-Ninth (London: Cooper and Graham, 1797), 24–25.

7. Deborah Graham-Vernon, “Bowyer, Robert,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 23, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3091. Fittler produced the engravings for Bowyer’s publication.

8. Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 54. Bowyer also served as attorney of Smart Senior’s estate.

9. “Appeared personally James Fittler of Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square in the parish of Pancras in the County of Middlesex Esquire”; “Will of John Smart of No 2 Russell Place Fitzroy Square, Middlesex,” February 14, 1810, ref. 11/1508/263, National Archives, Kew.

10. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, The Thirty-Eighth (London: B. McMillan, 1806), 27, as Mr. Fittler.

11. For more on the materiality of Smart’s drawings, see the “Technical Note,” by Rachel Freeman in “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1786,” in this catalogue.

12. Smart completed a similar drawing of the executor of his will, Dr. William Ruddiman, physician to the Nawab of Arcot. The original has not been located, but an engraving exists: Anthony Cardon, after John Smart, William Ruddiman, ca. 1793–1813, stipple engraving on paper, 11 15/16 x 7 1/2 in. (30.3 x 19.1 cm), Wellcome Collection, London, 647163i, https://wellcomecollection.org/works/puu9g598. A landscape background also appears in a portrait by John Smart Junior of the future mother of his child: John Smart Junior, Portrait Miniature of Mary Green, 1807, watercolor on paper, 4 3/16 x 3 3/8 in. (10.6 x 8.6 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.108-1929, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070047/portrait-miniature-of-mary-green-portrait-miniature-john-smart-junior.

13. “Will of James Fittler,” January 6, 1836, ref. 11/1856/193, National Archives, Kew. For similar topographies, see James Fittler, after Edward Francis Burney, Pain’s Hill, in Surrey, 1787, etching and engraving on paper, 5 7/8 x 7 11/16 in. (15 x 19.5 cm), British Museum, London, 1870,1008.42, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1870-1008-42; and James Fittler, after Edward Francis Burney, Claremont, in Surrey, 1787, etching and engraving on paper, 6 x 7 3/4 in. (15.3 x 19.7 cm), British Museum, London, 1870,1008.41, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1870-1008-41.

14. The sale took place July 14–16, 1825; Louis Fagan, “Fittler, James,” The Dictionary of the National Biography (New York: MacMillan, 1908), 7:80.

15. He was buried on December 9, and his age is listed as seventy-nine. London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. Dl/Dro/Bt/007/023, London Metropolitan Archives.

16. Abraham Raimbach, Memoirs and Recollections of the Late Abraham Raimbach, Esq., Engraver, ed. Michael Thomson Scott Raimbach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 36n55.

Gifted to the sitter, James Fittler (1756–1835), London, October 20, 1805;

Baron Hans Reitzes von Marienwert (1877–1935), Vienna, by May 1924–1935 [1];

Inherited by his wife, Baroness Maria Reitzes von Marienwert (1891–1975), Vienna and New York, 1935–1948;

Purchased from her sale, Fine French Furniture, Renaissance Bronzes, Important Tapestries, Old Meissen and Other Porcelain, French Objets d’Art, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, May 1, 1948, lot 273, as James Fittler, Marine Engraver to George III [2];

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.

Notes

[1] Baron Hans Reitzes von Marienwert exhibited the miniature in May 1924 at Internationale Miniaturen-Austellung in der Albertina Wien, Vienna, Albertina, May–June 1924, no. 840, p. 47.

[2] According to Art Prices Current 26 (1947–49), A65, lot 273 sold for £290.

James Peale Junior (1789–1876), Portrait of a Gentleman, 18–19th century, watercolor on paper, 4 5/8 in. (11.7 cm) high, sold at American Furniture and Silver, American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, New York, April 3, 1937, lot 132.

The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1806, no. 701, as Mr. Fittler.

Internationale Miniaturen-Austellung in der Albertina Wien, Albertina, Vienna, May–June 1924, no. 840, as James Fittler.

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

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 138, as James Fittler.

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 James Fittler.

The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, The Thirty-Eighth, exh. cat. (London: B. McMillan, 1806), 27, as Mr. Fittler.

Leo Schidlof, Internationale Miniaturen-Ausstellung in der Albertina Wien, exh. cat. (Vienna: Gesellschaft der Bilder- und Miniaturenfreunde, 1924), 47, as James Fittler.

Fine French Furniture, Renaissance Bronzes, Important Tapestries, Old Meissen and Other Porcelain, French Objets d’Art (New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, May 1, 1948), 62.

Daphne Foskett, “Miniatures by John Smart,” Antiques 90, no. 3 (September 1966): 356, (repro.), as James Fittler.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 138, p. 48, (repro.), as James Fittler.